Coconut Travels: So long Srinigar, on the road again to Jaipur

Dreamy Shikara - Srinigar, Kashmir

We bid our farewells at Srinigar.

We went through five security checks to get to the plane. One to enter the airport parking lot. One to check in our baggage and walk through the terminal. One to sit down at our boarding gate. One to walk to the plane and finally one to board the plane. Like I said, they really do their due dillegence here. I guess they can't afford to have anyone blow up anything in India which makes sense. The flight back was ok. Same thing as the first time.

Once again, getting off of the plane in Delhi was like stepping into an oven. Hot hot hot! During our baggage claim the power to the airport went out but was quickly diverted to another power source. We walked out to the parking lot to get to meet the driver who would take us to Jaipur. The car turned out to be a lot older than we wanted. My dad called up the travel agent peole and yelled at them for providing a bad car after paying a lot of money. Anyhow, Anil our current driver drove us to a waiting spot as the agency scrambled to send a newer car. While waiting, we found out that if you change the car you change the driver and Anil seemed like he was a fairly relaxed young guy who knew the ins and outs of everywhere we were going. The new car arrived which looked worse than the one we had so we told Anil we'd go with him.

We stopped at a quick self serve restaurant where I ate Indo-Chinese vegetable fried rice which was pretty good. I love having chinese food with indian spices. We drove by Haryana which is the newer part of Delhi. There were higher sky rise buildings and lots of freshly built malls scattered everywhere. I even saw my company's India branch here. Fancy looking indeed! I wish I had taken more photos on the way but I was pretty out of it.

Four and half hours later we had left Delhi, entered Rajastan and were sitting down in our hotel room in Amer, just outside of Jaipur. The room was ok at Amer view Hotel. There were quite a few foreigners in our hotel; all european.

Sparky and Amber Fort - Jaipur

Anil, the driver took us to Amber fort and then the summer palace just outside of Jaipur. Amber fort was simply breathtaking.

Amber Fort Close Up - Jaipur

The cool thing about the summer palace is that during the monsoon season it's bottom two floors are submerged in a lake. The only way to get to the palace is by a boat. Absolutely gorgeous!

Summer Palace (Submerged during Monsoon) - Jaipur

View of Summer Palace against the setting sky - Jaipur

Night Life - Jaipur

We drove around Jaipur quickly and went shopping a little bit. I got some more kurtas and short sleeves too; tailored especially to my tastes! We had dinner at a restaurant in the Gitz Hotel where there was a traditional folk dance by some singers and dancers.

Traditional Rajasthani Dancing - Gitz Hotel, Jaipur

Musician providing music for the dancers - Jaipur

The girls were pretty but couldn't have been much older than 16, 18 tops. The guys were ugly but they could sing well and the dancing was awesome all in all. They did all sorts of tricks such as dancing on nails and dancing with three pots on their heads. I'll let the photos speak for themselves, but the dancing was beautiful indeed.

Traditional Rajasthani Dancing - Gitz Hotel, Jaipur

Lost in the Music - Gitz Hotel, Jaipur

I pigged out again on Chicken Tikka Masala. It was so good and this was authentic Rajasthani Tandoor cuisine. I shouldn't have done that cause now I feel bloated hehe. Tomorrow we attack all of Jaipur! It's going to be a long day, but I can already tell I like Jaipur and Rajasthan.