India Travel
Listings of Jaipur in Rajasthan
Airlines Indian Airlines, Nehru Place, Tonk Road, the southward continuation of Sawai Ram Singh Road. Jet’s agents are Travel-Care, E-4, Ground Floor, Jaipur Tower, Ml Road. For ANA, Continental, Royal Brunei, Royal Nepal. Sri Lankan and Thai go to STIC Travels, 4th Floor Ganpati Plaza, Ml Road. El Al, Korean and Malaysia operate through a shared office at 304 Ganpati Plaza, Ml Road. In the same building, you’ll also find the Air India office, Just down the road, British Airlines are at G-2 Usha Plaza, Ml Road. With the exception of Lufthansa, who are at Sharangi Mansion, New Gate, the remaining airlines are all based in the Jaipur Tower, on Ml Road: Austrian Airlines; Air France; Gulf Air; Kuwait Airlines; KLM: PIA ; Royal Jordanian 9 0141/375430; Syrian Arab Airines; and Thai Airways.
Beauty parlours Jaipur is renowned for its herbal beauty parlours, where you can pamper yourself with a healing body massage or marrow-and-turmeric pack facial. The most famous is the Shahnaz Hussain Institute, at S-55 Ashok Marg in G Scheme, which has separate clinics for men and women; if it’s fully booked, try the less expensive Kaya Kalp, at 55 Chander Bhawan, behind the Rajput Sabha Bhawan, near St Xavier’s school. Ashok Marg (also with separate clinics).
Bookstores The boutique in HotelArya Niwas stocks a good selection of titles in English, most of them about, or set in, India. Books Corner, on Ml Road just past Nim’s has up-to-date magazines, newspapers and books in all major European languages, while Evergreen Guest House also has a secondhand stall.
Cinemas if you go to the cinema only once while you’re in India, it should be at the Raj Mandir on Bhagwan Das Road just off Ml Road, which boasts India’s most kitsch, over-the-top decor and hefty sound system. Most movies have four daily showings, and there’s always a long queue, so get your tickets an hour or so before the show starts.
Dance Several of the big five-stars, including the Rambagh Palace and Sheraton Rajputana Palace. host nightly culture shows, featuring folk dance, music and traditional puppetry. These can be a lot of fun, especially if they’re held outdoors. Expect to pay around Rs150. Another music and dance venue is Choowki Dhani, 22km south of the city.
Hospitals The largest in Jaipur is Santokba Durlabhji Memorial Hospital (SDMH), Bhawani Singh Marg.
Internet Access costs Rs30-50 per hour. The majority of hotels listed above are online. Otherwise: try one of the many internet offices around town: one of the best is Communicator on the ground floor of the Jaipur Towers, opposite All India Radio, Ml Road, who charge less than average for offline work.
Music Jaipur’s not a particularly good place to buy musical instruments (those made here are of medium or inferior quality), but plenty of travellers take sitar lessons while they’re in tfie city. A recommended teacher is Mr Ghasi Lai Sharma, who can be contacted through the Sharma Music Centre, on Nawalgarh Road.
Photography Fuji outlet on Kishan Pole Bazaar, near Ajmeri Gate; Konica on Ml Road almost opposite Niro’s; Kodak by Sweet Dream hotel, and various others.
Police stations the main police post is or Station Road opposite the railway station. Post For poste restante, go to the GPO on Ml Road (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm). Parcels and registered mail are kept at the sorting office behind the main desks; packages are cotton-wrapped and sewn at the concession by the main entrance.
Swimming pools Evergreen Guest House charge nonresidents Rs75 for use of their pool, but you
may prefer to pay more (Rs150-175) at posher establishments such as the Jai Mahal, Jaipur Ashok or Raj Mahal, where lawns, deck chairs and refreshments are available.
Tailors One of the best tailors in town, patronized by no less than the maliaraja himself, is Jodhpur Tailors, behind Meela Hotel, near Ganpati Plaza (Ml Road). This is a good place to get suits made, as well as traditional Indian shirts and pukka Jodhpur riding breeches, and they’re not at all expensive.
Travel agents GSA Janta Travels, Ml Road. Site World Travels, Station Road, an agent for Indian Airlines and also Western Union, deals with international and domestic flights very efficiently.
