For me, the Amber Fort is where it all started. I saw a picture of it and thought it was fake, a rendering from stories or historic images. I didn't know it really existed. The massive wall, the way it filled the terrain of Amer, calmly sitting in front of the lake... I'd never seen a structure so vast. I started looking online and there were more forts, palaces and temples; more amazing things built before power tools, trucks and cranes and I wanted to see the place where these things live. That's pretty much what got this whole trip going, a picture of the Amber Fort.
That morning, I experienced that rare moment in India where, at the water's edge, I had it all to myself. In my mind, I had imagined the moment when I first saw the Amber Fort; it's silent it's just the three of us: me, the lake and the Amber Fort. As is often the case, reality bested imagination and even at sunrise, there was the omnipresent old Hindi music, blaring from crappy loudspeakers across the lake and in that moment, the whole experience was perfect and I wouldn't have changed a thing.