Dharmendar Kanwar

Coming from someone who studies India's artistic and architectural history, this will probably not be too shocking, but my biggest frustration with this text was the lack of any footnotes, citations, etc. that indicated where particular parts of Ms. Kanwar's history and descriptions came from. She is, of course, a long-time resident of the city, and she acknowledges Chandramani Singh's help with historical fact-checking. Even so, I would have been excited to see something as brief as a list of recommendations for further reading to anchor the historical notes on Jaipur, its rulers, its plan, and the monuments included here.

The walks are generally well organized, although the amount of time that each one takes can be far longer than what is suggested here - especially at the City Palace and Albert Hall, or in Amber and Sanganer. Since I was in Jaipur for some time, I found the walks' division here the most helpful when I was exploring the city, area by area, during my first weeks there.

There is one temple whose absence from this text really surprised me, as it's inside of the city walls: the Kalkiji temple, which would have been an easy addition to Walk 5. It's an eighteenth-century temple associated with Jaipur's founding and the horse sacrifice that Jai Singh performed (twice) at that time. A beautiful marble statue of a horse - Kalkiji's vehicle - even has its own small shrine in front of the temple. The temple's entryway would be on the east side of Sireh Deohri Bazaar, just north of the Ramchandraji Temple (#11) on the map for that walk.… (mehr)