Yoga Jaipur has several reputable yoga schools, among them; the Rajasthan Yoga Centre, 2km north of Bani Park in Shastri Hagar; the Yoga and Naturopathy Centre, opposite Rajasthan University, C Scheme, in the southwest of the city; and Samarpan, #1 Road, VKI Area, which is run by a disillusioned allopathic doctor. If you need somewhere to convalesce after a chronic illness (such as hepatitis), a place well worth checking out is the Navneet Natrupathy Centre, 30km south along the Agra road, in the village of Bassi.
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East of Jaipur in Rajasthan
The fertile area east of Jaipur, interspersed with the forested slopes of the Aravalli Hills, holds an inviting mixture of historic towns and wildlife sanctuaries. The fortified town of Alwar to the northeast, fought over for centuries before its incorporation into Rajasthan in 1949, served as refuge for the exiled Pandava brothers of the Mahabhamta during their thirteenth year of hiding, before Krishna helped them in the fierce battle against their cousins, the Kauravas, chronicled in the Bhagavad Gita. Not far from Alwar, Sariska Wildlife Sanctuary is renowned for its tigers, while further east are the former princely capitals of Deeg
Information of Jaipur in Rajasthan
RTDC has a handy tourist information office on Platform 1 of the railway station (daily 6am-8pm; 0141/315714).There's a second branch at the Tourist Hotel (0141/360328), and an unusually hopeless Government of India tourist office at the Khasa Koihi hotel (Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 9am-1.30pm; 0141/315461). To find out what's on, you're better off consulting the monthly Jaipur Vision, available at Books Corner on MI Road (Rs25). Changing money can be time-consuming at the city's banks, but there are plenty of private exchange places in Jaipur offering more or less the same rates, where you can cash travellers' cheques quickly and easily in air-conditioned
Moving on from Kota East of Udaipur in Rajasthan
Kota is well connected by bus to destinations in Rajasthan and across the state border to Bhopal and Indore. Services to Bundi leave more or less every half an hour, taking around one hour. Travellers heading northeast towards Agra often pass through Kota to pick up the main broad-gauge line, which is also the most straightforward approach to Sawai Madhopur, jumping-off place for Ranthambore National Park. The recommended service here is the Paschim Express #2955, which leaves at 8.50am and arrives one-and-a-half hours later. There are also six daily trains to Delhi (most of them via Jaipur and Bharatpur). The easiest
Arrival and information of Jaipur in Rajasthan
Jaipur's Sanganer airport, 15km south of the centre, is served by domestic Indian Airlines and Jet Airways flights from Delhi and Mumbai. An airport bus into town costs Rs30; taxis charge more like Rs250. The railway station is lkm west of the Pink City, very close to the main concentration of hotels, while state buses from all over Rajasthan and further afield pull in at the more central Inter-state Bus Terminal on Station Road. Arriving from Delhi, you skirt the south side of the city, stopping briefly at an intersection called Narayan Circle, where rickshaw-wallahs frequently board the bus saying it's
Keoladeo National Park Practicalities East of Jaipur in Rajasthan
Cycle rickshaws are the main form of transport within the city, but fares for he long haul in and out of town soon mount up, and it makes sense to rent a bicycle, either from your hotel (around Rs35/day) or the shop on NH-11 outside the Spoonbill Restaurant. If you need to change money, head for the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur. Binarayan Gate (Mon-Fn 10am-2pm, Sat 10am—noon). Bharatpur's bus stand is in the west of town near Anah Gate, just off NH-11. If you're arriving from Fatehpur Sikri, get off well before, when the bus stops at the crossroads
Around Jaipur in Rajasthan
Forts, palaces, temples and ruins from a thousand years of Kuchwaha history adorn the hills and valleys near Jaipur. The superb palaces of Amber provide the most obvious destination for a day-trip, but you can also visit Amber Fort - or Jaigarh - which crowns the hills to the north of the city, or travel south to search out the traditional potters, block printers and dyers of Sanganer. Organized tours visit Amber and Jaigarh in a day; Amber is accessible by public transport, and minibuses run to Sanganer.
