Jantar Mantar is one of the most famous attractions of Jaipur. In a nutshell it is an 18th-century park & heritage site with fixed instruments for making astronomical observations.
We visited this ancient wonder in September 2015. First things first, guides are available at the entrance whom you can hire for a government fixed rate. Hiring a guide is extremely necessary here since without a guide we wouldn't have understood the complex astronomical instruments on display. Audio guides are also available which is particularly useful for solo travellers.
At the entrance you can buy a combined ticket which includes entrance for most of the famous places in Jaipur. That was really helpful as we didn't have to wait for ticketing queues at Amer fort, Nahargarh fort and a few other places of interest.
Now coming back to the gentleman we are talking about, he is a hawker who stands just outside the entrance of Jantar Mantar. We were a group of four and it so happened that just as we disembarked from our ola cab ( Read this article to know how we managed to book cheaper full day cabs for a lot of our trips) Khushbu's mobile phone which she had placed on her lap while clicking photos on our Nikon DSLR, fell down and none of us noticed.
It was only after around 15 minutes when we were already in and had hired a guide too, when she realised that she had lost her phone.
We tried calling her number but it was busy!
After a few futile attempts of calling her number we rushed outside and started hurryingly and haphazardly searching for the phone. There was this guy who kept looking at us and even inquired if we were searching for something. We feared telling him since we didn't trust him. But travellers have no option but to trust strangers. We finally told him our problem and there he popped the phone from inside his pocket.
That was hers!
That was hers!
But then why was the phone busy, we wondered?
Apparently he had called the last dialled number to inform that he had found this phone on the street. The number happened to be our mom's. Seconds later we got a call from our mom asking if everything was alright.
Yes, it was, we said, thanks to the gentleman. His kind gesture is forever to be remembered because it is people like them who reinforce in our minds the true spirit of humanity, brotherhood and honesty - the traits every traveller wishes to be confronted with in all their travels.
This was not just the only instance when we met a golden hearted Samaritan. There's another story when one of our friends was dumb enough to leave his wallet (YES, ENTIRE WALLET!!) in the pay-and-use lavatory of Kalka station. (Read more about the toy train from Kalka to Shimla here)
To know how he got it back and in what condition, here's the link!
Keep reading more of our travelling stories at www.ourtravelcravings.com
Cheers! Long Live travellers and travelling!
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| The composite Ticket that we purchased from the ticket counter just outside Jantar Mantar in Jaipur. Nahargarh fort was perhaps the best of all the attractions! |
