March 7, 2014. Jaipur, India

The day had an auspicious start, because I grabbed this photo of a women loaded with bricks on her head.

Then after a brief visit to the stamp museum, we went to the Amber Fort. It is an incredible royal mountain city built in the 1600s and later abandoned for the new planned city of Jaipur. The palace was amazing as was the temple and the fortifications. There seemed to be zillion steps to climb, and I am once again worried about pneumonia, but some how I managed.

Hawkers are everywhere, and someone wanted to sell Jim this hat.  He didn't want it and counter offered a ridiculously low price. The hawker tried his hardest but Jim wouldn't budge and surprise of surprises, Jim now owns the hat!

 

Our driver, Kahn then took us to a textile factory, which I was keen to see.  I should've known it wasn't going to be a factory.

 Unfortunately although I did really enjoy seeing the demonstration of block printing on fabric, and trying it and seeing the rug making demonstration, I was less than enthusiastic about the pressured sales pitch afterwards, especially knowing that the driver would get a cut. All my shopping is now done, finished, complete and I told Kahn, that I wouldn't go to any more shops! 

I always have my eye out for interesting things and today I lucked in to an incredible private museum.

The sign on the building read Shree Sanjay Sharma Museum and Research Institute; an educational centre for Art and Heritage. Of course I had to check this out and am I ever glad I did.

We met the founder, Shree Sanjay Sharma and were shown through the musem by his son, Tilak Sharma and his grandson, Chaitanya Sharma, the museum co-ordinator. What an amazing collection of priceless manuscripts, over 100,000 many illustrated. Only a tiny fascinating sample of books from the past four hundred years are on display but they are all preserved, catalogued, and available by request. Scholars from over fourty countries have visited and taken advantage of one family's gift to humanity.  We were fortunate to visit the brand new museum building which opened in September 2013.  This new building is filled with many carefully curated galleries, each on a different theme and all of them cultural; sandels, paintings, tapestries and many more. I  was fascinated and the time flew by and I am certain the family kept the museum open until six  because we were so interested.  I think it is admirable and inspiring that one person, with the support of his wife and entire family, could take up the challenge of preserving the long, rich Indian culture.

Jim and also saw several very old examples of the game "snakes and ladders".  I had never thought about it as representing life and good and evil and I certainly never knew that this game is part of India's gift to the world.