All right guys well, it's day one here in India.
It's my first full day in India, and this place is incredible, to say the least.
We're going to be kicking off this tour of Rajasthan here in Jaipur, and what do we have in store today?
We're going to be going on a week-long tour of Rajasthan.
Rajasthan is one of the most colorful States in India.
Rajasthan basically means Land of the Rajas or Land of the Kings because there's a ton of different
princely states or little kingdoms that make up this entire state.
So as you may or may not know, I used to live in India 9 years ago now,
and I came through Rajasthan when I finished my job.
Hey, this is me and I want to show you my hotel here in Udaipur
where I am paying two dollars and fifty cents a night
So check this out. I went to a lot of places that
we're going to go and to the legendary Pushkar Camel Festival
So I'm super stoked to show this place to you and to all of you guys.
We're going to be making an entire series about Rajasthan, the most colorful state in India.
We'll be visiting the three main cities in this series starting here in Jaipur, the Pink City,
Udaipur, the White City and Jodhpur, the Blue City.
We'll be wrapping everything up at the legendary Pushkar Camel Festival.
Wait. Camel festival? yeah.
Pushkar Camel Festival is going to be a holy ceremony,
also a camel trading ceremony.
It's pretty damn interesting.
It's going to be a feast for the eyes. So stay tuned for all of that.
Over this trip, we'll be shooting to virtual reality films.
So be prepared for those.
One is going to be the Grand Tour of Rajasthan,
and the other is going to be the Pushcart Camel Fair in 360 degrees.
We're joined by Carlos Mason, the talented cinematographer who is coming with us
to Peru to South Korea and helps us on East of Eden.
We're also joined by Celine Tricart.
She is a VR specialist who will be helping us with two VR films.
We're starting off here at the Amer Fort in Jaipur, so there's tons to explore. Let's get started. Let's go.
We are posted up on the wall.
Just trying to get a nice establishing shot, but...
What a crazy place. There's so much happening.
There's literally a procession of elephants
carrying people up the ramparts and into the fortress.
Making new friends, Marko?
Making new friends. You girls from Rajasthan? No
How do you say cheese in Hindi? Cheese. Paneer.
So apparently it's a thing here in India;
people just like to take selfies with you
If you're from the west, then you're just a good person to take a selfie with.
Good job
All right, well here we are at the top of Jaigarh Fort.
Exactly. Garh means fort and Jai named after Jai Singh who was one of the Maharajahs here.
A Maharaja is a Hindi word which means Great King and
Rajasthan, Land of the Kings, because like this place,
there is a dozen or so kingdoms that were all ruled independently for hundreds of years.
Nowadays itt's a great spot to kind of get some elevation and really take in the landscape, but it's incredible.
There're these walls that are just hugging the hills, almost like a little miniature version of the Great Wall of China.
An Incredible, incredible place to kind of get your bearings for your first day in Rajasthan.
It's true what you say about the Great Wall of China because these walls,
like the Great Wall of China, were built to keep out invading armies.
The Greeks came through here;
Genghis Khan came through here and the Mughals, which was a Muslim empire from Central Asia, they all passed through here.
And they were resisted on these very walls. Pretty incredible place. So much history.
Honestly, trying to encapsulate the history of this place in a YouTube video is a challenge
We're going to do our best. So stay with us as we continue to explore Rajasthan.
Pretty interesting piece of information here.
Back in the day when this was inhabited by the Rajas,
when there were bad people, when they did something wrong, they would be taken here,
and this little pit behind me used to be full of water,
and in that water there were crocodiles.
In a very James Bond villain-esque move,
they would throw the people who've been condemned to death into the crocodile pond.
They didn't have tunas with laser beams, but they had crocodiles.
This is an extremely well designed fortress.
You can see down here ..these are for arrows.
This right here is for burning hot oil
so you could pour it on anyone trying to climb up the fort.
And then the big holes, those are for cannons, including the largest cannon on wheels in the world which is just down here.
So all these fortresses a lot of the buildings that we're going to see across the series in Rajasthan
We're built in the 14 and 1500s.
This was a time when Europe was really just emerging from the Dark Ages
But here in India these civilizations were reaching heights that were renowned around the world.
