I talked a bit, last time, about the ride up to Jodhpur, which was a blast. But I haven’t yet told you about Jodhpur itself. Jodhpur felt like a small town again, but not quite like Udaipur. Jodhpur is NOT a quiet little place. Jodhpur, in the heart of the old city, was a cramped, bustling city, with cows lounging around every twenty feet, and a never-ending stream of Autorickshaws, motorcycles, mopeds and bikes blazing down narrow alleys with only enough care for your person to honk loudly at you as they passed you by. To be fair, though, honking at you is the polite way, here, to let people know you’re going to pass them, either on the road or a walkway (there were no sidewalks in most of this city, just areas where more people walked than drove).
But don’t get me wrong, Jodhpur was also the setting for probably THE most incredible place we’ve seen on our whole trip. I will tell you right now that my words will not do it justice. And as many pictures as we took of it, from inside and out, not one or even 10 of them will convey to you the magnitude or magnificence of the place. It is man-made, but hardly seems so. It is a great castle, on top of a hill, but seemingly carved OUT of the hill itself. Indeed, the walls seem to fade into the hill itself, so that it’s hard for your eye to spot where the rock ends, and the castle wall begins. It is a fortress of the grandest proportions, and of a quality and majesty fit for a story book.
We saw Kumbhalgarh on our way here, and that may have been bigger in terms of area. But this place, Mehrangarh, is so much more impressive in scale that they’re barely the same species. It was built to withstand assaults by elephants, trained and armored for war, bashing at its doors. It uses tricks like having lots of right angles before and after big gates, so that nobody could get a running start to try to break them. The walls are incredibly thick, and so gigantically tall that they tower over you and I imagine would even make men on elephants feel like mice in front of a cat. When you see the inside walls, they are covered like acne with tiny, shallow holes… made by cannon balls that may as well have been spit balls. It’s not surprising, then, that in its hundreds of years of existence, Mehrangarh was never defeated. In fact, with each major success, more and more gates were added, to celebrate and remember their victory, and to make it even more impenetrable than before.
(Those spikes are at the height of an elephant’s head. Ouch!)
Aside from how it’s built, though, the place is also one of the best maintained, organized and operated historical sites we’ve ever seen (and I guess we’ve seen a LOT by now!). The audio guide alone, which is included as part of your paid admission, includes quotes from Rudyard Kipling, who was similarly impressed with the place, and spoke of it being “the work of giants”. Many audio guides seem to fail towards being either too boring, or so overly-dramatic that they sound completely cheesy. This one strikes the perfect balance. It gives information about each space that you actually care about, and gives just the slightest touch of dramatic flair to engage your emotions.
Inside the fort is a palace, filled with open courtyards, and endless rooms. The windows of the palace rooms are all covered by intricately carved lattice work, each one unique… and there are hundreds of windows! The shapes of the lattice are all repeating geometric forms, and Jimena kept picturing how much her dad especially would love this place (both her parents are mathematicians).
That being said, the lattices have a bit of a dark side, by our accounting anyway. Their whole purpose was to “protect” the women from being seen. To go to that much effort to hide away your women speaks of a fairly oppressive society towards women. And again, I’m not saying the Western World® doesn’t oppress its women either. We certainly do, through things like dress codes, beauty “standards”, and the very emphasis on beauty over things like cleverness, resourcefulness or capability, courage, etc. While the windows are beautifully made, they acted as a very elegant cage.
Getting back to the rooms… some of the better-preserved rooms are filled with historical artifacts, carpets, tapestries lamps, arms, and even several mini museums (a collection of palanquins, an armory, a collection of elephant chairs (sorry, that means chairs for riding on top of elephants, not chairs for elephants to sit on. I know… I was a bit disappointed myself), etc), and even a collection of incredible paintings. The rooms also are filled with beautiful stained glass windows decorated with floral and geometric designs, as well as many incredible miniature paintings, showing multiple scenes spread out across the walls and ceilings.
(Fancy Elephant Chair)
(Fancy Palanquin)
(Jime took this one for her aunt, Mariace. Apparently the ancient Hindus also loved South Park; it looks like Mr Garrison reached enlightenment. )
And then, of course, there are the views. I mentioned that this was a castle on top of a mountain, right? Well, not only that, but this particular mountain stands alone. So, when you get a view from a balcony window here or there, you are suddenly shown this INCREDIBLE view, far off to the distance. But also, there’s the old, blue city of Jodhpur below you. The houses are painted a very light blue in this city both to help keep cool, and also, interestingly, as a way of keeping out mosquitoes. I can’t tell you if it works for that or not, but I will say we didn’t see many mosquitoes in this town. Of course, it may have helped that our windows were always closed…. naaaah. It’s gotta be the paint.
(In the upper-left corner is a swarm of several dozen hawks. Since I’ve never seen hawks swarm before, I asked around. Apparently they feed them from time to time. Today was a lamb.)
Other than Mehrangarh, we did one other interesting thing. We took a sort of village safari. That is, we hired a driver for the day to take us on a trip to visit a few different local people, as well as a wild animal preserve. The people we saw were a potter, a hand-loom carpet maker (world-renowned, apparently), the home of a Bishnoi couple.
The potters gave us a little demonstration of them throwing on a hand-turned wheel. Basically, it’s a 100kg disc, balanced on a narrow point. They use a stick to get it spinning, and it’s so perfectly balanced (and heavy), that once it’s up to full speed, if you just let it spin free, it will spin for an hour! Even after the guy threw a couple pots on it, it STILL spun for at least 10-15 more minutes. Jime even got to try playing with it.
