April 20, 2012

• StarStruck in Jaipur

  

  And so, with full bellies and empty bladders, we left behind the bustling streets of New Delhi and set off for Jaipur along dusty roads cluttered by cattle, camels, and something else alliterative. No I wouldnt make that up

  

  To help pass the time on the road we played a number of improv games such as good idea, bad idea (come up with one, next person has to change it to make it into the other); fortunately, unfortunately (you tell a story with each person alternating the sentence beginning), and alphabet story (tell a story where each person has to start their sentence with the next successive letter of the alphabet). By far the best way of passing the time was Russian Hangman.

  A Game taught to me by a friend made on the beijing trip, it consits of one person thinking of a word, such as balloon. The first letter is given, but nothing else. Then each person goes around and asks the wordmaker any question they want. The wordmaker has to think of an answer to that persons question that begins with the letter he gave

  Word: balloon (word and length unknown to all but wordmaker)
  Person 1: Is it a type of fruit?
  Wordmaker: no, it’s not a Banana
  Person 2: is it a sports team?
  Wordmaker, no, it’s not the Bulls

  This goes one until the wordmaker cannot come up with an answer to the question beginning with the appropriate letter. To avoid bluffing by players, if the questioner cant come up with an answer, no additional letters have to be given out

  Word: Balloon:
  Person 3: is it a french philospher?
  Wordmaker: ??? (doesnt know any starting with B)

  If person 3 is able to give a response, then the wordmaker needs to give the next letter…as in, the second letter is A. now the whole thing repeats with all the answers having to start with the letter A. This goes on until the word is within 1-2 letters of ending. At any time, the people playing can use their turn to try and guess the entire word, but they each only have 2 guesses before they are “out”

  Whoever guesses the word gets a point and becomes the new wordmaker. If nobody guesses and the word is revealed, or if all the guesses are used up, then wordmaker gets a point. One round of this with every person as the wordmaker killed about 3 hours of the trip as we all learned how creative we can be when asked questions about literally anything and everything

  

  In practically no time at all, we arrived at our first site in Jaipur, the Jantar Mantar Observatory. The observatory consists of fourteen major geometric devices for measuring time, predicting eclipses, tracking stars’ location as the earth orbits around the sun, ascertaining the declinations of planets, and determining the celestial altitudes and related ephemerides. Each is a fixed and ‘focused’ tool

  

  It contains a number of old and still functioning astrological instruments, like the worlds biggest sundial, which you can just make out behind Dr Han. It is accurate to two seconds Jaipur Time. Its shadow moves visibly at 1 mm per second, or roughly a hand’s breadth (6 cm) every minute

  

  Or this which does something impressive with geometry, probably

  

  Jayaprakash Yantra consists of hollowed out hemispheres with markings on their concave surfaces. Crosswires were stretched between points on their rim. From inside the Ram, an observer could align the position of a star with various markings or a window’s edge. The Mishra yantras were able to indicate when it was noon in various cities all over the world. The something whose name I forgot Yatras were able to locate individual constellations in the night sky

  

  You can just make out the shadow behind Miss Crystal and Dr Han, it is WAS in fact accurate with local time

  

  Each of those little staircase sculptures is a guide to locating an individual constellation. They are very strict about people climbing on them, more specifically, they do not allow it. So of course you know what we had to do

  

  The whole gang, destroying history and culture, one monument at a time

  

  We werent quite sure what this did, but it makes a cool looking picture

  

  Oh Shit! Is this a mayan death calendar? A timekeeper of DOOM???

  

  Nope, Just some crazy starship for telling important calendar dates around the world. No 2012 end in sight.

  

  Every instrument in this place was designed by Jai Singh II, a brilliant guy. The small structure in the foreground is not an astronomical tool at all, but the scale model built before the two instruments in the background that was used by the architects to measure dimensions. And yet even the models are functional, although slightly less accurate.

  After the observatory, stopped for lunch before moving on to our next destination. Never ones to have a meal without entertainment, we enjoyed a sitar with our thali

  

  What further adventures lie in store? Keep reading (and or recommending ) to find out!

  • 12:49 am
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