So now you appreciate the world's largest cannon.
Just look at those rims.. the spinning, the spinning, the spinning
They're not spinning now They're not spinning.
This thing is huge. Apparently when they shot it,
it destroyed a town that it was aimed at, and the guy who shot it was so blasted back by the reverberations.
he fell off the back to his death.
That is what we'd call blowback.
Celine, you have an audience. Yeah, I know.
I've never been that famous in my life. It's awesome, isn't it?
I don't want to ever leave India
There's been a minor car accident
Our driver accidentally
smashed into a little wall.
We are on foot in the town of Amer.
This is like old, used to be old Jaipur,
but now it's just kind of on the outskirts.
It's like in the suburbs really
but we're passing all sorts of temples and
kind of wandering these little back streets.
So this is pretty awesome.
Right now, we are at a step well and most of India is like tropical or subtropical.
But up here in Rajasthan were on the edge of the Thar Desert or the Great Indian Desert.
it's two hundred thousand square kilometres and
In order to basically conserve the water that they get during the monsoon they built these large step wells.
At the bottom down there is water.
These were built a couple hundred years ago, but awesome place for photography
And it looks like some surreal kind of Modern Art.
It's my first day back in India, and I'm falling in love all over again.
You have to love this country. It's just got so much happiness.
There're people; there're smells; there're sounds.
It never stops, and it's such a productive country.
There're trees growing everywhere. There're monkeys. There're animals and cows wandering through the streets.
It's a lot of taking on your first day, but if you can slow down and appreciate it,
you can really, really fall in love with this place as I have, as well.
We it into the center of Jaipur:
the madness continues as always here in India.
We are going to go try to get one last VR shot for the day and
That is at a place called the Hawa Mahal, which is really fun to say.
Although it is chaotic Jaipur is India's first planned city.
It was built in 1700 when they the city down here
And it's all set out in the grid formation. Each little rectangular
block is a different sort of bizarre, so it's just a giant marketplace.
This guy is awesome.
One of the best things about India is masala chai.
Chai is a Hindi word for tea and it's super awesome here
It's very sweet; its spiced, and it's served right here on the street.
And you know what, Mark?
It gives a whole new meaning to the dirty chai. Oh dear.
Take a look at the place behind us.
He's authentic as it can get. It's chai, and it's dirty, and we're drinking it.
It's delicious so the guy who sells called chai wallah
and here chai comes to five rupees, which is just couple of cents. It's amazing
So there's been a slight change of plans.
The light is really not that good on it right now,
so we're going to head back into the city palace
There's a little bit better light in there.
We'll get some b-roll on the Odyssey, and then take some photos.
The elephant owner just got off and is literally grabbing a drink over here.
This big beautiful elephant.
Okay, well, it's official... India's the coolest country on earth.
So this behind us is the Hawa Mahal
Mahal means palace in Hindi, and this translates to Palace of the Wind.
So back in the day when the city was built
this was the women's section of the city and this area right here was designed
so that women could look out onto the street, but not be seen.
The Maharaja at that time were Hindu, but in that time Hindus also
had to be covered from public view so this was a way of doing that.
It was painted pink which is a symbol of hospitality here
in honor of the Prince of Wales who was coming here to play polo with the Maharaja.
Oh my god.
That was a wild day, first day in India. Madness
Beautiful beautiful madness, and I can't wait for tomorrow
I'd say, I'm kind of jealous.
My first day in India two weeks after graduating college
was the craziest experience of my life.
I think that there's no amount of culture shock that amounts to your first day in India. it's incomparable.
I was a bit jealous that you're going through that today because I remember how much it changed me.
I think that it's cliche to say that going to India changed your life
But this is just the first day of a whole multiple week trip
I was really happy to have you as my India guide, bro and just kind of being able to navigate
the chaos that unfolds on the outside of this little sanctuary, our hotel.
But it's been an incredible day, and I really cannot wait for more exploration tomorrow.
So in the meantime if you guys liked this video give it a thumbs- up,
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In the meantime stay curious,
keep exploring and we'll see you guys on the road.
Namaste.