Woolly says – I was a trifle jaded having been woken constantly throughout the night with other hostellers alarms going off, having lay there growling for several hours I was close to taking matters into my own paws and stamping on the phones responsible for the constant noises, Jo beat me to with the use of a few very rude words, ones that she never lets me use, and I finally managed to dose until someone decided to turn the lights on at 6am!
One of the reasons that we don’t use hostels all the time, they might be cheap, but they come with consequences.
Woolly says – With our bags packed and left in reception for collection later we sailed forth in a rickshaw to one of the temples I had been hearing about. A steep climb led us higher and higher above the city, passing cows, goats, wild boar and lots of monkeys, it didn’t look quite like it’s pictures on google but maybe that would be more evident once we reached the top. Pausing for breath at the temple opening I noticed a sign that told me that we were at The Sun Temple! I wondered how long it would take for the women to realise that the driver had dropped us at the wrong place! As we had made the climb up it seemed rude not to go into the Surya Mandir, the temples official name, which was established in the 18th century and funded by a courtier of Sawai Jai Singh II. The views across the smoggy city were great and a lady who looked after the building blessed us and tied string round the girl’s wrists and around one of my paws. There was nothing else to see or do so following a family of boar we headed back to the city centre.
Not having wifi meant we were unable to check what the name of the place we had actually wanted to go to, so recalling from memory we asked a driver for the white temples and headed off onto the chaos of the roads.
Woolly says – The white temple is actually the Birla Mandir, built by a rich Jaipur family it was started in 1977 until being completed in 1985. From the roadside it looked impressive and having admired the colourful shrubs we headed towards the foot storage area, when a guard started blowing his whistle in my ear. As I failed to see what I was doing wrong, I glared at him as he shouted directly into my face that the temple was closed, of course it was, it’s us, we had arrived just as it shut its doors for the afternoon. The officious man continued to scream at the top of his lungs and I took a leaf from Jo’s book of phrases telling him to ‘chill his beans’, not sure he understood but he at least stopped the bawling, which allowed a couple of quick photo’s to be taken before we beat a hasty retreat. We sat in the rickshaw and I waited for someone to have an idea, it took a while.
The only place I could think of was the Doll’s Museum, not what you might expect but at least something.
Woolly says – I really wonder where she gets these things from! But with nothing else to offer it seemed that we were off to view some dolls. Finding the entrance to the building was a little tricky and we found ourselves in a deaf and dumb school, we smiled and waved as we wandered the corridors before finally asking for directions….. to the building next door! Set over two rooms the museum held a range of dusty cabinets containing dolls dressed in regional Indian dresses before moving onto a range of dolls from around the world including the UK with a very small beefeater representing England. It wasn’t much but it was pleasant enough and having seen everything it had to offer we wandered back to the road to search for some lunch. I’d enjoyed Jaipur even though it seemed to be the dustiest place so far, next on our epic trek was to one of the seven ‘new’ wonders of the world, I couldn’t wait.