Pushkar Day 2- Part 1

Today was the main day of the Pushkar Mela. There was a Yoga event in the morning. So I was all excited for the event and planned to go for it from the night before. I reached the Mela ground at 7 and could see very few participants for the Yoga event.

After completion of the Yoga event, I rushed back home to get ready and go with my in-laws to the Vishnu temple. We got wonderful darshan in the temple.

Then we came back to our hotel room and got ready to checkout. We kept our bags in the luggage room and headed to the Mela ground for the competitions planned for the Pushkar Mela.

We were on time as we saw camel decoration competition. The camels were decorated with lot of colors. Then there was a camel dance competition planned. Each camel had to dance for 5 minutes and perform some jumps and change movements as per the rule. There were 25 camels for this competition and each one was really nicely trained by their owners and gave a wonderful performance. We had never seen such an event before. I really liked this event.

Jaipur Day 3

We had an early morning checkout planned today. We went to Sindhicamp bus stop and took a bus to Ajmer and then another bus to Pushkar.

We reached Pushkar by noon. It took us a while to reach Hotel Poonam where we had our reservations. We had our lunch there and the food there was delicious. After lunch, we got to our rooms and took rest for a while.

Around 4pm, we started to visit Brahma temple. This temple had a lot of crowd there. We somehow managed to get the darshan quick and then headed to Vishnu temple. The road to the Vishnu temple had lot of shopping stalls on the way. So we took time for some shopping and got some great stuff. Vaishnavi got the ethnic backpack that she was looking for. Although it was not exactly how she wanted, but she liked the colors and got it at a great discount. Towards evening, we got our darshan in the Vishnu temple and headed to Mela ground.

The mela ground is a huge open space where the events of the Pushkar mela happen. There were lot of people in there and the entire place was buzzing with excitement.

Jaipur Day 2 -Part 2

After a heavy lunch in LMB, we planned to visit Amber Fort. We hired a cab for all of us. During the way, we were full of praises for the food and plan to have a heavy Thali at LMB.

On the way to the Amber fort, we came across Jaigad Fort. This was not on our list. But our driver recommended to visit this place and since we had some buffer time, we went for a quick visit. It was definitely too huge to cover for the little time we had but we managed to make a quick visit.

Then we went to Amber fort. It was another super big place. We reached around 4pm and there was already lot of crowd inside. We were having fun seeing the beauty, capturing pics and posing for selfies. Towards sunset, we for tired and exhausted and came to know about Cafe Coffee Day inside. So we went there to have a coffee and continued exploring the fort. After sunset, the place started to get dark. We were informed about a song and light show scheduled for 7pm. So we planned to visit that  and it was really fantastic. The view of the fort with the different colors exhibited in the show was simply gorgeous. It was worth watching this show.

Jaipur Day 2 -Part 1

Today we planned to cover City Palace in the morning. We took the city bus and headed there to visit the place. I met Khalil from Malad office along with his family there. That was a nice little surprise. We got to click lot of pictured, took our family selfie and had fun.

Then we went to LMB for the famous Rajasthani Thali. Seriously, it was the biggest Thali I had ever seen. The ambiance of this place is awesome and their service was worth mentioning despite the crowd during lunchtime. After we placed the order, we got the Thali very quickly. We had expected that it would take a while considering the crowd there. So this was very impressive. The food tasted really delicious and after a little while I got full. LSP was happily ordering extra servings while I found it very difficult to complete the initial servings on my plate. Overall it was worth the visit and we had a great time.

Jaipur Day 1

We reached Jaipur early by 6am. Then we had a quick breakfast and went to our hotel. Finding a cab in the morning was a little difficult. There were cab drivers everywhere and they were asking sky rocket prices to the hotel. Thankfully my husband knew the route to the hotel and bargained for a nominal cost.

On reaching the hotel, we were really tired and sleepy. But we got ready quickly and headed out to see Jal Mahal. It was really pretty. By the time we reached the place, sun was shining brightly and the bright sunlight made the Jal Mahal glow. We could not go inside but watched it by the bridge and took pics.

Then we made our way to Hawa Mahal. This was one of the must see in our list. When we reached, there were few people there. We could peacefully start seeing the place. But within a while, it became very crowded. It was right in the middle of shopping area and we were seeing lot of options for shopping around it.

Then around lunch, we decided to try a local restaurant. There were less people there and food there was good. People around had suggested to try LMB. But we decided to try that the next day.

The rest of the day we spent shopping around Hawa Mahal and did a few purchases. But the early morning train travel had made us all exhausted and we retired back to our rooms early.