India trip part 10-B: Amer Fort, Amer (outside of Jaipur) - My favorite garden in the world!
Part one.
This garden/courtyard was possibly my favorite part of all of india and I'm not sure why, exactly, but I just love it a whole lot.
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This is where the women of the palace would sit and view the proceedings in the public meeting hall below. Purdah was strict back then, so the women could never be seen by strange men.
They looked out of here, down into the diwan-i-aam below (there was a picture of it in the last post.)
A view from a different place on the same level. Amer was a flourishing city since at least 967CE, though it was probably around longer than that. I wish we would have had more time to actually explore the city itself instead of just driving through, but it was ~117* (47*) and Thomas had a really really bad and bloody sinus infection so we were just doing things as quickly as we could.
One of those cooking pots is a recreation for the movie, but the other is really what the palace meals used to be cooked in!
THIS GARDEN YOU GUYS. This is the #1 reason I fell in love with Amer, and this is the first thing I think of when recalling good memories from India. I don't know why, but I am just so in love with this garden and courtyard. Obviously this means I was a princess here in a past life and this was mine. ;D ;D ;D. Every psychic/channeler person I've ever met even if they don't know me and my india obsession have said that i've spent most of my past lives in India and that i'm usually royalty or somewhere in the upper echelons (however you spell that)... and I have a deep soul connection to the desert. SO OBVIOUSLY this garden used to be mine. Haha.
No joke, Killian just said "Thank you mommy princess!" to me out of nowhere. He's never called me that before... and i didn't even do anything just now. A SIGN YOU GUYS.
haha!
Wish we could have spent more time hereeeeee.
When I own property, something like this will be mine.
The mirror palace from the last post is directly to the left, overlooking this garden.
<3 everything about this (except my arm. Sigh, sigh, sigh.)
I would love to print this one out sometime.
And this is walking around to the right of the garden.
I was just so overwhelmed by the genius of old architecture/engineering to keep this place cool and livable, being in the mountains of the desert.
The garden is directly to the right, there. The ceilings are high, of course, but look at the holes in the ceiling. There used to be a big swing that would hang here for the queen so she could sit and look over the garden. That blue strip on the floor is:
This. It's covered now, but it used to be a stream of cool water that she could dip her feet in. But that's not all! The water would come out of the wall there (an indoor waterfall/water feature!) which would make a lovely sound and send her toes the water, but it was also designed so that as the air blew past it, the water would cool it. This room and swing-area would thus stay cool even when it was blazing hot. Brilliant.
You can't see very well (neither could i) but behind this glass is a very, very old wheelchair. The queen would be SO laden down with heavy jewelry that she could actually not walk, and she was rolled around everywhere. (!)
View of the garden and hall of mirrors. The queen could sit there and the emporer would go about more private business over there.