Jodhpur

I am totally charmed by Jodhpur (known as the blue city); blue is definitely more impressive than pink.  We arrived in Jodhpur late and I was surprised by the quiet of the station and also the amount of people sleeping out front in the entryway.  So far since arriving in India one of the major ways the image in my head has differed from reality is that I have seen far fewer beggars than I had anticipated.  I never realize I have a preconceived notion of a place until I arrive and am startled by what I do or do not see, then I realize it must be a juxtaposition with my made up version.  So yes, there is extreme poverty as seen by the people sleeping in the station in Jodhpur, and cows lying on piles of trash in the middle of the road, but in terms of beggars on the streets there have been very few.  I'll circle back to a few other general surprises later but for now I'll go on about Jodbpur.  After crashing out the first night we had another planning morning figuring out where we wanted to stay the other 2 nights since we weren't jumping for job about our guest house and also decided roughly what we wanted our days to look like.  All the drag of logistics was soon forgotten, however, as the afternoon plan was to see the Maharangan Fort (the towns main attraction).  The people of Jodhpur were generally super friendly so as we climbed up to the top of the hill people were waving hello and pointing us in the right direction without further agenda just because they were happy to show off their city.  The fort itself was incredible, complete with an audio tour that was not in the least bit dull.  Listening to first hand accounts from the current Maharaja about how he has redefined his role in current day Jodhpur and hearing stories  about protecting the fort from armies of elephants was truly riveting.  To top it off we had dinner on the terrace where the cannons used to be just outside the fort walls and watched the sun go down finishing the meal in candlelight with a warm fire and the entire place all to ourselves,  what a way to spend an afternoon/evening.  Walking around Jodhpur even after dark felt quite safe and we had the same friendly encounters coming down from the fort as we did heading up.  We had 2 full days in Jodhpur which was a nicer pace then the squish it in-catch a train pattern we started off with.  While this in no way means we had time to dilly-dally about we were able to have  one more day of site-seeing and 2 whole nights in the same hotel.  The second morning we hired another tuk-tuk driver for the morning to take us to the Mandore gardens about 10km (sorry can't figure out conversions) out of town.  Although these gardens are supposedly a hotspot of Jodhpur they were underwhelming to say the least.  They were home to the shrine of a million gods an old Jian temple, the ruins were beautiful but it was a good lesson that we don't need to go out of our way to find more of this sort of thing.  After wandering about we got our driver to take us to Jaswant Thada a cenotaph of white marble on a picturesque hilltop.  This did not disappoint, it truly is an architectural marvel as touted.  Feeling a bit weary we still decided to tackle the bazaars of Jodhpur and do some shopping.  Known for spices and textiles it couldn't be missed.  Everyone knows that in the US shopping is one of my least favorite activities but oh how I love markets!  Saris and scarves next to piles of vegetables and piles of ground powders in all different colors, I could walk around forever and never get bored.  To make the experience even more enjoyable the friendly vendors would invite us in for tea as they opened each and every shawl and hanging hoping it would catch our eye.  It was not only fruitful but a delightful experience despite the fact that I have no sense at all what items should cost.  Bartering is much easier if you have a sense of what items actually cost, oh well if I paid to much at least I was full on chai and chit-chat!  Although shopping was actually fun and not painful I still left rather exhausted; we stopped by the hotel to grab some items before heading to dinner and found we no longer had the entire place to ourselves.  A couple from England joined us for dinner and it turned out to be his birthday so we had a celebratory dinner and drinks at a funky spot called On the Rocks, definitely catered towards tourists and yet there were few tourists there.  Another very surprising observation is that we have encountered very few white folks.  Our route this far has been pretty standard as far as I can tell (Agra, Jaipur, Jodhpur-all key spots in Rajasthan) yet the westerners we encounter are few and far between.  This has been rather lovely, to not feel as though we are in a pack of curious white folks looking to see the sites and sounds of India, but again quite surprising as I alone know a few handfuls of people who have visited India.  A by product of the lack of westerners is that Casey and I are subsequently celebrities.  As we tour around people regularly stop us to ask "Madam, one photo please."  They do not mean they wish for us to take their photo in exchange for a couple of rupees (this is another, less surprising, phenomenon) but rather they want to take our picture usually with every single member of their family.  I can only imagine what their photo albums look like after a trip.  What do they say when showing photos to their friends "there is the such and such fort and here are a couple of white girls, how exciting."  Its a funny thought, no?  Anyway, back to the birthday celebration and our last night in Jodhpur.  When we got back from dinner we went up to the roof since we heard a bunch of noise and wanted to see what the commotion was about.  Turned out to be a wedding procession coming down the road with lots of music and fire crackers!  As we watched our host (the people who ran the hotel-which was actually their home) showed up and told us they had been waiting for us to return to have cake-how sweet is that! A night full of festivities and very little sleep before catching a 5:00am train to Jaisalmer.