Jaipur hotels collection

Nine squares, one for each planet: Jai Singh wanted his city laid out as a mandala. One of them fell on the Nahargarh hills; it was moved, and the plan has limped ever since, without the right-angled avenues seeming to mind. An hour's drive away, at Bagru, a paste of clay, gum and lime, the dabu, is pressed onto cloth with a wooden block to shield the pattern in the indigo vat. At the Jantar Mantar, the shadow of the astronomer king's great sundial can be seen creeping across its stone quadrant.