I have started my Hindi lessons with my teacher, Subhadra. Each weekday morning, I take a tuk-tuk (autorickshaw) to the Idex offices and have a three hour one-on-one lesson followed by lunch on the rooftop. The first week involves some orientation classes about Indian culture and customs as well as some field trips to famous sites. After orientation stuff, I have the afternoons free to explore before catching dinner back at the camp. This is the general outline of my weekdays.

One morning, Idex takes me and a couple other volunteers to the Amber Fort, which employs a bunch of elephants to carry tourists up to the top.

At the top is a really neat museum complex within the walls of the old fort. Another famous site I visited on a free afternoon was Jantar Mantar, an astronomy park with a lot of astronomy equipment built by a former ruler in the 1700’s. There is a very interesting and detailed audio guide available as well.

Nearby is the Royal Palace, which is still used as a residence by the royal family, while a portion of it has been converted to a museum. Before independence from Britain in 1947, India had hundreds of princely states scattered throughout the country. All of these ruling families agreed to give up their monarchies in exchange for something (money, property, etc.) to create the world’s largest democracy. Now many members of former ruling families are in politics and business. Some have converted their palaces to hotels or museums like this one in Jaipur.

Also near the Royal Palace is the Hawa Mahal, or palace of the winds built by a king in 1799 to house his harem. This also is a neat spot with a great audio guide.

On another day, I visited the Albert Hall Museum, which was built in 1876. This is a very pretty building with thousands of pigeons and a nice museum too.