It took less than a week in India for me to make my first mistake. 

Despite researching for so long about how to make my time in the Golden Triangle the best ever, I still managed to screw up. 

You see, when I began to read about Jaipur, I came to two realisations: there’s so much I want to see in this city, but I also don’t want to spend more than a day there. This traffic-clogged city sounded like somewhere I wouldn’t warm to, and yet, it had so many world-class attractions that I wanted to see. 

It felt like the most logical step was to take a tour. I hopped on Viator and found a company offering a day-long exploration of India’s pink city. They’d take me to all the best spots: Hawa Mahal, Amber Fort, Jal Mahal, Jantar Mantar, and the City Palace. Not only that, but the tour company had an average of five stars from 125 reviews. 

It sounded like the perfect way to see as much of Jaipur as possible. 

Let’s kick this post off by getting one thing out of the way: despite Jaipur having the nickname the Pink City, it’s far from pink. In fact, as you can see in the photo above, it’s a distinct shade of orange. Maybe pinky-orange at best, but definitely not pink.

The city was painted this shade way back in 1876, to welcome Prince Albert Edward — the eldest son of Queen Victoria — to town, and it’s remained that colour ever since. It’s now illegal for buildings in the old city to be repainted anything other than this tone of pink and these days, everything is regularly painted to ensure the walls look pristine at all times. 

Although I’d seen photos of Jaipur before I arriving, I was still transfixed by this perfect shade of salmon as our driver took us through the old city. Within minutes of leaving our guesthouse, we were pulling up outside Hawa Mahal — arguably the most famous attraction in Jaipur. 

We met our guide for the day here, and were quickly informed that Hawa Mahal is actually a facade, designed so the royal women could observe what was happening on the streets without being seen. Behind the impressive wall was a rather ordinary building.

It was here that we encountered the first disappointment of our tour. 

We weren’t allowed to see inside the building because we were on such a tight time schedule. Despite the tour listing stating that we’d have an hour to explore Hawa Mahal, in reality, we had two minutes to take some photos and then we were back in the car again. We didn’t even have time to cross the road and take photos from more than six foot away from the building.