This place is a must see for any travellers coming to India. Met a lovely couple (living in Sweden) and teamed up to tour the local forts and a few other sites around the place. The hotel had arranged 2 tuk tuks and drivers for our exclusive use for the whole day for the princely sum of 800 rupees ($14.28). This turned into another one of those silly number of photos days as there was no way to take it all in.

We started at the monkey temple (Galwar Bagh) which was “surprisingly” a temple on a hill with lots of monkeys. The temple was unimpressive but there were many monkeys and a pretty good view over Jaipur. The next stop was a photo opportunity at the floating or water palace (Jal Mahal). You cannot get out to the island but it is pretty spectacular either way and is a 5 min stop on the way to or from the three forts of Jaipur which are relatively close to each other and set along the ridge of the mountain. In addition to this is the 27 kilometre defensive wall that was constructed. The Indians love to tell gullible tourists that it is the Great Wall of China and by all accounts the French and yanks are the ones that tend to buy into this.

The fort run is huge and exhausting to do all in one day and by the end you are suffering from attraction overload so the third of the forts gets a fairly cursory glance. The first thing you hit is the lake at the bottom of the ridge where you look up to the amber fort and palace then across the ridge to the Jaigarh Fort and along the zig zag of walls. This place is truly impressive. The first introduction to this was the snake charmer with his cobra in a basket which evolved into the elephant ride option to climb the hill to the amber fort and palace.

Once at the Amber fort and palace you find yourself in a building that is more of a maze than a palace. You get awesome views all around and keep popping into random rooms and terraces in this maze of a building. There is no natural flow and everything is sectioned off and the biggest challenge is finding the exit when you are finished. When you get to the side of the fort there is a tunnel offering protected passage between the amber for and the Jaigarh fort which goes for about a kilometre up the hill. Upon exiting the tunnel you have about another kilometre hike up the hill to the entrance to the next fort.

The Nahargarh fort is the last of the three and is on the opposite side of the same ridge from the others and is the fort that can be seen from down town Jaipur.