India Day 13-14 Jodhpur

We started off our thirteenth day in India with the same bus ride back to Jodhpur, although this was one quite pleasant compared to the misery two days previous, as it only had as many people as seats. After checking back into our hotel, we took a nice, long walk across town-going straight through the main market and all its craziness. We had a delightful and peaceful afternoon at a classy, rooftop restaurant-which provided fantastic views of the blue city. Like Jaipur (pink), Jodhpur, for some reason or another has taken on a color-light blue. In the older parts of town, almost all of the houses are painted light blue, and accented in white, which gives the city a very distinct look set against the dirty gold of the rough desert beyond. The restaurant’s views also looked right down on the main market and right up to the Mehrangarh, the main fort in Jodhpur. We had aftenoon drinks-a great antidote to the hot, dry weather and then enjoyed a peaceful, romantic candlelight dinner as the sunset. It seemed that fairly often during our trip Danthemanstan and I took some recommendations from the guidebook that might be intended for honeymooners-but sometimes you have to just roll with it.

In the morning we visited the Mehrangarh, the old fort of a Rajput royal family from Jodhpur, the descendants of which still manage the fort. They were (no surprise) featured prominently on the great audio tour. It was an amazing fort with giant, imposing walls rising up to intricately decorated palaces at the top. The audio tour livened up the visit with some great stories about the old maharaja (princes) and their numerous battles. After getting pretty screwed negotiating a rate to the airport between auto-rickshaw drivers that were clearly in collusion, we flew with Air India down to Mumbai. Jodhpur airport’s two rooms easily made it the smallest airport I’ve ever flown through. The plane was pretty worn out, and although I was happy to get a meal on a three-hour flight, it was easily the worst meal I have ever had on a plane. So, if flying Air India-maybe just pass on the cold curry mush.