Day 124: Rest day in Jaipur
/The pink* city
* Let’s get this over with straight away. It’s not pink! It’s terracotta, or salmon coloured at a stretch, but that colour is not pink. You do see some pink in some places, particularly older buildings, so maybe they mangled the colour reference in a recent repaint - but this city is not pink.
Having said that, it’s perfectly nice as a terracotta city.
We went for a quiet stroll round and ended up heading in to a few of the buildings to look around. The “women’s quarters” of the palace, the Hawa Mahal, is the famous stone lattice encrusted building that makes most of the tourist shots here. The external facade may be the famous shot, but the internal courtyards, corridors and towers are probably the more impressive sight.
The Jaipur poster image - the Hawa Mahal
On the other side of the towering facade, an intricate network of passageways, stairways and rooms.
There’s something quite modernist about this city when you strip away the embellishments.
We also checked out the Jantar Mantar observatory, built in the 16th Century (along with four others around Europe) to create better tables astronomers could use to predict the position of the sun and stars. Presumably this had the effect of providing more accurate navigational tools to travellers and sailors - a bit like India investing in its own 16th Century GPS system.
The Observatory, and the largest sextent in the world (maybe).
In the evening we had a real treat. An Indian cooking course with the Manju Cooking School. Manju runs the classes in her own home, so it was a great chance to see how a Jaipur resident lives and cooks.
We’ve eaten a lot of Indian food over the last month, but we picked out a few favourites to learn. Vegetable Paneer, Bhindi Bhaji, Dal Fry and the most important - Paratha and Chapati breads.
This was a really special experience, as Manju let us know her daughter was getting married the next day, and you could tell she was very excited. There were a constant stream of guests arriving, but this didn’t distract from our lesson - it added so many more interesting details.
Manju made us feel very at home, including adding a “bindi” (coloured dot) to our foreheads on arrival, and dressing Sarina in a sari - essential for proper Indian cooking, obviously.
Getting set with the ingredients with Manju.
We learned so many little things, but it’s really most useful to watch Manju at work, the pans she uses, the tools (nothing special you wouldn’t already have) and the spices. It’s obviously the spices that make the real difference and the test of whether we can reproduce this food in the UK is going to be a little dependent on whether we can get some of the spices. Green mango powder is not something I’ve ever spotted in Tesco, but then again, I wasn’t looking for it.
Hands on learning and tuition
The real jewel was making chapatis and parathas. The simplicity of it was reassuring, after we’d had a few goes at this ourselves in the past. We probably used a bit too much oil and tried too hard really. Can’t wait to make this a staple in the McNamara household, and I can see the kitchen parties at Tiger’s Uni having a roti theme.
Tiger making the chapati dough. The metal containers behind are Manju’s spices. No labels - she just knows which is which.