India 11

Today, Bob fed lunch to Ms. Rangoli (32 yeas old, so at mid-life) and Yolanda fed Ms. Gauri (18 years old, so a carefree, joyful teenager). We were there with these two elephants a couple of memorable, relaxed hours and then went back to the hotel (Fairmont Jaipur) for afternoon tea and some blogging. In the morning time, after a bit of searching, Huseem and Ashok helped us find an ATM that accepted our debit card and then we went to the waterfront to photograph Pelicans and the Jaipur Water Palace (Jal Mahal).

The daily flower market was next, where everyone gathers garlands, petals or blossoms for their shrines, good luck talismans for their vehicle front bumpers, or wedding mosaics and other embellishments. We again photographed the sugar cane crusher cart and Huseem described how his favourite delicious beverage is made by the cart men with crushed mint leaves and lemon halves, which are juiced in sequence after the canes in the rolling crushers. The flower market was colourful and smelled wonderful! The cost for blossoms is about $.20/kilo but goes up to about $1.00/kilo in wedding season, which continues right now.

Huseem told us many stories in our travels with him today, including one about an uproar from the wives of a recent king, as they wanted to get out of their sequestered palace to see the street markets, so, as kings do, this one commissioned a multi-story set of apartments, which we visited, with a view to the markets below. The wives could thus look out to the street but still not be seen.

Our next stops were City Palace and the Jantar Mantar Observatory, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which was created for calculating astrological / astonomical alignment for determining birth names, predicting the monsoon, and preparing for battle strategies. There is even one sundial that is correct within 2 seconds.

After a visit to a block print workroom, where Yolanda picked up meterage of fabric, we went for a unique and special visit to the Elephant farm that has been in Huseem's family for eight generations. What a wonderful last tour day in India!