Jodhpur: The Blue City

Hey everyone. I haven't had a chance to make any posts in a while because we've been really busy, with camels and all that. But to catch up, I think I'll go chronologically. This post is about Jodphur, which roughly translates to Jodah's City. It was founded ages ago, but really I'm not here to give a history lesson, I'm here to tell you what we did.

We stayed at a cool little place called the Krishna Pasham Haveli (or something like that, they just called it the KP Haveli). This was a totally remodeled Haveli (hindi for mansion house) and it was lovely inside, and since it was sitting just at the base of the fort we had a great view of the fort at night, and during the day. Right across from the KP Haveli was a little convenience store and the guys in there we really cool, they helped us figure out what to do and were generally the kind of people that make India great. :)

The first thing we did in Jodhpur, was get our bearings by walking around and shopping. Jodhpur is full of loads of cool little shops that have all kinds of useless Indian trinkets, which we have loaded up on. We've now sent three packages home to Leah's sister, who has no idea they're arriving and who will have to go pick them up from the post office. Just a few minutes from our haveli is the clock tower market, which is this insane madness of people, rickshaws motorcycles and people just laying their wares willy nilly all over the place.This is India. :)

There aren't really many restaurants in Jodhpur but we found a good (and cheap) one by recommendation at the Hotel Priya. Right across the street was a Softy and Softy ice cream shop that we went back to a couple times. The choco-dip was great!

Altogether I think people come to Jodhpur to see Merangarh Fort, a sprawling stone fort built on this huge rocky edifice in the middle of the desert. It is quite a site to see, so here you go:

Jodhpur and Merangarh Fort

The entire fort has been transformed into a museum, so we just followed the audio tour around. It was very good as far as audio tours go, and it was nice that there weren't people crowding around information placards trying to read about this stuff, we just listened as we walked.

You can see why they call this the blue city in some of the pictures, it is pretty cool to see so many houses painted the same way. Apparently they do this because blue helps cooling the walls, and it acts as an insect deterrent. I guess they would know!

We also walked around to the back of the fort, where there weren't any tourists. I guess there wasn't anything noteworthy on the audio tour, but I thought it was pretty cool walking around the parapets and seeing where the cannons were mounted.

We also tried to send a parcel from Jodhpur which was much more complicated than sending from Jaipur where it was so easy. Because of this, we hauled our package from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer, and then to Udaipur where we have just sent it off.

That's it!

pw

Pushkar, India

Pushkar is a holy village, surrounding a holy lake. This little town has sprung up into a very active tourist spot, it being so popular that the town officials have taken to examining passports to make sure people don't stay longer than three months.

Pushkar

It is hard to say why it has become so popular for long-time tourists, but its short term appeal is apparent in all the temples, probably over thirty of them that surround this holy lake. We saw it as the sun was setting and casting a reddish light over the lake temples.

That's the nice thing about Pushkar. The not so nice bit is that it is a little town over-run with long-term tourists. I hate to pinpoint a certain type of person, but it seems that there is some draw that brings the hippiest of folks here to stay. There are dredlocks at all angles, and everywhere there are tourists wearing baggy (undoubtedly very comfortable) clothes that only Indian priests wear.

The tourist attention means that the always attendant street vendors are not so hungry for our business, and this has two effects. First, they don't hassle us nearly as much. Second, they are very resistant to haggling - which is unfortunate because we're just coming into our own with this valuable skill.

The tourist attention has also created a weirder still side economy - that of the local religion. Men on the street approach us, and give us flowers which we are to throw in the lake. This wouldn't be so bad, but we have been warned that they will bully tourists into making 'huge' donations for the effort. Since we knew ahead of time, we avoided these people as much as possible, but one set of touts managed to slip these pretty little flowers into our hands. When it became clear that we weren't planning on dropping them in the lake they became angry and demanded the flowers back. We didn't intend any insult to the Hindu tradition, we just didn't want to participate like that - but these guys took it the wrong way and shouted at us as we walked away "why did you come to pushkar?!?"

Altogether the verdict is: full of tourists, expensive, and obnoxious religious touts. My vote is to stay away from Pushkar.

There is one caveat to this, and that is if you're interested in learning to become Indian. Everywhere there are places to learn to paint like the Indians, to dance like the Indians and even to absorb weird superstitious healing practices like the Indians. We saw spray paintings on the walls like "Aids is curable" through yogic medicines. If this is your bag, then Pushkar is where it's at!