Mike Yardley: Might and magic of Jaipur with Wendy Wu Tours - Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

When it comes to grand gestures, painting your entire city in the one colour is quite something. So much for painting the town red. How about pink? Jaipur beckons as one of India’s most enchanting destinations, where the Old City is harmoniously bathed in the same pink hue. The elegant capital of Rajasthan was painted in pink stucco in 1876 to welcome Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, who was the son of Queen Victoria and later became King Edward VII. Jaipur’s Maharaja chose the colour because pink symbolises hospitality in Rajput culture, and the gesture impressed the Prince so much that he nicknamed the city the "Pink City." The name – and the stucco - has stuck ever since. A year later, a law mandated that all future buildings in the Old City must be painted pink.

As I swept into Jaipur on a private holiday Wendy Wu Tours, there’s no denying how that welcoming palette sweetly seduces even the most jaded of travellers. Jaipur effortlessly casts you under its spell, as you delve into its rich history and treasury of enticements. There is an unmistakeable magic about the place. Nearly 300 years ago, an enlightened maharajah with a penchant for jewels and a keen eye for architecture built this planned city, wedged between the arid hills of northwest India. Built in the form of a rectangle, Jaipur was divided into nine blocks, seven for public use and two reserved for the state’s most prestigious palaces and buildings. The entire city was girdled by a formidable protective wall.

Called Jaipur after the city’s founder, Jai Singh II, the planned city soon gave rise to astonishing royal palaces and vast workshops of artisans recruited to establish a new commercial hub. These days, gem cutters, jewellery designers and garment-makers are still doing a flourishing trade in Jaipur. And the royals still occupy a wing of the majestic City Palace, while gleaming mid-rise towers and a new subway system anchor Jaipur’s forward march. But for all the contemporary progress, it’s the architectural grandeur, proud sense of place and thriving craftwork traditions that make this destination so infectious. Street markets are splashed in colour and handicrafts, and Hindu temples can be found nearly every 100 metres. Though the streets heave with beeping and belching traffic, aimless tourists and dung-dropping cows, there is a charm and charisma to the carnival of commotion.

Close to City Palace, my wonderful Wendy Wu Tours guide Vipin treated us to some sizzling old-school retail therapy. We walked under the peeling pink porticos of the roadside bazaars which were emblazoned with everything from puppets to pyjama pants; passing by carts of fried chickpea cakes, and marble-lined shrines with statues of Hindu gods. Garment-hunting was high on the agenda, for gifts to take home. Vipin led us to his favourite shop, where an explosion of colourful fabrics heaped in piles and stacked to the ceiling soon greeted us, as attentive staff served us Masala chai. Whether you’re after local, authentic t-shirts, shirts, trousers, scarfs, saris, rugs, cushion covers, towels or table-cloths…this is textile and garment-shopping heaven. As my sister snapped up some sensational saris, I haggled down the price on a sublime tablecloth with block-printed red elephants. The other boom retail business is jewellery, because Jaipur is a global centre for cutting and polishing precious and semiprecious gems. Head to Jewels Emporium’s stately white building and take a tour of the workshops, where cutters shape facets, and men at workbenches adorn gold settings with jewels, and rinse the gold dust from their hands in wash basins. That water is later sold to extraction companies. The quality of the workmanship is second to none, true Rajasthan’s abiding legacy.

Jaipur’s Pink City bragging rights is best epitomised by the Hawa Mahal, or Palace of Winds. We stopped by to pose in front of this five-story palace façade, constructed from pink sandstone. Built in 1799, its iconic facade features 953 small windows which allowed royal women of the court to observe street processions without being seen while also creating a natural cooling effect. The palace's architecture is a blend of Rajput and Mughal styles, ornately designed with protruding bays of lattice stonework and cupolas mimicking Krishna’s crown. Could there be a more glorious façade in the world?

City Palace is a stirring complex to leisurely explore, peppered with mouth-watering architecture, tranquil courtyards and lush gardens. The prize draw is the Palace of the Breeze, a triumph in building design, whereby the air circulates so efficiently that it keeps the occupants cool even in the extreme summer months, when the mercury can nudge 50 degrees. The on-site museum is studded with royal treasures, costumes and curiosities. Out in the courtyard, I admired some massive silver vessels that carried the Maharaja’s drinking water from the Ganges R