Best things to do in Jaipur
Jaipur, often referred to as the "Pink City," is a captivating blend of rich history, vibrant culture, and architectural marvels that offer an array of unforgettable experiences for travellers to indulge in.
#1 Wander The Pink City
At the heart of Jaipur lies Jai Singh’s original city, popularly known as the Pink City, enclosed by walls and imposing gateways. Though certainly not all pink, many buildings here are painted a distinctively rosy colour – one that was actually intended to camouflage the poor-quality materials from which they were originally constructed.
Chromatics aside, one of the Pink City’s most striking features is its regular grid plan, with wide, straight streets, broadening to spacious squares (choupads) at major intersections. Its design was created in accordance with the Vastu Shastra, a series of ancient Hindu architectural treatises.
#2 Seek out the magnificent City Palace
At the heart of the Pink City stands the magnificent City Palace, originally built by Jai Singh in the 1720s and having lost none of its original pomp and splendour. The royal family still occupies part of the palace, advancing in procession on formal occasions through the grand Tripolia Gate on its southern side.
Less exalted visitors enter through a modest gate on the eastern side of the palace that leads into the first of the two main courtyards, centred on the elegant Mubarak Mahal. Built as a reception hall in 1899, the building now holds the museum’s textile collection, housing some of the elaborately woven and brocaded fabrics that formerly graced the royal wardrobe.
On the north side of the courtyard, the Armoury is probably the finest such collection in Rajasthan, a vast array of blood-curdling but often beautifully decorated weapons.
#3 Gawp at Jantar Mantar’s huge astronomical instruments
Immediately south of the City Palace lies the remarkable Jantar Mantar, a large enclosure containing eighteen huge stone astronomical measuring devices. Constructed between 1728 and 1734 at the behest of Jai Singh, their strange, abstract shapes lend the whole place the look of a weird futuristic sculpture park.
It’s a perfect idea to pay for the services of a guide to explain the workings of the observatory, which was able to identify the position and movement of stars and planets, tell the time and even predict the intensity of the monsoon. The most impressive construction is the 27m-high sundial, the Samrat Yantra, which can calculate the time to within two seconds.
The Jantar Mantar is one of five identically named observatories created by the star-crazed Jai Singh across north India, including the well-known example in Delhi. However, his motivation was astrological rather than astronomical.