After driving down to London Heathrow on Sunday and spending the night in the Premier In, Monday evening saw our band of ten intrepid travellers boarding our flight to Jaipur. Six crafters, one husband, Alfie – one half of IndigoBlu and Laura – one half of BlockWallah (the two companies running our trip) and Andy, a well known mixed media artist who will be delivering some workshops for us.

Seven and a half hours to Muscat with Oman Airways and a further two and a half hours then from Muscat to Jaipur and everything was real – after the planning and anticipation we were actually here. Well…..not quite……just the small matter of getting our visas processed! We’d all got electronic visas which had been checked along every step of the journey, but the final act of having it stamped in our passports took an age. There were maybe twenty foreign passport holders on the plane, but in the time it took to process half of them, the whole plane of Indian passport holders had been processed through.

Transfer to the hotel gave us our first experience of Jaipur traffic. It comes in all directions, swerves, undertakes, cuts across junctions…….there appear to be no rules! I’m sure we’ll get used to it!
Mrs Singh met us at the hotel with a traditional welcome – a spot of red paste on our forehead, a few grains of rice flicked at us and a lovely garland of fresh marigolds.

Despite being travel weary, we have a full itinerary and head off in our little bus into the centre of Jaipur. It’s Diwali, so it’s busy and there are fireworks going off. The traffic is no calmer! Scooters drive by with a whole family on board- two quite tiny tots wedged between mum and dad, and tuktuks crammed with people. We saw a dozen or so cycle rickshaws – not sure this would be my preferred mode of transport!

We had a lovely vegetarian thali – a selection of dishes like a mezze, which everyone enjoyed, then it was time for our first experience of the bazaars. Some of our group made early purchases, whilst the rest of us soaked in the atmosphere. It’s all good humoured – “please come look in my shop” and you have to be able to say no and ignore the pleadings!

On the same street, we ticked off our view of Hawa Mahal, or Palace of the Winds. It has hundreds of windows facing directly onto the street and was built for the ladies of the royal court to observe the activity in the street below without being seen themselves.

So far it’s all I thought it would be, loud, busy and quite dirty. We passed slum dwellings with makeshift trestles for bed and flimsy fabric covers, people sorting through a large rubbish dump and a mother pinching her grubby little girl to make her cry and hopefully be more lucrative as a begging accessory.

The crafting starts tomorrow! For now, it’s bed and a good nights sleep as Diwali fireworks continue to sound in town.