Rajasthan Road: Amber Fort

A view of Amber Fort's main courtyard--Jaleb Chowk.

Jenna inside Amber Fort with the Diwan-i-Khas in the background.









Emerging from one of the fort's many small passageways.













A view of the fort from the long flight of stone steps leading to the back gate.

Rattlesnakes are not indigenous to India, but if they were, they would most certainly live in Rajasthan. This windswept state southwest of Delhi has the kind of hot, sun-beaten climate that rattlers enjoy in parts of Texas and the American Southwest.

After a wonderful week taking Andres and Celina around Calcutta, Delhi, and Agra, Jenna and I have embarked on a ten-day driving trek through this desert state. Rajasthan is the ancestral home of the warrior Rajputs, an independent breed of Hindu rulers who fought of successive waves of invading Afghans, Mughals and British before finally—and very reluctantly—integrating their princely states into the Indian Republic in 1947. (It helped that the new Indian government allowed the Rajput maharajahs to keep their land and titles.) The Medieval forts that dot the landscape are a remnant of this feudal past, placed everywhere in this dusky landscape like so many red houses on a Monopoly game board.

Jenna and I took a quick five-hour drive from Delhi on Monday to Rajasthan’s capital Jaipur. For this trip, we are driven by Shakir, a Rajasthani native from the lakeside city of Udaipur (another stop later on our tour, made famous by the 1970s James Bond movie Octopussy). Shakir is an amiable man with long wet locks of jet-black hair. He proudly informed us in our first hour of the trip that he has driven all over India.

“Rajasthan…West Bengal…UP…Kerala…Tamil Nadu. All over. I am very good driver. You like me much,” he said with a smile reflected in the rearview mirror.

For our part, Jenna and I were already savoring the feeling of being tourists after five months of living and working steadily in Tirur and nearly another month fretfully dealing with our visa issues, which have now been solved. We booked this trip in a rather impromptu way at our hotel in Delhi, through a soft-spoken Sikh named Chandeep. We were considering just taking trains through Rajasthan but Chandeep’s confident reassurances about his connections in the state convinced us to let him book the car and hotels for us.

“I will get you very good hotels. Comfortable hotels. The driving is easy. You will have the driver at your disposal. Good, reasonable price,” he said in his small tourism office in the first floor of our hotel.

Through one day in Rajasthan, Chandeep has been proven correct. We stopped at Amber Fort, just north of Jaipur on Monday before arriving in the city. To say who this fort was founded by and to what purpose it was used is about as interesting for readers as detailing the lineup and relative batting skills of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers. That is to say, history and the complexity of Rajasthani politics through the years have obscured the necessity for such long-winded explanations. Suffice to say, Amber Fort is a striking example of stone and marble architecture, perched atop a dusky hill overlooking a sprawling valley, well-placed to hold off an attacking foe. In fact, the guidebooks say the fort was never actually captured in more than four centuries of existence.

Amber Fort is a little kid’s paradise. Indian tourism regulations being what they are, most of the fort is unguarded and its intricate pathways, narrow alleys, and maze-like inner chambers are open for any industrious child with an exploratory soul. Several times, I lost Jenna because I found interest in turning through a random doorway or following a winding rampart into a darkened crevice that impossibly had another cavity leading off it. You could spend two full days in Amber Fort simply trying to find your way around.

The place has all the hallmarks of Mughal-era Indian forts—arched gateways with brilliant frescoes, bejeweled marble latticework overhanging windows and vaults, fibrous-looking stone pillars upholding egg-shaped domes. All the necessary parts are here: a Diwan-i-Am (Hall of Public Audience), a beautiful Diwan-i-Khas (Hall of Private Audience), a mosque, private chambers for the rulers, and a well-preserved Char Bagh (Muslim garden broken geometrically into four squares).

Overall, it was an excellent start to our trek through Rajasthan. Shakir met us outside the gate, having spent his time under a large banyan tree with some other drivers. “Too hot today,” he said smiling, as he led us to the car. “But that is Rajasthan. It will always be hot.”