India Guide
Rajasthan
Royal Gaitor
Address: On the northern edge of Jaipur city centre
Price: Free, camera Rs10, video Rs20
Opening time: Daily 9am–4.30pm
The walled funerary complex of Royal Gaitor contains the stately marble mausoleums (chhatris) of Jaipur's ruling family. The compound consists of two main courtyards, each crammed full of imposing memorials. The first (and more modern) courtyard is dominated by the grandiose twentieth-century cenotaph of Madho Singh II (d. 1922), a ruler of famously gargantuan appetites, whose four wives and fifty-odd concubines bore him a grand total of "around 125" children.
The finest of the chhatris is in the second, older, courtyard. The base of the elaborate tomb of Jai Singh II (d. 1743), the founder of Jaipur and the first ruler to be interred at Gaitor, is decorated with delicately carved elephant- and lion-hunting scenes.
On the ridgetop above Gaitor (and reachable from it via a steep path) lies the Ganesh Mandir, the second of the city's two major Ganesh temples – a huge and eye-catching building instantly recognizable from the huge swastika painted on its side.