A different Jaipur

My first visit to Jaipur was many years ago when the bus I was travelling from Delhi's ISBT to Jodhpur, stopped for a couple of hours at the pink city. Jaipur then, came across as a typical North Indian small city, full of loud people with their colourful, but mostly unwashed turbans, and their sun-tanned skin, crouching on the ground & smoking their beedis, unmindful of all the din caused the papad vendors and the vehicle horns sounding all around. Jaipur bus stand reeked of an odour that was a heady mixture of the various eatable vendors hawking their wares and a faint stench of urine and I was glad when the bus finally moved on.
















1) An View of Jaipur's city centre.
2) The Tonk Road flyover at Gandhinagar.

This time however, since lady luck having been kind to me, I found myself being driven from the Sanganer Airport to Park Plaza in the centre of the city. As the cab drove across Tonk road and Prithviraj road, I saw a totally different view of Jaipur. The wide roads, green avenues and some wonderfully designed buildings had me wondering if this was the same city whose bus stand I’d passed through many years before. Jaipur has not missed the development bus but, somehow has struggled to find ways to cling on to the ways of the old. The various bazaars that dot the old city still, are a reminder of how the present Rajasthani still juggles culture and tradition with modernity. The sight of pretty young girls driving their scooterettes through the narrow by lanes of a Bapu bazaar or a Tripolia Bazaar may be the result of urbanisation but the veils/chunaris behind which they hide their faces speaks volumes of their reluctance to totally break free.