Jaipur

Jaipur – Jaipur, the capital of the North Indian State of Rajasthan, is named after its founder Maharaja Jai Singh II (1693-1743). The city is surrounded by hills and dotted with forts. Houses with pink latticed windows line the streets, and look almost magical at sunset. An extremely well planned city, Jaipur was designed by an engineer and scholar Vidyadhar Bhattacharya, in accordance with ancient Hindu treatise on architecture, the Shilpa Shasta (Vastu).

It was planned in a grid system with wide straight avenues, roads, streets and lanes and uniform rows of shops on either side of the main roads. Jaipur remains the only place where the nine sectors that sub-divide the city symbolise the nine divisions of the universe. Jaipur is surrounded by a wall having seven gates and was built for protection from invading armies and wild animals that lurked just outside in the jungles that surrounded the city.