Upon arriving in Jaipur, we saw many elephants with everything painted (and I do mean everything, and I didn’t know those things were so large:)), camels, and a few monkeys. Traffic in the city was crazier but still managed to flow nicely. We caught a glimpse of Amber (pronounced Amer) fort from the road, and then Saje took us to a restaurant for lunch.

Lunch protocol is interesting. You invite your driver to lunch, and he generally declines. If he declines, you give him 50 Rs (approx. $1) to pay for his lunch (thanks for explaining this, Debmalya!). You go in, and are ushered to a nicer “tourist” part of the restaurant. This one was a bit glitzy. There was a boy in traditional Rajasthani garb with his dad playing an instrument, and the boy dancing and collecting money. The food tasted americanized, and it ended up expensive (700 Rs, or about $14 for the four of us). To compare, our dinner that night at the hotel (much tastier) cost about 300 Rs for the three of us). Somehow, we let Saje know it was fine to take us to more local food places, and have since paid about $1-$3 per person per meal, in addition to much taster food.

After lunch, we checked into our hotel, and headed to a late afternoon at the Albert museum, a collection of pretty awesome sculptures, weapons, paintings, and other goodies from the Jaipur region. I’ll talk about vandalism in more detail later, but as we discovered to be common, many statues from the 9-10th century were on display on podiums without protection, and kids and adults alike would regularly touch them, inciting a whistle from the guard, but nothing more. The museum was in a neat palace, and we strolled around it and its hundreds of pigeons afterward, before heading back with Saje to the hotel for dinner and relaxation.