How should I spend two days in Jaipur?
Day one: Amber Fort at opening, the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing below it, Nahargarh for the late afternoon. Day two: Jantar Mantar early, the City Palace, Hawa Mahal from the street opposite, and the old-city bazaars from four o'clock. Fit one museum you have booked in advance into the second morning. Work outward before the heat and inward after it.
The two constraints in Jaipur are heat and traffic, and they both point the same way: go north and uphill early, come back into the walled city late. Everything below is arranged around that. Nothing here has an opening time attached, because they change and a printed one goes wrong; check each place the evening before.
Day one
Early — Amber Fort. Be at the gate when it opens. The difference between 8am and 10.30am at Amber is the difference between a fort and a queue. Give it two hours; the Sheesh Mahal and the Ganesh Pol are the set pieces, but the water gardens below and the long ramped approach are the reason the place works.
Late morning — the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing. Ten minutes from the fort, in a restored haveli. Block printing explained properly, with printers at work. An hour, and the best-taught hour in Jaipur.
Afternoon — rest. This is not padding. Between one and four the city is unpleasant and everything you want to look at is in direct sun.
Late afternoon — Panna Meena ka Kund, then Nahargarh. The stepwell takes ten minutes and is on the way. Nahargarh is for the last hour of light and the view down over the whole grid of the city, which is when Jai Singh's plan makes sense.
Day two
Early — Jantar Mantar. Masonry astronomical instruments at architectural scale, and they work. Go before the shadows shorten.
Mid-morning — the City Palace. Next door. The textiles and the armoury are the strongest holdings in the city, and the two enormous sterling silver vessels are worth finding.
On the way out — Hawa Mahal. From the street opposite, not from inside. The famous façade is the back of the building; the interior is a corridor.
Or, instead of the palace — one private collection, booked in advance. If you have seen a royal palace before and would rather look at objects than at rooms, this is the swap to make. The nine galleries at Gyan Museum hold some 2,500 objects assembled by a single collector — jewellery, manuscripts, coins, arms, and one of the largest groups of silver hookah mouthpieces anywhere. It is in Sitapura, forty-five minutes from the old city, it is by prior appointment only, and the visit is guided by a curator. Write before you travel; people who have not have been turned away at the gate.
Late afternoon — the bazaars. Johari for jewellery, Tripolia for lac bangles, Maniharon ka Rasta to watch them being made, Chandpole for marble. These are working trades, not a heritage quarter. Walk, do not drive.
Evening — eat in the old city.
What this itinerary leaves out
Jaigarh, the Chand Baori at Abhaneri, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Galtaji, and the rest of the museums. All of them are worth a third day, and the third day is the one that stops Jaipur being a list of forts.
If you are choosing what to cut
- Cut Hawa Mahal's interior before anything else.
- Cut Nahargarh if the light is bad; the view is the point.
- Do not cut Amber's early start. There is no substitute for it.