We arrived at night by bus from Agra to Jaipur. The bus we took was a private AC bus that left at about 2:30 pm with a planned arrival time of about 8. The bus was nice and spacious and it looked like it was going to be a pretty nice ride. About 15 minutes into the trip the AC cut out! We went for a couple hours without it until we stopped at a roadside fix-it station. Apparently there is a separate motor that runs the AC and it had broken. There was one stop about half way through the trip at a rest station. Amazingly we saw two other members of the HHE group (Kate and Kathleen) headed the opposite direction in the station as well. We came into Jaipur after the sun had fallen but from what we could see Jaipur was going to be the most modern and best put together town we had visited yet. Wide roads, actual stores, and more cars than before. Our hotel (Arya) was only a few blocks from the bus station so we just decided to walk. We were all really impressed with the hotel. The rooms had everything we needed (including shower curtains). There is a nice bookstore, a lounge, outside seating, restaurant, and business certain. We will be here for the next three days.
We all decided to cut back on the pace for the next few days so we decided to sleep in the first morning here. This will also give us time to plan out the next few days. Anna and Sydni will be heading back to Delhi after this so Chris and I have been discussing various options about where to go and what to see. Right now it looks like he is headed to Goa after this and I will be going to Udaipur. We plan on meeting up in Mumbai around the 28th or 29th. I booked a flight that will leave from Mumbai on the 30th to meet my international flight leaving Delhi at 2:10am on the 31st. All I will need to do is run back to Hotel Grand Godwin to get the suitcase that I left there.
The first place that we went in Jaipur was to the Raj Mandir Cinema to get tickets for an afternoon show. This theater is the "most famous" in all of India. It seats about 1500 people!! They only show on movie at a time so we got tickets for the Kismat Konnection at the 6:30pm showing. There was a McDonalds next door and none of us had eaten at one in India yet (they serve no beef) so we thought we would check it out. I got a Paneer Salsa wrap of some kind that was really good. Amazingly the french fries tasted exactly like the french fries they make in the US. Wow and Yum! 
While leaving McDonalds we ran into Dustin and his friend Nathan. Dustin was with us during the HHE part of the trip and we had run into them in Agra at the Taj Mahal. Next we headed downtown to a park and the central museum (in the picture to the left). There were also suppose to be gardens and a zoo around there too. We found the park entrance and went for a stroll through one of the most poverty stricken parks I have seen to date. Trash everywhere and people sleeping everywhere. The shade was nice... Next we went to check out the Central Museum. On the way we passed the "Zoo" which looked a lot more scary than fun. I think the thought of increasing the number of animals around us in any significant manner was an overwhelming thought. The museum looked old and cool from the outside but our books description of the artifacts did really motivate us to go inside. So far this part of the day was kind of a flop. Dustin had talked about a walking tour through the Pink City so we went back to the Raj Mandir (the starting place) and walked around the streets for the next few hours. The Pink City is a city inside a city and it could probably be described best by imagining Aladdin. A lot of the main tourist attractions are within these walls (the Hawa Mahal, the Jantar Mantar, and the City Palace and Museum). Many of the shops we walked by where closed because it was Sunday. Tomorrow we plan to spend most of the day in this area checking out the sights and doing some shopping.
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