Jodhpur 10 | bellsandtrance's Blog

Subject: Jodhpur 10

We are staying in a 5 star joint and I love it. The food is brilliant and the rooms are excellent. Our hotel is 10 km outside the city and is in the gardens all around. There is entertainment in the form of musicians and drum players. We are treated like royalty once again and I'm so worried that I won't survive when I get home, making my own beds? Food? Coffee? What on earth will I do?
Garth put on a pair of shorts and they were so tight for him, I laughed at him, but I'm sure I won't appreciate it if he does it back to me, ladies you know what I mean. Almost 5 weeks of hotel food will do that to you.

Anyway Jodhpur also known as the blue city is surrounded by hills and rocky desert mountains. The old part of the city is painted blue and only the Brahmin were allowed to live there...they are the caste that includes holy men and priests. Population is 1.2 million by the way. The streets are cleaner here by a very thin margin. Jodhpur gets very hot in the summer and it's other name is Sun City...up to 48 degrees Celsius. The fort is called Mehrangarh and is looming and large on a hilltop. It's walls are sheer and almost 50m high at some parts! It looks like the perfect Impenetrable fortress higher than anything else in the area... Some of the walls still have the pockmarks of cannon balls from a battle with the Jaipur army a few hundred years ago. Gigantic gates covered with anti-elephant spikes (a hallmark of all the forts here in India) give access to the fort - and thankfully there is an elevator that takes you up some 40 meters so that when you step out you are met with a commanding view of the surrounding landscape - totally breathtaking! Our guide tells us (as he points out one small view) that they filmed some of The Dark Knight Rises here just a few months ago. We are taken on a journey through a large part of the fort up narrow stairs that open to an area showing the various types of elephant-carriages that were used at the time... Even a golden cage that the Maharaja would ride in - carried by 12 men. There are rooms showing the various types of weapons, the clothing of the royalty, the amazingly intricately-ornate meeting rooms and the Maharaja's bedroom. Opulence of this scale will probably never be seen again! Up and up until you are standing on the upper ramparts of the fort where once again you can see for miles in every direction... And you can clearly see large parts of the city filled with blue buildings in large clusters giving the city it's other name... The Blue City.

After we go to a real bazaar and its very bizarre for sure! The roads are tarred in the market area and they are about 3 meters wide. On these roads are many scooters and they hoot as they drive up behind you, this makes me jump a couple of inches every time. People think it's funny. There are puddles everywhere and the odd cow or dog. Tuck tucks drive you crazy here as we'll but are a very cheap and convenient way of getting around, as sometimes it's easier with the kids. This market is totally local so Garth and I buy a beautiful lamp, how we are going to get all this stuff home only Vishnu knows!
Anyway it's a very interesting market for the locals, there are spice shops, hundreds of sari and material shops, jewellery shops. Its a crazy place and takes forever to walk a few meters as everywhere we attract attention and then we have to stop and chat! And bet! And haggle! And take pics!
There is so many beautiful things, much to buy I wish I had a crate.Really I'm not kidding.

Back at our hotel we have fish and chips and salad(are we in India?). We pass out in our luxurious beds watching a bit of Indian tv....lots of dramas with stern looking mother in laws , gods who come down from the heavens in swirly clouds to give good advice to the hero. Or really funky, dancing and singing numbers, those saris swinging for all they are worth. There are some other channels were a serious debate continues about what the punishment should be for six men who brutally attacked a girl on a moving bus in Delhi. If only South Africa had such news coverage of crime it might be a safer place for all of us.
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