Amber Fort, Jaipur.

This place was really very cool. The mirrored building was used for public audiences with the emperor. (Akbar, I think) With all the mirrors embedded in the walls, only a few candles would be needed to light it.


The marble panels were made of the same marble used for the Taj Mahal and featured incredible botanical details. Happily, this is one of few parts of the fort that scavengers haven't gotten to. Adding insult to injury, some nimrod got the brilliant idea to whitewash over the elaborate paintings that used to cover the walls of the fort. As a result, all that decoration is irrevocably damaged. There are still small and faded traces of what used to be there in the upper stories of the harem. Lucky for us, the arched doorways between the public and private parts of the fort weren't painted by the aforementioned nimrod and the gold leaf hasn't been burned off by thieves. (We saw evidence of this in the Red Fort in Agra.)