First Impressions of Jaipur, Rajasthan | Pink City Vlog 🇮🇳

I'm in Jodhpur which is the capital city of Rajasthan and in this video, we're gonna explore this city in 6 hours. Just came on an overnight bus and it's only like 9 degrees. It feels so much colder. I just feel tired and cold and dehydrated and hungry from the whole night. Needed to lie down for a bit but I kinda need to go. I wanna get up to this one spot before it gets too freaking bright. So I somehow fell asleep for 4 hours after I went back to my hotel room. So now I have 4 hours to see the whole city of Jaipur. Let's see how much I can do. So behind me is Jal Mahal which is probably one of the more recognizable sights in Jaipur. This doesn't have a really special story. This actually was just a palace that was built in the 16th century. And then there was a severe drought in the city and there was a dam that was built sort of to preserve water. Which ended up flooding this whole area behind me and submerging most of this palace. And now it makes for some very interesting photos. So Jaipur is the capital of the state of Rajasthan but it's not really the oldest city in Rajasthan. It's not as old as Jodhpur. It's definitely not as old as Jaisalmer. It's only like 300 years old. Before Jaipur there was this kingdom of Aamir. If you leave the center of the city of Jaipur you'll sort of enter the town of Aamir that's still there. And you'll go through the old walls. And this Aamir kingdom was ruled by Rajput rulers. And at the start of the 18th century this guy named Jai Singh II came along and inherited his father's kingdom at the age of 11. He was a great warrior and he ruled the kingdom of Aamir from right here. The spot behind me. The Aamir fort. And expanded its borders as the kingdom became very successful. Funny enough once the kingdom started being really successful Jai Singh II sort of built the city of Jaipur. It was a very well planned city outside of Aamir. To sort of serve as a city around his fort of Aamir. And that's why it's so new and it's such a well planned city compared to a lot of other big cities in India at least. Also protecting the kingdom of Aamir was what they called the great wall of Aamir which is right in front of me. Which is this wall which had a lot of watchtowers and basically served as a last line of defense for Aamir fort and the king of the kingdom. So I wanted to go on top of this wall because apparently you can get some sick views. But apparently they don't let people on there anymore for the last couple of months at least. But I can still go inside the fort which is a UNESCO world heritage site and without a doubt the biggest attraction of Jaipur. So it's actually a very picturesque fort that's located on top of a hill and looks over the Mauta lake. So there's a couple of gates to enter Aamir fort. I'm entering from the east gate right now. So I just walked into the fort and there's all these monkeys. I was actually here like 25 years ago and I remember seeing monkeys in Jaipur back then too. Coolest is there's this monkey behind me that's holding on to this little baby monkey. It's so cute. Look at that. They're fighting over a baby monkey. Okay so one of those monkeys basically just tried to attack me and take my bag away. So I'm f***ing terrified right now. Maybe he was protecting his kid. This reminds me of when this happened in the Taj Mahal like 25 years ago. Some monkeys tried to steal our bags. Okay I'm inside the fort and I'm afraid to put my bag down anywhere because I'm afraid monkeys might come steal it again. This is a ridiculous fort. Very ornately decorated with a lot of marble and red sandstone in different sections. You can see a very heavy influence of Mughal architecture on this although this wasn't exactly a Mughal fort. There's like four levels to this huge fort and each of them have their own courtyard. I'm only in the first one. So on the second level there's this exquisitely decorated room or building called Shishakamahal. It's like covered on all sides by glass or mirrors. So I'm actually near the front side of the palace again and you can see the walls of Amir on that side and the main steps leading up to the palace. So something that still happens here is during the mornings there's like about 90 elephants that give people a ride on their backs, tourists, all the way up to the palace. If you ever come and see that I would strongly encourage to not participate in that because people who have like looked into it more have seen the elephants are very badly abused. They are old and sick and about like 20% or more of them are blind in one or both eyes. A lot of them have infections that are directly caused by spending years and years and years walking on these concrete. It's interesting because elephants are definitely not indigenous to this like dry region of India. They come from Assam to the best of my knowledge. So they're definitely not meant to be doing this. So this is like a dying industry almost like there's like some government organizations that have already told these elephant riders to stop doing this and replace them with electric vehicles but it's still going on and it's a matter of time till it ends. So until it ends I would strongly encourage you to not participate in that. I will put a link with more info about this so you can make up your own mind based on the actual information and research that's out there on what happens when you try to ride wild animals in a fort day in day out. That's the humanitarian spiel for the day. So right now I'm in front of Hawa Mahal which is one of the most interesting buildings I've ever seen. Hawa means wind, Mahal means palace. And this was built in 1799 by Maharaja Pratap Singh who's actually the grandson of Jai Singh II who founded the city. And he originally built it with 953 small windows in it so that the royal ladies from the royal family could see festivities on the streets without having to show themselves to the world because back then there were like all these very interesting customs that women couldn't show their face to the world. Especially women of high standing status. Now this building looks really fascinating from the outside but from the back side, if you go behind it, from the pictures I've seen it doesn't look that interesting to me so I'm not gonna go inside. That gate behind me that you see, the pink gate, is the gate to Pink City. And everything behind me is Pink City where everything is painted pink. This is actually the oldest part of Jaipur and in 1876 when the Prince of Wales came to visit Jaipur Maharaja Ram Singh decided to paint the whole old city pink because that was the color associated with hospitality over here. The traditions went on and now every building not just the famous ones or the popular ones, every single building regardless whether it's a shop or a hotel is required by law to have the color pink in Pink City right now. This area was actually declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of that and all of Jaipur often gets called Pink City because of this. Okay guys, that's it for Jaipur. That was a quick 4 and a half hour tour of whatever I could cover in the city. I wish I had more time but honestly it was fun just going out with my camera and a microphone and a strap and trying to make a video. That's what I used to do until 2018 before I started using gimbals and drones and all that stuff. Don't forget to like the video if you liked this video. Feel free to subscribe to my channel to support it or if you want to watch more videos from India and everywhere else. If you want to follow me in real time, feel free to follow me on Instagram. I'll catch you guys in the next video from probably the Taj Mahal.