It was created by Jai Singh in 1728 after he sent off his top scholars to study abroad, who returned with the knowledge required for such an undertaking. All the instruments were built on a grand scale, and although it fell into disrepair in the 19th century it was restored in 1901 and is now pretty immaculate, if slightly sanitised.
This was used to calculate the Azimuth and Altitude of the sun and other 'heavenly' bodies.
There were a number of cleverly constructed bowl-type instruments each representing half of the celestial sphere. The shadow of the intersecting cables traced the sun's movement and indicated the interactions of other objects.
This one was a mahoosive sun dial.
This showed the construction methods used to create a similar tool, situated next to it that was a 'stereographic projection of heaven on the plane of the equator'. There was a little too many uses of the word heaven for my scientific mind, but it did gradually dawn on me, as I read more about each piece, that most of these clever scientific instruments were actually used to work out bloody horoscopes! Clairy liked the way the metal had been hammered flat into curved sections and joined together.
I was slightly disappointed to find after looking at the piece above, that none of the moving parts in the instruments still worked, although apparently after the turn of the century restoration, all the instruments were checked and worked perfectly.
'Keep off the grass, don' t drop any litter, but please just ignore this massive load of crap we've just left lying around...thanks.'
Another huge sundial. This one was pointing exactly to the correct time. Clever. I wondered just how annoying it might have been if an earthquake had struck after the decades of construction and moved all the instruments a few degrees in the wrong direction.
This monstrous beast (not the Clairy) was the centre point of the observatory and was yet another elaborate sundial.
It had some lovely lines.
Clairy thought this one looked a vertigous nightmare, with its endless ledges, wonky stairway, and random cut-out sections. It possibly should have been made out of cheese...
...and with a bit of work from a giant blow-torch would have fitted right into a Dali painting.
Clairy christened this aspect 'The Stairway to Hell', with its calf high walls that she felt she would have to throw herself over.
These next instruments were used for the direct measurement of celestial latitudes and longitudes. There was a different one for each astrological sign, that would be used when that sign was in the meridian. Here's Clairy's Gemini one...
...complete with suspiciously un twin-like twins.
And my Capricorner.
Nice tail...and reflection.
I didn't quite figure out how this last instrument worked, although it had similar crossed cables tracing the suns path across the hemisphere. It also had large sections cut out from the bowl which you could get down to via a flight of steps.
The celestial pole.
After leaving the Jantar Mantar (chant it with me...Jantar Mantar, Jantar Mantar, JANTAR MANTAR!). We made our way past the palace and took the same route that we had the previous day where we had seen the snake charmers. Sadly they weren't there again, but one of the pullover goat gang was, in this incredibly manky jumper. This happy chap was munching away on something. Possibly an unsuspecting lorry drivers brake cable.
As we headed out the palace gate Clairy snapped this nice pic of the elaborate tiling. We liked the streamers of pidgies hanging out waiting for the next religious offering of tasty corn to be tossed on the pavement below...
...like this chap was doing, drive-by worship stylee - don't even take that helmet off.
Our next point of call was the Hawa Mahal (Palace of the Winds), a gorgeous five storey structure that looked really quite stunning from the road.
Just a couple of bikes parked around the corner.
There was no entrance to the palace from the main road, we had to nip round the corner and up a little alleyway to reach the main entrance below. This was because the palace was designed to enable the royal women to watch the life and processions of the city without being seen themselves. Obviously a doorway onto the street would have driven most mortal males to have attempted some kind of lust-crazed break in.
Once inside we decided we would take the audio tour as it was produced by the same people as the fabulous one at Meherangarh Fort in Jodhpur. It was very informative. The tower on the left contained the walkway that led all the way up to the top floors. We were suprised to find that it was a textured stone ramp and not stairs, but the commentary later informed us that this was due to the fact that the royal ladies couldn't have possibly been asked to walk up five flights of stairs, so were instead pushed up the ramp in some kind of comedy aristocrat sized pram.
As pretty as the building was, it felt like the restoration job was not being done in a very heritage-conscious or caring manner. Lots of the detail on the stone masonry and jalis had been lost through over-painting, and there was a fair amount of new concrete on show.
There were still some lovely details though, like this leafy roof section.
Looking down on the street from one of the lower floors.
Nice scalloped arches.
'I saw eee, but eee didn't see I'...A 'John Strickland' classic from deepest darkest Somerset. Somehow appropriate.
The painted pink render with white outlines gives quite a pretty look on the ornate roof sections. The pink colouring of the old city came from the founder of the city, Jai Singh II. In the local area, the attractive red stone used in the Red Fort at Delhi was not available, so he ordered that his new city be painted pink, and then people might think it was the same...or so the rather dubious story goes.
As we made our way higher, I'm not sure if Clairy temporarily forgot about the vertigo, especially when she spotted a pair of elephants on the horizon.
'Oh hi!'
'See you later!'
Looking back towards the Jantar Mantar, and the City Palace, the tower on the right.
Insanely busy streets below.
You could see where the name 'Palace of the Winds' came from as we made our way up. It had been quite carefully designed to maximise as much wind as possible, and to circulate it effectively throughout each floor. Apparently temperatures can reach 48C(!) in summer, so it seemed like quite a sensible plan.
Oh god yeah, I was quite cool up there.
Some pretty last views of the top floor, before we made our way back down.
Naughty little kiddlings, heading off to school. Indian children seem to have the most insanely massive school bags, god knows what they have in them.
And to reward ourselves for some hardcore sightseeing, we naturally had a thali. This one turned out to be one of the tiniest yet, but was also one of the cheapest and did include some Channa Masala (curried chick peas) so we were happy.
After lunch we attempted to walk to a shop selling authentic ethically made camel leather shoes. We passed this modern haveli-in-the-making complete with top quality kerplunk style scaffolding.
In the end we found ourselves stomping along a majorly busy duel carriage way, with only the vaguest idea as to whether we were on the right track, due to lonely planet's appallingly bad map. We flagged a rickshaw down and he tootled us off in the opposite direction to the way we had been heading. Eventually we realised as we pulled up to a completely different shop that he was pulling a fast one and had taken us to somewhere where he might get a big fat commission. We were both well annoyed, particularly as he refused to take us back to where we wanted to go. In the end we stomped off and found that we weren't far from our guesthouse so it wasn't really the end of the world, just a minor set back.
Later in the afternoon we contacted 'Super Salim', the incredibly friendly driver who had helped us out the previous day and we did make it to the shoe shop of Clairy's dreams.
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