We had breakfast in the restaurant - scrambled eggs on toast - and handed over piles of dirty washing for the dhobi wallah. We then set out to walk to Gwalior Fort, stopped to photograph a Gandhiji on the way and tried unsuccessfully to barter the auto-rickshaw wallahs down from 15rp. We carried on walking towards the fort not sure of the route in due to the usual poor LP map. Eventually we found an auto-rickshaw that took us up for 10rp. The fort had some amazing rock carvings in the cliffs and was 100m above the town & about 3km long. Big.
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| The Great Man |
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| The Rock Man |
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| Pippin Fort |
The archaeological museum was shut due to a state holiday but we went inside the Man Singh Palace. We left by the northeast entrance and Oz had a haircut and shave for 10rp watched by a crowd of incredulous Indians.
We then caught an auto-rickshaw to the Jai Vilas Palace & Museum and the wallah said he'd put on the meter. I'm not surprised he offered it came to 30rp. As in Varanasi we arrived at the museum during lunch hour, so we waited with a soft drink and the obligatory crowd. Entrance was a whopping 20rp and then we were charged 10rp to leave our bags; a bit of a cheek as they wouldn't allow us in with them and then we acquired a guide who wanted to whisk us through the museum faster than we wanted to go and blatantly asked for a tip. Indians are not backward at coming forwards. The museum was notable for the Belgian cut glass and the photo of Saddam Hussein.
We stopped for choc-ices on the way back & I also had a bouncer, a plastic cricket ball full of ice cream. A good marketing ploy in a country like India. Our clothes survived the dhobi-wallah but the bags didn't.
2012
I think the exchange rate was about 50rp to the Aussie Dollar.
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