Accommodation of Jaipur in Rajasthan
As a major tourist and business centre, Jaipur has a wide selection of hotels many of them offering exceptional value for money. For once this is especially true at the bottom of the range, thanks largely to the paying guest scheme introduced by the local tourist office, which enables you to stay in small family guesthouses that are far friendlier than most hotels. That said, the city also boasts some of India's most impressive and opulent palace hotels, as well as a batch of thoroughly dilapidated former mansions offering more atmosphere than creature comforts. Wherever you choose to stay, it's
Nawalgarh Northeast of Jaipur in Rajasthan
Teetering on the edge of the hills 3km northeast of Jaipur. Nawalgarh, or "Tiger Fort" (10am-4.30pm: Rs4) was built by Jai Singh II in 1734 as a retreat for his wives, the maharanis. Its unique design, regular and repetitive, stands in contrast to the other royal dwellings in Jaipur, and the views are breathtaking. All the queens' apartments are identical, arranged around the central courtyard in perfect symmetry, each with a room for a personal maidservant. Ram Singh, who in 1868 built more apartments on the upper floor, continued Jai Singh's tradition of orderly design by constructing another set of
Arrival and focal transport of Shekhawati in Rajasthan
Shekhawati is crossed by a mainline railway, linking the major towns with Delhi, Jaipur and Bikaner, but services are all hopelessly slow, unreliable and run at inconvenient times of the night; basically, you're better off" travelling into the region by bus. From Jaipur, the first town in Shekhawati you come to is Sikar, an unprepossessing market town two hours away by road (110km) that's only worth stopping in to pick up transport northwest to Nawalgarh, where you'll find better hotels and a more relaxed, rural atmosphere. Buses also run from Jaipur to Fatehpur (48km north of Sikar) - approaching from
Gaitor of Jaipur in Rajasthan
A short distance north of the City Palace, and just over 6km from central Jaipur on the road to Amber, the walled complex of Gaitor contains the stately marble chhatris of jaipur's ruling family. Built by Jai Singh II, the complex contains memorials to himself and his successors, including his son and grandson, with a room set aside for a future memorial to the present head of the family. Unless a ruler should happen to die an untimely death, the construction of his cenotaph is normally well under way during his lifetime, and traditionally each ruler takes exceptional pains to ensure
Sanganer in Rajasthan
SANGANER, 16km south of Jaipur, is the busiest centre for handmade textiles in the region, and the best place to watch traditional block printers in action. There are a couple of large factories here, but most of the printing is done in family homes as a cottage industry. This is also a great place to shop for traditional textiles; prices are much lower than in Jaipur. Sanganeri craftsmen and women also decorate pottery in Rajasthan's distinctive style; graceful floral designs in white or deep sea-green are painted over a traditional inky-blue glaze. Within the town itself, there are ruined palaces and
Practicalities Nawalgarh of North Jaipur in Rajasthan
Nawalgarh s bus and jeep stand is about 2km west of town, served by buses from Jhunjhunu (ever}1 30min; lhr) via Dundlod (15min) and Mukundgarh (20min); Sikar (every 30min: 40min); Jaipur (every 30min; 3hr 30min), and Ajmer (1 daily; 5hr).Jeeps leave when they're full.The railway station is about 500m west, with four daily services in each direction from Sikar to Jhunjhunu (three from Jaipur). Incoming trains tend to arrive in the dead of night (when all the hotels are shut), but you can catch a conveniently timed service from here to Delhi at around 10pm (the Shekhawati Express; #9734), which
Practicalities East of Jaipur in Rajasthan
The bus stand in the west of Alwar sees services to and from Deeg and Bharatpur (every 15min), and Sariska (every 30min or so). Frequent buses also run north to Delhi and south to Jaipur (both 2-3hr). Several food stalls at the bus stand sell drinks and fiery curries, and there's a bike rental shop near the exit. The railway station, receiving trains from Delhi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ahmedabad, Deeg and Ajmer, is a few kilometres away on the east side of town, and has retiring rooms.You can change currency and travellers' cheques, albeit at a thumb-chewingly slow speed, at the
Travel details in the Rajasthan
