Palaces, Forts and other stones

Should I even bother you with the explanations of all the sides we saw today? Maybe, it would sound like a tourist guide. That’s not what I want.
What me really had impressed was the Jantar Mantar, a magnificent, major, majestic, monumental place! It’s a observatory, builded back in the 17th century. With instruments of stone and some metal they measured and predicted sunrise, seasons, quantity and quality of harvests, astronomical and astrological data, used it to give directions to city plans and other major projects. The larger sundial is about 2 seconds off of our time measure today. The instruments are still used for project planning, especially agricultural projects and also horoscopes (not that I have that much interest in the latter one, but it’s amazing, they still do). It’s astonishing, that those basics from the late medieval are touching todays quality. To me, it was the highlight of the day.
City Palace and Amber Fort were interesting. Whereof the fact that the royal family still lives in the City Palace and the presents of their guards gives a nice touch to the visit. Seeing the elephants outside Amber was nice. Interesting, that every elephant walks the way up and down to the fort maximum 5 times a day. Is it some kind of animal protection?
Before we went back to the hotel we saw the proces of hand-printing fabrics. What an accuracy!
You see, what I find really, really special?
It’s the change of sights in the streets, within the last 3 years. At least, as far as I can judge. Back then I was in Mumbai for only one week… an other region, a short time. But, you see, there is still a lot of poverty (measured by our standards), but it is not the same as 3 years ago, not in all those cities and villages we saw so far. Almost no families lives at the sidewalks anymore, less children are bagging, less women with babies are bagging. You see much more kids in cloth from private schools, and even much more girls in school clothes anyway. There are lesser bike-rickshaws, more tuk-tuks and certainly more modern cabs. There are lesser food and fruit stands along the streets (is that a good sign?). Unfortunately, they sell more (colorful!) junk, mostly plastic… a way they, maybe, shouldn’t go… As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of construction sides: infrastructure (surely needed!), houses, hotels (is tourism already that much growing?), malls (used as walking miles… trade still takes place – and will be – in the bazars). Food quality – on average – is much better than 3 years ago. Definitely, a country in its rise.