Jaipur 2

After last night's rain, drizzle this morning, and a warning that once the monsoon starts it can go for days; we thought we were in for a very wet few days.  However, the morning drizzle turned to rain midday than stopped completely. We also learned why Indians love when the monsoon starts; the temperature was cool and it was windy. 

Big day of activities:

1. Amber Palace - 9km north of Jaipur built around 1000, updated in the 1600s, and surrounded by dramatic hills on which crawled a wall that the kids referred to as the great wall of india.

2. Water Fort - The maharaja's afternoon summer palace on an island in a manmade lake.  The majaraja referred to is jai singh who created Jaipur in 1720. It was raining during these pics.

3. Gem shopping - Japur is most famous for importing raw gemstones and making jewels - rubies, emeralds, sapphires, tanzanight, opals ... everything but diamonds. The girls are set for their 16th birthdays.

4. McDonald's - not the same, but it was really nice to have a taste of home

5. A grocery store - I love going to grocery stores when traveling to see real people doing everyday activities. Why oh why can't we buy onion shampoo in the states?

We decided to stay in Jaipur one more day because we like it here.  It is the fastest growing city in India and has 4.3M people, but it doesn't seem overwhelming.  It's probably because we are eating home-cooked meals and hanging out with our friendly tuk tuk driver Dhara. He stayed with us all day and is incredible with the kids just like Shambu in Nepal.