Today we headed to Jaipur, the city known for being the
“Pink City”. Although the pink paint was faded on most of the buildings that we
drove by, you could still see remnants of its colorful history. On our way to
our hotel, we stopped at the Palace of the Winds for a quick picture.
Before checking into our hotel, we went to Amber Fort, which
is on the way to Jaipur. The fort itself is set on top of a hill and it can be
a steep climb to get up there. People can even take elephant rides up to the
fort so they don’t have to walk up.
We were told by our tour guide that many of
the animals, including the elephants, that are involved in touristy activities
are often not treated well. I was happy to find out that Intrepid doesn’t use
any animals that aren’t treated well. In Jaipur there were a few snake charmers
that were trying to lure snakes out of their baskets in exchange for money from
tourists.
It looks like just another tourist thing, but in fact most of the
snakes are drugged and hurt so that they do what the snake charmer tells them.
It hurt me to know that most of the animals weren’t being treated humanely
simply because the people wanted to get more money out of the tourists.
In
graduate school, we’ve had quite a few discussions about the positive and
negative effects of tourism on small villages and even large cities. And here I
was in Jaipur seeing it right in front of my face. To help this issue that
India and many other countries are facing though, Intrepid has created a
foundation (www.theintrepidfoundation.org)
that gives back to the communities that their tour groups go to. In Agra (where
the Taj Mahal is) there have been dancing bears staged throughout the city as a
tourist ploy, but thanks to the Intrepid Foundation, many of the dancing bears
have been saved from this money-making scheme and are undergoing treatment.
Although it is often heart-breaking to see these kinds of
activities go on, it gives me hope knowing that a huge company like Intrepid
Travel is trying to do something about it. Knowing that I have passion for
issues such as animal rights, reassures me in knowing that I picked the right
career in public health and international development.
Alright well I’ll get off my soapbox now and back to your
regularly scheduled programming. Once we climbed up the many steps to Amber
Fort and passed all the hawkers trying to sell us postcards, plastic auto
rickshaws and paintings, we finally made it to the main floor of the fort. And
there was so much of the fort to see!
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| A room of mirrors |
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| This monkey was such a poser! He loved having his picture taken! |
After leaving the palace, we headed back to our hotel to put our bags in our
room, have a quick bite to eat for lunch and freshen ourselves up before
heading out on a tour around the city.
One of the things I love about the markets in India is that
they’re all organized by type of product. So on our walk around Jaipur, we
passed by sugar stall after sugar stall and flower market after flower market.
Such beautiful colors!
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| You could find every type of sugar imaginable here |
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| The flower market |
We ended our first night in Jaipur with a visit to one of
the historical movie theaters in India and went to see Dhoom 3. A great
action-packed Bollywood movie! If you have 3-4 hours free, I highly recommend
seeing it!
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