The Jaipur Conspiracy

In the early stages of planning our trip to the North of India, our list of cities included, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Lucknow, Darjeeling and Calcutta. For lack of time, and the vast distances between these cities, we eliminated Jaipur and Lucknow with the intention of visiting these places the next time we returned to India of course. Darjeeling was a bit of a stretch since it is in a remote area of West Bengal and would require about 40 hours of trains and taxis to get there from Delhi. But the thought of waking up to sights of Everest and the three other tallest mountains in the world, was too good to pass up.
Unfortunately, our luck ran out the other night, when we arrived at the Old Delhi train station to catch our 11pm train to Darjeeling, only to find out that it had been delayed by 9 hours. Which meant that we would miss the toy train that takes us to the heart of Darjeeling city, which only runs once a day. Which would also mean that we would end up travelling for 3 days and only get 1 night in Darjeeling. In the end we decided we would be nuts to travel all that way and only get a few hours to enjoy the place. So we cancelled all our connecting trains and our hostel bookings to Darjeeling and decided instead to visit Jaipur. It's like we were meant to come here or something! To make things worse, we wanted to leave Jaipur on Jan 30th so we could get to Calcutta by Feb 1st and spend 2 whole days there. Calcutta is much larger than Jaipur and therefore would warrant more time spent seeing all the sights. But when we went to the train station, there were absolutely no trains available to Calcutta until the 31st. Which meant we would spend not 2, but three days in Jaipur, the city we didn't even plan to visit! In the end, I think Jaipur had us in her sights, even though we didn't have her. And the "pink city" has offered much more than we anticipated. Neeks and I have officially found the best katchories in India, and got to hang out with a cool New Brunswick couple who were staying at our hostel-- our first interaction with fluent English speakers in a long while!
Jaipur has a lot of sights and relics from the days of the early Mughal Empire. There are many beautiful forts which sit atop the hilly areas around Jaipur that garner a gorgeous view of the sprawling city below. As well as the characteristic rose coloured facades within the old city walls, which is what makes Jaipur knows as the "pink city". The roads are always crowded, but at least you can opt for a more eco-friendly cycle rickshaw as they are everywhere. And I mentioned earlier our discovery of the best katchories we've ever tasted-- well we've decided they alone were worth the trip!