After driving through for a few hours we stopped at a road side motel which was appropriately named Rajasthan Motel. We were almost on the border of Delhi and Rajasthan. By this stage of course we were hungry. Rakesh-ji drove us right into the car park under the shade of a nice big Banyan tree. Any shade in summer in India is God sent. We opened the car door to step out and the first thing that hit us was the gust of hot air. Just like when you open the over door after you’ve been baking for an hour! Luckily we were getting more and more used to the hot weather. There was no escaping!
Looks much more than a motel doesn’t it? Thats the entrance to the motel, through the narrow hallway it leads on to a massive big dining room all of which was non-air conditioned. Then we walked through that onto the left which had a nice sized air-conditioned room where we sat. The window to the left is where we had our lunch while the earth scorched outside.
Looking at the greenery you wouldn’t quite think it was about 46° centigrade here would you? And yes I often pondered how they keep these places green in such extreme climate! There ought to be some method to this madness other than just plain watering.
We’re seated inside in the nicely air-conditioned part of the Motel. Meals have just arrived. The garlic Nan bread was really nice even though the photo looks rather pedestrian.
The Rajasthan Motel Motif on their plates
And some more shots while we waited for our food to arrive. The food was quite good even for a roadside motel and we didn’t feel unwell or otherwise. We rushed back in the car for the rest of the journey with baited breath for Jaipur.
Yes we got snap happy as you do when you waiting for food 
The Road to Jaipur is pitted with hardware shops almost every small town or village we passed had at least 5 to 20 Ball Bearings shops or dealers on ether side of the highway. It was later we learnt that the biggest manufacturer for Ball Bearings right from the smallest machinery to the big tanks and ships are made right here in the most arid of all places. We were passing through the Ball Bearing export area of northern India and didn’t have a clue. Had I known this at the time I surely would have taken a photo or two of the Ball Bearings shops.
You’d notice a Ball Bearings shop here, and a make shift school for kids in a village we were passing by
We had finally arrived at the pink city — Jaipur. We were going to stay at Mandawa Haveli Hotel. This is a haveli, hindi for Mansion, built in typical Jaipur architecture with lots of pillars and arches right in the heart of Jaipur City.
This was one of the water features in the Mandawa Haveli Hotel. A little bed of fountain that lit up at night along with the fountain on the marble floor.
The hotel looked great and the water feature is really beautiful!