Albert Hall Museum is a museum in Jaipur city in Rajasthan state of India. It is the oldest museum of the state and functions as the State museum of Rajasthan. 

It is named after King Edward VII (Albert Edward), during whose visit to the city as the Prince of Wales, its foundation stone was laid on 6 February 1876.

This museum amazingly houses 19,000 historic objects and has various collections like metal ware, ivory work, lacquer work, jewelry, textiles, pottery carved wooden objects, arms and weapons, clay models , sculptures, educational, scientific and zoological objects, tribal costumes, ceramics, oil and miniature paintings, inlay work, musical instruments, clocks and marble statues.

The central museum is the most visited destination by tourists of Jaipur. It is famed for its enormous and exclusive collection. One section of the museum, also known as Darbar Hall, has the largest floor covering in the world. This is the oldest and finest identified carpet, and is solitary in its kind. This museum remains open all days expect on the Holi festival. The museum is open from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Albert Hall is 20 to 30 minutes walking distance from City Palace but you can opt to go by tuk-tuk.There are many bookstalls and food joint along the way. Preferably you walk as you can blend in with the locals and see their day-today life activity.

Albert Hall tickets are also included in the Rs 400 City Palace ticket.

Hawa Mahal is one of the many places in Jaipur that you have to visit. It is situated not far from our hotel and it takes about 15 to 20 minutes of tuk-tuk ride. 

Hawa Mahal or "Palace of Winds", is a palace in Jaipur, India, so named because it was essentially a high screen wall built so the women of the royal household could observe street festivities while unseen from the outside. Constructed of red and pink sandstone, the palace sits on the edge of the City Palace, and extends to the zenana, or women's chambers.

Its unique five-storey exterior is akin to the honeycomb of a beehive with its 953 small windows called jharokhas decorated with intricate latticework.

The original intention of the lattice was to allow royal ladies to observe everyday life in the street below without being seen, since they had to obey strict "purdah" (face cover). The lattice also allows cool air from the Venturi effect through the intricate pattern, air conditioning the whole area during the high temperatures in summers.

As Hawa Mahal is known as "Palace of the Wind", you can actually feel the breeze going through the inner building as you walk through the place. Not one place left without the breeze. Because the building were built by red sand and some parts are made of marble, you can feel the coolness. 

I was inspired by one of our top Malaysia artist FB post, Red Hong Yi that I wanted to share a post on what's my favorite thing of all time.

Recently Hong Yi posted a post on her FB page that she decided to organize a solo exhibition, hopefully by end of next year. She was asking for a favor from her account followers on what are their most meaningful object. It could be a gift or something that you have bought yourself. You can read about Red Hong Yi here.

So today I would like to share with you, my favorite object of all time. Possibly the only one.

It's a watch that was presented to me by my father on my 21st birthday. The time when my father was working in Sri Lanka. The fact that the watch came from the other side of the globe, makes it even special.

I've been fond for watches since I was a kid. I'll ask for watch as my birthday present, every year.

This watch basically grew up with me. I love this watch perhaps because it symbolizes my adulthood. My dad said that I should get a proper watch as I'll be entering into the working world in the next few years. So he wanted to get me something decent.


I wanted something classic yet chic look, and stainless steel watches has been my preference, therefore the Tissot PR50 became my choice, Stainless steel can never go out of style and they're everlasting.

 Wherever I go, she comes with me and I would never trade anything for it. My dad don't spend unnecessary because he knew, it is never easy to earn a living especially when you're abroad, away from the family. He has never bought anything expensive for himself. So for him to present me that watch means a lot.

Until today, I wear the watch everywhere. Sometimes to the office or formal functions. That watch gives me the sense of warmness that is hard to explain. But definitely I'll keep the watch for until the end of time.
Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance. 
~Ruth E. Renkel

Perhaps I could say that Jantar Mantar is one of my favorite place. As you step into the Jantar Mantar, you'll be aww with their huge size and variety of astronomical measurement instruments.

Jantar Mantar is situated at the opposite road of the city palace (note that there are a few entrances to the city palace). The entry price is around Rs 400.

The Jantar Mantar is a collection of architectural astronomical instruments, built by Sawai Jai Singh who was a Rajput king. He had constructed a total of five such facilities at different locations, including the ones at Delhi and Jaipur. 

The name is derived from jantar ("instrument"), and mantar ("formula", or in this context "calculation"). Therefore Jantar Mantar means literally 'calculation instrument'. 

The Jaipur observatory is the largest and best preserved of these. It has been inscribed on the World Heritage List as "an expression of the astronomical skills and cosmological concepts of the court of a scholarly prince at the end of the Mughal period". 

