Day 7:
February 13: Jodhpur
The first highlight of this day was the Jaswant Thanda, a beautiful marble cenotaph (memorial building) on a hill opposite the fort.
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Some people call it the "little Taj," with some reason. The roof stairsteps like a pagoda.
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Inside, the marble is so luminescent that the sun glows gold through it in some places, and at the far end of the room (lit mostly by sun through ornate carved marble screens) was the shrine where puja offerings are made. Along the chain keeping visitors from the shrine, supplicants had tied cloths and kerchiefs, each one a wish or prayer.
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Then we spent several hours at Mehrangarh Fort, the stunning red stone fort overlooking the Blue City.
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The audio tour was splendid, rivalling any I've encountered anywhere in the world; a pleasing Indian baritone read to us about the history of the fort, with optional digressions on subjects like opium, the caste system, the Maharaja today, and the role of color in Rajasthani society.
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(I wish the text were online somewhere; it was well-written and informative and really pretty neat.)
As exquisite as the carved yellow sandstone in Jaisalmer had been, the carved red sandstone at the Jodhpur fort was too:
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After another walk down from the fort (much like the one we'd taken on Wednesday, our first afternoon in town), we took a trishaw to the Umaid Bhawan, the vast sandstone palace visible from everywhere in town. (It's the big domed and minaret'd sandstone thing we saw from the front gate of our hotel, in the distance, behind the tent encampment.) Part of it is the palace where the Maharajah lives now; part is a museum; and part is a luxury hotel, where rooms begin at $350/night and go as high as $750/night. We thought it was pretty hideous, actually: grandiose and characterless, with none of the charm of the old sandstone buildings! The museum mostly contained old clocks and vases; when we stopped for a beer and a "fresh lime soda" (our favorite beverage: a shotglass of fresh-squeezed lime juice, topped off with sparkling water) on the columned back steps, we paid more for those two drinks than we'd paid for our entire magnificent lunch at the Tibetan place in Jaisalmer.
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We left there feeling relieved that we'd opted for the Ajit Bhawan instead: the little brother's palace costs a lot less than the big brother's palace does, and it has at least ten times as much character!
After spending a while wrangling with travel plans at our hotel (getting to Jaipur would prove challenging: more on that tomorrow), we took a cold and refreshing dip in the pool, and then dined at the Ajit Bhawan. Dinner is served outdoors; they light the grills, illumine the trees with hanging bulbs (like a kind of fairyland), make fresh bread on the tandoor, and provide good but unobtrusive live folk music from a blanket on the grass. While we ate, fireworks exploded overhead (must have been a wedding across the street). After dinner we sat awhile on a porch swing near our villa, and then retired to our room where we read matrimonial personal ads to each other, marveling at the wealth of stories encapsulated in their stilted code.
Or, back to the index.