Monday, January 14, 2008
And after the wonderful Amber Fort and the elephant ride is was off to Jaipur City. We stayed in another Heritage Hotel, The Samode Haveli, which is owned and run by the Samode Royal Family, who still live here.
It has only 22 rooms, each with its own decoation. These hotels are simply wonderful destinations in their own right. Because these hotels have been carved out of very old Palaces, they have many twists and turns so you do get to see the wonderful frescos and painted walls along the way to find your room. (This can take awhile!) The swimming pool and the dining room are especially beautiful. After driving through the varied traffic (as in trucks, camels elephants!) one is absolutely hit with the calm and tranquility of these former palaces and very much appreciated by we tired Western travelers.
Our poor tour company which could not do enough for us, filled, for them, a strange request. So in the wonderful city of Jaipur with its temples palaces and art we headed out that night to the Raz Mandir Cinema to see a first run Bollywood movie, starring the very famous Madhuri Dixit, in her return to the screen following her retirement to have a family. We now know all this as the papers are full of news of these stars.
Raz Mandir is a real landmark in Jaipur, in fact all over India. If Indians are coming to visit Jaipur, along with Palace and temples, an evening spent at the movies and especially at this theatre is a must. The Raz Mandir is quite beautiful, decorated and comfortable, and huge lobby which is needed because there is not much time between movies. Large crowds congregate in the lobby waiting their turn to enter, as the screens are not dark for long between filme.
. And of course they are mad for movies in this part of the world. India has the largest film industry in the world. We were interested to note in the trailers that Disney is now in co production in India to do animated features. Cannot beat ‘em join ‘em I guess.
There were actually a few other tourists in the audience (we all seem to sit together in the upstairs) but mostly this was a local audience. . And you should know, in the movie,“The Aaja Nachle” the show went on, ,hundreds of the cast learned the dances and the boys got the girls (as in every Bollywood movie). Busby Berkley had nothing on these productions when it comes to choreography and size of very colourfully costumed cast. As Norman says, you cannot beat this style for sheer entertainment value. Footnote: the driver and guide had a bet that we all would be so bored watching for three hours, an non-subtitled movie in Hindi we would leave at intermission They certainly misjudged this movie mad family!
And so to bed to dream of elephant rides and dancing feet.
It has only 22 rooms, each with its own decoation. These hotels are simply wonderful destinations in their own right. Because these hotels have been carved out of very old Palaces, they have many twists and turns so you do get to see the wonderful frescos and painted walls along the way to find your room. (This can take awhile!) The swimming pool and the dining room are especially beautiful. After driving through the varied traffic (as in trucks, camels elephants!) one is absolutely hit with the calm and tranquility of these former palaces and very much appreciated by we tired Western travelers.
Our poor tour company which could not do enough for us, filled, for them, a strange request. So in the wonderful city of Jaipur with its temples palaces and art we headed out that night to the Raz Mandir Cinema to see a first run Bollywood movie, starring the very famous Madhuri Dixit, in her return to the screen following her retirement to have a family. We now know all this as the papers are full of news of these stars.
Raz Mandir is a real landmark in Jaipur, in fact all over India. If Indians are coming to visit Jaipur, along with Palace and temples, an evening spent at the movies and especially at this theatre is a must. The Raz Mandir is quite beautiful, decorated and comfortable, and huge lobby which is needed because there is not much time between movies. Large crowds congregate in the lobby waiting their turn to enter, as the screens are not dark for long between filme.
. And of course they are mad for movies in this part of the world. India has the largest film industry in the world. We were interested to note in the trailers that Disney is now in co production in India to do animated features. Cannot beat ‘em join ‘em I guess.
There were actually a few other tourists in the audience (we all seem to sit together in the upstairs) but mostly this was a local audience. . And you should know, in the movie,“The Aaja Nachle” the show went on, ,hundreds of the cast learned the dances and the boys got the girls (as in every Bollywood movie). Busby Berkley had nothing on these productions when it comes to choreography and size of very colourfully costumed cast. As Norman says, you cannot beat this style for sheer entertainment value. Footnote: the driver and guide had a bet that we all would be so bored watching for three hours, an non-subtitled movie in Hindi we would leave at intermission They certainly misjudged this movie mad family!
And so to bed to dream of elephant rides and dancing feet.
# posted by katie @ 11:34 PM 
