DAY EIGHT - JAIPUR AND TRANSFER TO DELHI

No time to dream … things to do, places to see. Up early and back on the road to drive through the Pink City (the colour hospitality) and visit the most amazing observatory. The sun dials stand at 27 degrees (position of Jaipur in relation to the equator) and can tell the time to within exactly 20 seconds! (and yes – it was absolutely spot on!). I won’t (not to say ‘can’t’) explain the intricacies of the rest but there is a whole ‘system with a purpose’ built here by some very sad and super-intelligent man who had nothing better to do than work out a way to tell the signs of the Zodiac. It’s just beyond me. Having said that – he was a bloody genius. And this is how it works (kind of):

You give birth and race to the observatory to find out exactly what time your child was born. From the time you go to the next ‘dial’ to determine the zodiac sign. From there you go to the specific dial built for your child’s zodiac sign (different sundial for each one) and there you can find out the degrees of … wait for it … something or other (‘cause I’m getting lost now!). HOWEVER … with that information, you then trot across to the other strange hanging objects and with all the information gathered you can calculate whatever it is you need to calculate before looking through a tiny telescope-like object to find – (drum roll and big TA-DA) – your child’s CONSTELLATION!!! And – whoopee-doo, with that, you can find out whether the poor sod is going to have a life worth living or not (I mean – would you REALLY want to know?)

So – now you have all the technical information you’ll ever need to know about sundials and observatories …

Let me introduce you to the Amber Fort. Now, to me ‘a fort is a fort is a fort’ (how many can you see and still be fascinated?) so I’ll just tell you the bits that I found interesting:

The Maharaja had 12 ‘official’ wives (those who lived in the fort and who were allowed to sit on the carpet with him in public – Yippee!). Part of the fort was a square of twelve rooms, each with a private entrance so ‘your man’ could sneak into each one privately. The architecture was such that the rooms were all perfectly ventilated – this was amazing. As soon as you stepped into one of the bedrooms you could feel a breeze. In the official court, the walls and ceiling are mirrored, but not simply for decoration. In winter they would light candles here; the candlelight reflected off the mirrors, absorbed the light and generated heat. Pretty amazing, really. Anything else was just … well … ‘fort’ stuff.

That was it for the morning in Jaipur. After that was a 6-hour bus ride to Delhi. Ours was DEFINITELY the bus to be on. We laughed loads. I swear I lost weight trying to teach Alison how to do Sudoku, following which we did several quizzes from Ali’s puzzle book – losing billions of points if you didn’t ‘buzz’ to her satisfaction. We had singing – and we even came up with 117 ALTERNATIVE USES FOR PADDED KNICKERS. Yep! The scenery was that interesting!