(Apparently this guy has won so many awards, even Richard Gere came and bought one of his carpets)
The Bishnoi are a tribe of people in the desert who are known for, among other things, their fierce dedication to the protection of the trees and animals around them. One particular story comes from the local ruler sending men to chop down some of their trees as his way of forcing them to pay taxes when they had no money. Not only did the people refuse, but when they set themselves up as human shields to protect the trees, the men who came for the trees just slaughtered hundreds of them and took the trees anyway. From then on, the ruler (who had apparently NOT intended to kill them all), decided that the people should be protected and respected from then on.
We had tea in the home of a Bishnoi couple. The tea was actually an opium tea (though the opium was of course MASSIVELY reduced in strength for us, and replaced with mostly sugar). Still the tea actually included a small ceremony, which was neat to watch. The tea contraption itself was actually pretty interesting. It looks a bit like a fancy, two-sided chorreador (Costa Rican traditional coffee maker). When we did get to taste the tea, it was so incredibly bitter that even *I* was surprised. If you know Jimena, you can imagine how it was for her. But she was a great sport, and drank it down with a perfect smile.
(Did I mention that this was in the middle of a desert, and that it was around 108F/42C? We sweat a lot. Mine is just unfortunately displayed)
On the way back towards town, we took the long way and drove through the wild animal preserve, where I apparently had good luck in attracting animals to us. We saw lots of Blackbuck, a couple Blue Bulls, and some other Antelope. We also saw a really nice little watering hole (and in this desert, any watering hole this big was definitely going to draw a crowd). In the water we saw some regular cows, but also water buffalo and some MASSIVE wild boar (with lots of cute little piglets running around). I don’t think I need to tell (again) you how hot it was out there, but let’s just say it never fell below 40C. Still, it was a pretty neat trip.
From Jodhpur, we took a night train to Jaipur, about 5 hours, and arrived at around 5AM. After all that planning I did for trains in India, this was actually the first train we took. We road in a 2nd class sleeper with AC. It was… an experience. It was nowhere NEAR as bad as the torturous ride from Mumbai to Udaipur. But it was also not exactly pleasant. It was a bit nerve-racking to figure out which coach was ours, and even where our train was going to stop. Also, the train was late showing up, and there was another bit of train waaaaay down at the end of the station which I wasn’t sure was NOT our train. I went down and asked, and they told me that this train was indeed going our way, and I started freaking out briefly, because the train seemed like it was leaving, and we were not on it. I asked somebody else, who had slightly better english, and they told me that yes, these coaches were our train, but that they were only PART of our train. The rest of our train would be coming along in a moment. So, eventually it showed up, and we found our coach number, and then our bed numbers.
Since we had bought these tickets a bit last minute, we were split up into different areas, but at least close. I took the top bunk in one room, and Jime got a bottom bunk on the side of the aisle. Long story short, the ride was bumpy and shaky, and we only got about a couple hours of sleep total. But at least it wasn’t 16 hours, and it wasn’t full of loud car horns the whole time like the bus was. And when we arrived in Jaipur, we had a driver waiting for us, with a sign with my name and everything. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been met with a sign before, so that was a nice way to end the trip.
Our hotel in Jaipur was by far the fanciest hotel we’ve stayed in so far. The rooms were huge and clean, with fancy murals painted on the ceilings. But the real gem here was the garden. The garden at this hotel was BEAUTIFUL! It was bright, with a really nice shade tree, some pretty statues here and there, and lots of pretty plants around the edges. Also, this hotel was not in the heart of the city, but more on the edges, so the hotel was MUUUUCH quieter than everywhere else we’ve stayed. Also, and this was perhaps our favorite part, the restaurant at this hotel was GREAT. We enjoyed EVERYTHING we ate here, really enjoyed it. I even had a couple pizzas there in the beginning, and those were good too, with lovely soft, melty cheese. Here is where I started enjoying Indian food again. Unlike a lot of other places we’d eaten at, these guys actually knew how to add flavor to dishes, even when they were not spicy. Our favorite was something called “Aloo Jeera”, which was basically a dish of cubed potatoes with turmeric and cumin seeds. We could eat that all day. We’ve had it in a couple different places, but these guys rocked it.
Other than the hotel, we didn’t really see much in Jaipur. We saw their fort, whose name I forget, but that place has nothing on Mehrangarh. Most of the rooms are empty, the organization was crap, and the audio guide was so cheesy that we eventually couldn’t listen to it any more, even though we’d paid extra for it. We did see more elephants on the road though, so I finally have proof. :)
One tiny bit of amusement came from the fact that on our way out, there was a guy doing a snake charming performance with a small cobra. So, I finally got to see one of those, and I didn’t have to go out of my way to do it. Even the traditional instruments they used were cool. One was a sort of gourd with a string that he played so that it made a sound similar to a big water drop. All in all, it was worth the 20 rupee tip.
Other than that, the rest of our time in Jaipur was spent shopping and playing around on the internet (the hotel also had a decent internet connection). The shopping we did was all at a big area called the Bapu Bazaar. Unlike the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, this place is basically just a few streets full of lots of sellers. This particular area is known for all its textiles, so we bought some really pretty sheets to use as table cloths, and Jime got a pretty shirt, and a couple REALLY beautiful long skirts.
After that, it was off to Agra and the Taj Mahal, and then Delhi. But that will have to wait until the next post. Until then…. ciao for now.
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