We left Jaipur and travelled through the countryside to the cool shady ancient walled town of Samode, which surprise surprise, has a fantastic palace. It’s a proper walled city, so old (I’m not sure how, sorry) that the outer walls had very long thin vertical slots in them – so that archers could adjust the range of their arrows directed at some now long distant, unfortunate foe.
The streets are fantastic cobbled stone, and the paradox of time is everywhere; click on this pic – ancient cobbled road, ancient buildings, a camel drawn cart, but a painted wall with a cell phone number on it advertising something.
The palace was (I don’t have an appropriate English word) detailed and beautiful. Instead of the outside I thought I’d show you a tiny bit of the the in. Here is a room, looking down from a balcony sort of passageway – perhaps a bit busy for some tastes – but profoundly beautifully done – and I don’t know how long ago – but more than a few yesterdays. All the white stuff is polished marble.
In the little towns dotting rural Rajastan, way off the beaten track now – going is a little slower – and any form of transport will do. I really liked the guys in the tractor trailer – wrapped up as they were in their turbans. The tractor is an old Massey Ferguson - something that reminded me of my childhood Eastern Cape holidays.
And everywhere, along all the roads, walked the flag people. Every so often there would be a tractor with a trailer – on the back of it (no doubt a lot of car batteries and) some really huge speakers pumping out Banghra at a zillion watts. Nothing on earth parties like India – more of that later though.
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