City Palace Museum

I was greeted with brightly painted walls in yellow, deep red and white when I entered the museum. I learnt that the museum was split into three areas – textiles, art and weaponry. Each was interesting, as you had to wind in and out of pillars or climb spiral staircases to get to the exhibits. The art museum featured art in the previous era as well as the original Persian carpets, books, calligraphy and even the sedan chairs that they used to carry their emperors on. It’s amazing to see how the art forms changed over the years. Too bad photography isn’t allowed the museum or I’d be capturing those shots!

The textile museum was nice too since it showed what the kings and royalty wore during that time. I remember one piece particularly clearly because it was so huge! I overhead one of the hired guides who was showing two Caucasian man around that the king was some 700 pounds. You can imagine who wide the waistband was! Plus, the king was short, so it was kind of disproportionate.

Shots of parts of the museum






Cannons...


The weaponry section featured weapons used at war. There were loads to look at, but I didn’t quite know how to appreciate it, so I walked out of the place quite quickly.

I went into a shop within the museum that sold handicrafts. It was quite nice to see them actually making what they were selling, from woven fabric to metals and even paper. I was tempted to buy the papers but it was a little pricey and so I gave it a miss.

The loom - and we were looking for this in Singapore?!



Lakhbir called me in between my tour around the museum. He had forgotten to charge his handphone and hence it was dead when I attempted to call him. I made arrangements for him to pick me up at the entrance of the City Palace Museum. I waited some half an hour but still, there was no sight of him. I called him again and was quite frustrated that the line kept getting cut off. It seemed he was at the “entrance” too, but still I couldn’t spot him. Finally, out of frustration, I passed my handphone to the security guard standing by the entrance to give Lakhbir directions to the entrance I was at. Thankfully, there was a group of youths standing close-by and one of them kindly gave Lakhbir directions to where I was. He then told me that Lakhbir would meet me round the corner, near the entrance to an Observatory nearby. I thanked him profusely and made my way round the corner.

The lane there was pretty sparse and so it smelt of dried urine. Still, I carefully trotted along, appearing as “gung-ho” as I could. You can’t imagine how happy I was when I finally spotted Lakhbir driving down with his car!

I then told Lakhbir to skip the hotel stop he was supposed to send me to before the City Palace Museum stop and go straight to the Loharu House, my accommodation at Jaipur.