Travels with an Elephant -Day 11 Indian Holiday

You might have thought that an 8 am start for a visit to the Amber Palace and Fort just outside Jaipur might have merited a place at the head of the queue for the elephant ride up to the palace from the coach park. Not so!
I can't say it was the Germans who got there first or the Japanese, but wherever the tourists came from, they got there first and we had to wait in line.
Then it was our turn to climb into the howdah from a strategically placed stand and off we went lumbering up a narrow stone path with amazing views over a lake. Our mahout didn't believe in using his stick on his elephant, so the pace got slower and slower as the path steepened.
I have to say if it were a choice between a camel and a elephant, I would choose the elephant.

The Palace itself is yet another Mogul residence with extensive grounds completely surrounded with a wall 17Km long, rather like the Great Wall of China. The living arrangements of the Maharajahs seem to have been weighted towards producing sons to fight wars, which then meant having several wives, not to mention concubines. There needed to be buildings to accommodate all the different families and secret corridors for the Maharajah to move between them, making an extensive arrangement of space, both for winter use and the hot summer weather.
Complicated or what?

On the return journey to the hotel for a much longed for poolside lounge, we admired the Jal Mahal Water Palace which was built before the surrounding land was flooded to provide a lake in which it now stands. It almost looked like a very much larger Loch Leven Castle.

Now back on the hotel terrace enjoying cold drinks- the first time since having been in India that we have had more than 15 minutes to ourselves.