Trains Jaipur to: Agra (2 daily; 7hr); Ahmedabad (2 daily; 14hr); Ajmer (5 daily; 2-3hr); Alwar (7 daily; 2hr 35min-4hr); Bikaner (3 daily; 6hr 30min-1 Ohr); Calcutta (2 daily: 29hr); Chittaurgarh (2 daily; 7hr 40min-8hr 15min); Chum (3 daily: 5hr 20min); Delhi (8 daily; 4hr 20min-6hr 30]; Jhunjhunu (3 daily; 4hr 40min-6hr); Jodhpur (4-5 daily; 5hr-6hr iOmin); Kota (3 daily; 3hr 45min); Mount Abu (3 daily; 8-9hr); Mumbai (2 daily; 16hr 30min-22hr); Sawai Madhopur (2-3 daily; 2hr-3hr 20min); Sikar (5 daily; 3hr); Udaipur (2 daily; 10-12hr). Jodhpur to: Abu Road (3 daily: 5hr); Agra (2 daily; 13hr); Ahmedabad (3 daily; 10hr);
Sawai Madhopur and Ranthambore National Park Practicalities East of Jaipur in Rajasthan
Sawai Madhopur is served by trains on the main Mumbai-Delhi line, and is thus easily accessible from Bharatpur, Agra, Jaipur and Delhi, as well as destinations further south, such as Kota. The train tracks divide the main residential side of town to the north from the industrial zone, known as Sawai Madhopur City, to the south (where you arrive when travelling from Shivpuri). The station is midway between the two, close to the bus stand and bustling Bazriya market area, near the cheapest lodges. About 100m southwest along the train lines (toward1; Mumbai and Jaipur) is a flyover carrying the
Outside the Pink City of Jaipur in Rajasthan
A handful of museums, temples and cenotaphs, scattered around Jaipur's less congested suburbs, offer welcome respite from the relentless traffic and crowds of the Pink City. The Albert Hall museum, housed in a grand British building that somewhat eclipses the collection inside, presides over a swathe of formal parkland, the Ram Niwas Public Gardens, south of the centre near the Museum of Indology. home to a fascinating hoard of quirky Indian artefacts. As a target for day walks out of town, the hilltop "Tiger Fort" at Nawalgarh, overlooking Jaipur from the rocky ridge north of the Pink City, is a
Moving on from Udaipur in Rajasthan
Indian Airlines flies to Jaipur, Jodhpur, Delhi and Mumbai. Book tickets direct at their office in the LIC Building, opposite Hotel Air Palace, Delhi Gate (Mon-Sat 10am-1pm & 2-5pm). Jet Airways also fly to Jaipur, Delhi and Mumbai, but not to Jodhpur. Their office is north of the centre at the Blue Circle Business Centre, 1C Madhuban (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm). Udaipur is poorly served by trains, with just one daily departure to Ahmedabad, where you can pick up connecting services to Mumbai. Heading north, two trains run to Delhi each day. The fastest is the #9616 Chetak Express (depart 6.10pm), which also
Pushkar Practicalities East of Jaipur in Rajasthan
Most long-distance journeys to and from Pushkar have to be made via Ajmer. Pushkar does not have a railway station. The Ajmer bus stand in the east of town is served by buses from Ajmer and Jaipur, while travellers from destinations further afield, such as Delhi, Jodhpur and Bikaner, arrive in the north of town at Marwar bus stand, to be besieged by accommodation touts.The lack of rickshaws means that you'll have to walk to your hotel (though there are bicycles for rent right by the Ajmer bus stand, and hand carts for transporting luggage). Pushkar doesn't have a tourist office.
Samode in Rajasthan
Hidden among the scrubby Aravalli Hills, SAMODE, on the outskirts ot Shekhawati, is notable for its impeccably restored eighteenth-century palace, which became famous in the 1980s as the setting for the hit Raj-romance movie The Far Pavilions. It's possible to come here on a day-trip from Jaipur, 42km southeast, but if your budget can stretch to it, spend a night in one of the palace's uncompromisingly romantic rooms, plastered with murals and filled with antiques and ornate stonework. Nonresidents have to shell out a hefty Rs100 to visit, but it's worth it just to see the beautiful Sheesh Mahal, or
By bus in Delhi
Delhi is at the centre of an extensive bus network covering much of north India's neighbouring states. Buses can often be quicker than trams, but the long-distance ones especially tend to be uncomfortable. On long-distance routes there's usually a choice between ramshackle state-run buses and smart soft-seated coaches run by tourist offices, hotels and private agents. Use these as much as you can — outside the main cities, all buses are state-run. The vast majority of state-run buses depart from the Inter-state Bus Terminal near Kashmiri Gate in Old Delhi, which has a cafe and left-luggage counter. However, services for some