This blog unlike many others has been different in one aspect. I don’t write about my personal life. I always had the feeling that others will not be interested in knowing about me. The second reason is that I didn’t like boasting about myself, I did that I did that. The third reason is that my life is not open to everyone. But in some of my writings I have touched my personal experiences in a superficial manner. Anyway I will be touching upon my life now for the simple reason that I want to share my experiences in Jaipur with the readers of my blog.
I was born in Chennai, and spent more than 15 years of my childhood in a place called Triplicane. I felt more comfortable with the blaring noise of the city and the lights of the sodium lamps. But after we shifted our home I missed all this. My college was also situated out of the city and also IIM Indore. Even now I used to look at the city lights from the hostel at IIM Indore.
But I felt the memories of my past coming back to me in Jaipur. The last thing I expected in this place was nostalgia. But I can’t help myself getting nostalgic since tonk phatak; the place I am staying in Jaipur is an exact replica of big street in Triplicane. Same kind of book stores, same type of market which stretches through out the street.
After finding a decent accommodation in Jaipur, I immediately went to the tourist office to get a map of Jaipur city. I also got some tourist information about the city. The cost of living is relatively cheap when compared to Chennai. It will take 150/- bucks to travel to most of the historical destinations.
I wanted to travel to some places on my own without taking the tourism help. So I took a map and set out to explore this beautiful city. About 1 km from tonk patak is a place called Jawahar Kala Kendra, a place that is supposed to be an artistic location. Most of the galleries in JKK were closed, I was able to visit only one gallery that was open there, the sphatic art gallery, and the gallery was filled with paintings and sculptors by some of the local people. The paintings were good to look at but I was only able to enjoy them (not understand). I had my breakfast in Jawahar Kala Kendra and set out for my next destination.
The lakshminarayana temple or the Birla temple was my next destination. I still continued to walk all the way from Jawahar Kala Kendra to Birla temple. One thing that I understood while traveling Jaipur was never to rely on the information from one single person since twice I was shown the wrong way but being a smart traveler (At least think so) I found out Birla temple. It was about to close but I reached there Just In Time (JIT). As the name suggests the lakshminarayana temple was built by the Birlas. It also housed the Birla museum but the museum was closed. Close to the Lakshminarayana temple was the fort of Rani Gayathri Devi. She stays there.
My next destination was the Ganesh temple which was very close to the Birla temple. The places seemed less famous attracting very few tourists. After the Ganesh temple I traveled to the international dolls museum. The museum was inaugurated by Bhairon Singh Shekawat in the year 1979. It was housed near the school for deaf and blind children. The money from the museum went to that school. The ticket was two rupees, the museum consisted of two sections namely Indian dolls and international dolls. Indian dolls consisted of dolls depicting the various states of India. International dolls as the name suggests consisted of dolls depicting the people of various countries. The Japanese dolls were the most beautiful of all the dolls I found there.
The next place was the museum of Indology. But the fare was quiet high (40 bucks per head). The funniest thing is that if two people come then the fare is 20 per head. I didn’t go to this museum since the costing done was forbidding and funny.
I was tired by this time because of the long walks; I took a rickshaw for eight bucks and set out to the Albert hall which houses the central museum. Before going to the museum I went to the state zoo which was nearby, the ticket cost me 10 bucks. Zoo was an interesting place always; I was welcomed by two tigers, May be the missing tigers of Sariska. (I also had a plan to go to Sariska but decided the other way). Then there were other animals like panther, white tiger, Himalayan bear, brown bear, Lion, Gharial, croc, sambhar, Ibis, Macaque, jackal, hyena etc. Most of the animals were kept in their natural habitats but some were there in cages.
Then I went to the final destination the Albert hall/central Museum. It was a princely building with a lot of pigeons and people. It contained some reproduced paintings of Rameses and other Egyptian and Greek paintings. It also had some reproductions of the paintings from the Hindu mythology like Ramayana and Mahabharata. It also had reproduced versions of Mona Lisa (one of my wish is to see the original in lauvre) and a sarcophagus from Egypt.
After my mini trip I was like hell tired on my way back I rested for sometime in the Ram Nivas Garden before I took a rickshaw to tonk patak back to the confines of my room.