Sightseeing! In Jaipur! Hurray!

Dear diary. Today I did some of the necessary evil. I went sightseeing.

I've been in this shaggy village for two months and I basically haven't visited any sights. Basically that's because I really don't care. It's like...going to see a new pile of garbage while living in dump pit. It's new and fascinating but it's still only shit.

Ok, don't get me wrong, the sights here can be nice and worth a visit. It's just that the surroundings don't really encourage you to want to see the sights. For example Taj Mahal was great. And this observatory I just visited here was nice. But to get there you need to swim through lakes of shit.

Indians have parked their vehicles. On the way to the Places.

I walked for about 90 minutes to get to the area I wanted. It's only a few kilometers away. I tried getting a tuktuk but they wanted 50 rupees instead of my offered 40 rupees so I didn't take one. 50 rupees is almost one euro, come on! So, I decided to just walk. And as I had no idea where exactly the places were (City Palace and the observatory, they are right next to each other) I got lost quite nicely. Almost took a rickshaw at one point but the conversation wasn't too encouraging:

- namaste. Will you take me to city palace?
- *shaking head in Indian style which can mean anything*
- no? fucking great.

After asking for directions a few times I finally found some place. I had no idea what it was but it was advertising itself as "now world heritage site 2010!". When I was in Mumbai with Tani we had bought tickets to the elephant island which is also a world heritage site. But nobody ever stamped the tickets or anything and the ticket says that it's valid on all of India's world heritage sites besides Taj Mahal. So I used that one. It clearly also says that it's for one-time use only. The guys at the gate had never seen such a ticket and when they saw the text "Not valid for Taj Mahal" they of course assumed that it was a ticket to Taj Mahal and didn't let me in. After I spelled out for them the meaning of the text they finally let me in. And didn't stamp the ticket.

A....thing. Round and big. For doing stuff.

Guess what this is. Yes, you guessed right! It's a sun clock! Measures time with an accuracy of 2 seconds, they claim.

Outer entrance to the City Palace. No need to go in.

After entering I asked some tourists what the place is. "This some planet stars here." Observatory! I had found it! But it just didn't look anything like the observatories I have earlier seen. It was a big open space with lots of different sun clocks and devices for measuring things. Huge devices. Nice place. Spent maybe fifteen minutes there and then tried to go to the City Palace. Well, it was closed at 5pm and I was 5 minutes late. Tough luck. But I was almost relieved - didn't have to go through another wonderful sight and I had the perfect excuse to just go home.

Now I believe I have done my duty. Seen some local sights. No need to see more. I hope.