Jaipur: Elephants and Castles Go Together

Meet our driver and elephant. Based on the pachy's performance, he seemed younger than his brothers and sisters. We passed at least one other, slower-moving elephant on the steep climb up the hill to the Amber Palace.

Up we go, the elephant doing the hard work of carrying us on the platform to the Palace.

The Amber Palace is huge. It is surrounded by the Great Wall, as our guide told us. The wall is some 11 miles long and it snakes up and down steep hills.

But let's go inside and have a look at the beautiful construction. The plumbing and heating features are advanced for the 1600s. The artistic details certainly match any Florentine features, but they were from a hundred years earlier.

This is the courtyard where the king and queen welcomed visitors and where the barracks existed along the far wall.

The elephant-themed pillars and the outside pillars of sandstone and inside pillars of marble defined the room where royalty met with petitioners.

Across from this stand existed the family apartments.

These were beautifully laid out. The baths, for example, had hot and cold running water.

Let's look at the Hall of Private Audience, a stunning display of stonework and glass.

Below, here is a detailed view of the ceiling. You can see the pieces of glass embedded in the stonework.

Inside these outer corridors is the meeting room.

Note the alabaster stone panels on either side of the doorway. There are flowers, bees, other insects all beautifully carved into the soft gypsum.

And here we are, reflected in a glass mirror, as taken by our guide.

On the way back to the hotel, we drove by what is called the Water Palace, built in the middle of one of the lakes. Our driver offered to take us there, but by now we were "palaced out."

Next up, we visit an exhibit of current arts, carpet-making.

Cheers,

Brio