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The Pink City, home of the Maharani Gayatri Devi, renowned princess and rider of elephants, is the backdrop for one of the most lavish properties of India. Accommodations run the gamut from private pool suites to luxury air-conditioned Rajasthani tents with teak floors and soaking tubs.
Jaipur is known as the pink city for many purported reasons, the most likely of which is that the structures in the old walled city are built with pink sandstone. It is also the home of the Maharani Gayatri Devi and, as I had been reading about her before embarking on this trip, Jaipur had already captured my heart before I arrived. She is the daughter of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and the widow of Jai, the Maharaja of Jaipur. She was raised in a palace that housed hundreds of servants with a paddock of just as many elephants. In her youth, she was known to be one of the ten most beautiful women in the world. She managed a six-year clandestine courtship with Jai, as handsome as he was dynamic, and ultimately became his third wife, entering into a marriage of choice rather than one chosen by her family for the purpose of strategic alliance, as was so common in her day. Yes, this is the stuff that fairytales are made of; it doesn't get more romantic than this.
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