This is the second part of my Jaipur visit blogs. You can read the first part by visiting the below links one by one.
This is part 2 of the 4 post series describing about our Jaipur trip. Here I will describe my experience while staying and moving around in Jaipur, in day 2 of our stay.
About the Hotel Harsoli
We stayed in a Homestay Hotel Harsoli Haveli. Yes its name is mentioned as hotel, but actually it is a home stay with all amenities of a Hotel. Everything was good - rooms are large enough, cleanliness and service was as expected from a hotel. One thing I do want to mention here that the food variety is quite limited. And as they do not have a proper running restaurant, it takes some time to get the food on table.
They say that they prepare food after receiving the order in their home kitchen. Therefore the item which take extra time, were not available most of the time. In our three days stay, I was not able to have Dal Makhani, as it was never ready, and they will always say - "It will take too long, please order something else."
There is one more thing that can affect you that the hotel is in residential area, inside a colony, so you can not find conveyance on road, or any nearby market or shops. You have to walk at least for 1 Km for this. So if you do not have your own car, then this may cause some difficulties.
Other than that, if you love peaceful surroundings, and love to walk in quiet neighborhood then it is great location for you.
Roaming around in Jaipur
Now for us this was a leisure tour, so we were not in a hurry to visit all places. We took our time to wake up in the morning. Therefore in our three nights four days stay we visited only three major attractions - Amber Fort, City Palace and Jantar Manter. Other than this we visited Jouhari Bazar, and Baapu Bazar.
Amber Fort Palace
Amber Fort palace was our first adventure in Jaipur. I said adventure, because driving a car there actually was. I have driven mostly in plain areas. And I was not expecting to take my car on top of the hill to the Fort. Yes, the parking for the Amber fort is on high altitude, you have to drive through narrow lanes and a steep slope all the way the the entry of the fort. For me it was a first experience and there was feeling of fear and excitement also.
And after reaching on top, finding the parking place was another daunting task. There are so many people visiting the place on weekends, if you find a good place easily then you are lucky. I parked my car on the exit slope of the hill, and had to put heavy stones in front of wheels to prevent the car from slipping on the road. The parking charge was Rs.50.
So I would suggest either you should have driving experience of a hill station or better take a cab there. When we were there, it was Dusshehra time, so the elephants were not available. The elephant ride is a new experience if you can afford it. They charge Rs.1100 per person to take you to the top from the bottom of the hill.
From the Inside, the fort is very big, and the palace if beautiful. We took a guide there in Rs. 200. He took around 2 hours, and we saw almost all important places in the palace along with the history of them. He also helped us in taking pictures of all of us together.
We reached there at around 12:30PM and were going down at around 3:30PM.
After coming down we were looking for some place to have good food. But everywhere we went we only found Punjabi food. I could not find anywhere special Rajasthani food, for which we were craving for.
While coming back to our hotel, we found one crowded road side eatery named "Ankurit Kachauri". It is a place somewhere near Raj Mandir Cinema, They make kachauri using sprouted pulses, and it was delicious. The price was only Rs.10 per piece.
After killing the hunger, we thought what to do, as we still had some time left in dinner. So we planned to visit Birla Temple. It was nice, peaceful place. We spent around 1.5 hours there and then finally turned back to our hotel.
This is the end of Day 2 of our Jaipur visit. You can read the next two parts by visiting the below links:
Visit to City Palace, Bapu Bazar & Jantar Mantar
You can also watch the video log (vlog) of the same here: -Delhi to Jaipur vlog part-1 | Bapu Bazaar | Delhi to Jaipur by road/car | hotel Harsoli Havel Jaipur
