After a few hours we stop at one of the optimistically-named ‘resorts’: a step up from the cafes, which sell cups of chai almost guaranteed to leave a cockroach in the bottom along with the tea residue. Here, however, we saunter off in search of caffeine and cigarettes. A couple of rounds of toast are ordered, smeared with what is loosely termed ‘jam’. Indian jam never declares its allegiance to any kind of fruit in particular, presumably because it contains none. Instead, this neon-coloured gloop is sugar and red food colouring melted down into lumpy syrup. This morning, however, we’re grateful for it. Also on the menu are baked beans on toast and omelettes. The bread comes without the crust sliced off, and the waiter does not flinch when we ask him to hold the sugar from our drinks, a sure sign that this is not a place run for the Indian customer. And looking around, there are more white faces in this café than we have seen in three weeks in Delhi.
Jaipur sprawls for at least a hundred kilometers before the city walls loom. Cafes and roadside stalls still call themselves after the city here. But it’s a bleak landscape: flat scrubland, above which looms the occasional grey mountain, a repetitive scene which serves only to remind you how large this country is. It’s the Nevada of India, with coke stalls where casinos should be. As in Nevada also, there are more hotels by the roadside than would ever have clientele to fill them, and it leaves the wide eyed traveller wondering how they ever pay their overheads. This strange world is something never seen by the thousands of tourists who fly in every year.
But suddenly, these Potemkin Villages disappear and we pass through the huge pink arches of Jaipur. Immediately, the roads are filled with rickshaws and bicycles and camels pulling carts loaded with firewood (here camels are beasts of burden, rather than the showpieces they are elsewhere. Cows, being holy, have it a lot easier in Rajasthan). The women here wear saris brighter than those in Delhi. they create a cacophany of colour: yellows, greens, blues. Even the old wrinkled faces that peek out from beneath them are radiant with their vibrant reflections. Everywhere there are roundabouts; and in the centre of them are miniature village hubs where men sit and talk as the traffic whizzes by. The streets are bazaars selling bags and turbans and saris and pashminas to tourists for three times their worth. And all this against a backdrop of buildings that are uniformly, and bizzarely, pink. They look like Cinderella’s palace atop a child’s birthday cake. 
The whole city was painted pink in 1876 by the Maharajah, Ram Singh, to welcome the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). These days, when Prince Charles visits, he brings his own personal chef, since he can’t stand the food. Though he and the current Maharajah (who went to Eton, but not with Charles) are now great polo buddies. Though Maharajah-Windsor relations may have changed, the city still remains pink.
When later we ventured back out into the city to do some shopping, we were surrounded by swarms of men beckoning us into their shops, assuring ‘best price’, and all of them taking the time to whisper warnings in our ear. “This other man works on commission,” once says, “do not speak to him – you can trust me.” “You can just looking, not buy,” reassures another. “Best price, madam, I assure you. You can look around and come back – you’ll see.” And no amount of pleading can convince them that you do not need a pillowcase or a bedspread or a sari or a string-puppet. “You take as presents,” they say, even though you explain you’re not going home for months. And everybody asks, “which country you from?” It’s not considered impolite in India to ask anything, and when another seller (who is busy spreading saris before me despite my protestation) offers to sell me a hat for 500 rupees, he next asks me which religion I am – for I cannot be none. I shrug and say that I am Catholic, even though I haven’t taken communion for years. He breathes a sigh of relief. “Me too!” he says. I offer him 300 rupees. “No, then you are my Catholic friend and you can give me 1,000!”
It’s the hard sell, the desperation to grab tourist rupees before someone else does. And even though you know you are being ripped off, somehow even the buying is fun; shouting multiple refusals to the man following you down the road with a hand drum, while ignoring the jewellery seller who has sent his nephew to persuade you back to his stall, as simultaneously you have some fly-encrusted pistachio brittle thrown in your face by an old man. Under one of the pink arches, a man lies inexplicably naked, while a car screeches to a halt as five goats wobble across the road. We head up to the Amber Fort around four o’clock and our driver struggles with four kilometeres of switchback roads. But once at the top, the sunlight reflects off the orange stones, and falls behind the city sprawling below. As the darkness settles, and the Muslim call to prayer echoes off the walls, the twinkling lights spread out as if the stars have fallen on the ground. We all take in a quick breath.
“I hate to say this,” says Neil, “But it reminds me a lot of Los Angeles.” And though he meant to spoil the moment, in a sense he was right.
Before us are Jaipuri’s residents, all two million of them. And this is Jaipur: like L.A., chaotic, noisy, and full of things that sell for far more than they’re worth. It’s just that this city is a hell of a lot more pink.
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