How is it like to be a tourist in your hometown?

Hi all,

I’m from Jaipur, Rajasthan. After my wedding I had to leave Jaipur with a very heavy heart. It was not easy for me to leave a city where I’ve grown up, did my school, college, had friends, people knew me... basically, was the don of the place.

Jaipur has changed a lot from when I remember it from. The infrastructure is different, the youth looks different from our time, the prices of things have gone up drastically. Mostly everything had changed except for the heritage and tourist places. Of course, these places are now much more clean and attractive and as per the tourists standards. But there is not a major change. At least that’s what I thought. But wait. We have also changed a lot.

Living in Dubai for almost 4 years has changed us so much, the appearance, way we talk, body language, everything has changed.

For the first time ever, this time in Jaipur I felt like a tourist. For this visit my husband chose to take a few pictures of the historical monuments, the lakes, elephants, camels and all other major attractions we have in Jaipur.

So here we are, woke up early morning and got ready for Nahargarh fort to see the famous sun rise. On our way we stopped by Jal Mahal,we reached there with two of our cousins. Took some amazing stills there.

And then later we headed towards Nahargarh. Jaipur looked the same from the top of the hill where Nahargarh is located. 

The place reminds us of our college days when we used to bunk and hide, have chai (I’m not a beer fan) and samosa. I just could not stop smiling and recalling and sharing the stories with my husband. Little he knew about my college life and the gang.

While returning we stopped at the Amber fort and visited the Amba Mata temple.

 Amber fort is beautiful. All the jharokhas, windows and balconies are beautifully maintained. We could hear nagadas and shehnaayi from one of the balconies, which added to the look and overall feel of the fort. My daughter saw elephants for the first time from that close. The beauty of the fort is its elephants. They are decorated with designs on their bodies with different colors, walking one behind the other, picking up two at a time and dropping them at the other station. All the tourists who come here climb the fort on the backs of elephants as it is built on a mountain we took our car from the back-side entry.  The fort was freshly painted and very well maintained.

After we finished, while returning to our car, a group of local vendors approached us and started pitching us the handmade paintings, carved elephants, puppets and handmade umbrellas. Oh! they were so beautiful. Let me be very frank with you all, I’ve grown up seeing all this and still it fascinated me so much so that I ended up buying 5 handmade paintings, but I had not forgotten to bargain, so got a decent deal. For the first time ever, I felt like a tourist in my own city.

Hungry by then we had breakfast a local snack shop, Jaipur is famous for kadhi-kachori, so we ordered that along with jalebi, samosas and chai. After a long time, we enjoyed road side food actually standing on the footpath.

Jaipur has a lot to offer to the tourists, what I shared is just 10 percent of it. Over all it was beautiful and amazing to go to the memory lane after more than 7 years. It was also funny to experience the feel of being a tourist in my own city and the expressions of the vendors when we told them that we belong here were priceless.