The Jantar Mantar was made by Sawai Jai Singh as he was particularly interested in learning about the sky above his head.

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. 

Built from local stone and marble, each instrument carries an astronomical scale, generally marked on the marble inner lining. Bronze tablets, all extraordinarily accurate, were also employed. For further reading, you can go here.

Photo courtesy: I Love Jaipur
These 12 monuments represents the 12 horoscope. Each one measures each horoscope.

Do you know that the Brihat Samrat (refer to photo below) probably the largest gnomon-sundial ever built. With a gnomon arm 22.6m high and two lateral quadrants of radius 15.15m, it measures local time to an accuracy of 2 seconds? More facts about the Jantar Mantar here.

The Brihat Samrat is one of my favorite instrument in the Jantar Mantar. Why? Because the instrument is so huge!. Spectacular will be the word I can use to describe this one.

There are plenty of tourist spots in Jaipur and their attractions are mainly their forts. There is Amber fort (pronounced as Amer fort by the locals), Jaigarh fort, Nahargarh fort as well as their museums. Best is to stay 3 or 4 days in Jaipur. Suggest that you start your day early morning as some of the fort could take you hours to reach and some are not reachable by tuk-tuk and you need to get the taxi. Most of the forts are situated high above the hills, so stamina is very important. Get a good workout before your departure.

As our hotel is in the city, it cost around Rs 200 for a tuk-tuk to bring us to the City Palace. These prices may vary and you can bargain with the tuk-tuk drivers. It's all about bargaining in the city of India.

We decided to visit the City Palace as that is the nearest attraction in the city and it was nearby to our hotel.

City Palace, Jaipur, which includes the Chandra Mahal and Mubarak Mahal palaces and other buildings, is a palace complex in Jaipur, the capital of the Rajasthan state, India. It was the seat of the Maharaja of Jaipur, the head of the Kachwaha Rajput clan. The Chandra Mahal palace now houses a museum but the greatest part of it is still a royal residence. The palace complex, located northeast of the centre of the grid-patterned Jaipur city, incorporates an impressive and vast array of courtyards, gardens and buildings. The palace was built between 1729 and 1732, initially by Sawai Jai Singh II, the ruler of Amber. He planned and built the outer walls, and later additions were made by successive rulers continuing up to the 20th century. The architects achieved a fusion of the Shilpa Shastra of Indian architecture with Rajput, Mughal and European styles of architecture.

The City Palace is in the central-northeast part of the Jaipur city, which is laid in a grid pattern with wide avenues. It is a unique and arresting complex of several palaces, pavilions, gardens and temples. The most prominent and most visited structures in the complex are the Chandra Mahal, Mubarak Mahal, Mukut Mahal, Maharani's Palace, Shri Govind Dev Temple and the City Palace Museum.

There are a few entrances and you can choose either one to enter. Choose the one nearby to Jantar Mantar. Ask the locals if you're unsure.

Ticket priced at Rs 400 and it will take approximately 3 hours to finish the whole tour and you can rent the audio recording between Rs 90 to Rs 118. It tells you detail story of the palace and most tourist attractions provide this service. Tour guide is not necessary since you can rent the audio recording.

The 2 blue entrance that you can see in the below picture represent 4 seasons (winter, autumn, summer and spring). There are 2 more entrance which I did not take photo of.

 Do you know that these silver urns were recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest sterling silver vessels?

Why they were recorded as world's largest sterling silver vessels?:

  There are two huge sterling silver vessels of 1.6 metres (5.2 ft) height and each with capacity of 4000 litres and weighing 340 kilograms (750 lb), on display here in Diwan-I-Khas (picture below). Diwan-I-Khas was a private audience hall of the Maharajas, a marble floored chamber. These urns were made from 14000 melted silver coins without soldering. These vessels were specially made by Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II, who was a highly pious Hindu, to carry the water of the Ganges to drink on his trip to England in 1901 (for Edward VII's coronation) as he was finicky about committing religious sin by consuming the English water. Hence, the vessels are named as Gangajelies (Ganges-water urns). There are a number of crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling (normally covered with plastic sheets to prevent dust collection), which are uncovered on special occasions.

The palace architectures and drawings are so well preserved that you can see every details of them. I do not know how they did it but indeed, it is something that we can learn. The man-made monuments are so well kept that they looked like as if they were built yesterday. They were all mainly made from high grade marbles, precious stones and some were also gold painted drawings. The structures are man made and mostly made out of red sand.