We woke up, stretching our arms in the air and took in the wonderful view out the window of our five star hotel.... Lol.
We had a long transfer day planned today. A morning flight to Jodhpur, the second largest city in the state of Rajasthan, followed by a car drive through the dessert plains to the Fort city of Jaisalmer that lies at the foot of the Thar Dessert.
The arrival at Johdpur airport marked a real change in the landscape - we were now in the North for sure. The architecture was more Islamic in nature and the structures were largely made out of sandstone brick the colour of light golden sand. I loved the little energy saving slogans posted at the baggage claim at the airport...
We got out of the airport, hoping to meet our driver as planned. It was damn near Tyndall lunch hour, and having to wait under those circumstances is never good. My phone was not working, so I asked a local ticket seller to phone Ashraf, the hotel owner in Jaisalmer who'd arranged everything for me. He apologized and said the driver was on the way. He then called back ten minutes later with an update that the driver was another 10 or 15 minutes late. Something about a rainstorm in Jaisalmer the night before had caused problems. I eventually figured out that the rainstorm had caused a problem with getting the 7-seater we'd ordered to make it to the airport in Johdpur, five hours away, in time. He had to get a substitute driver from Johdpur. The guy showed up another 45 minutes later - it wasn't his fault, nor even Ashrafs, but let's just say there were some non PG related "discussions" while waiting for the guy.
Eventually, we had our lunch at a tourist place in Johdpur that was actually fantastic, and we were off to check out Mehranghar Fort with a more positive attitude :-).
Rajasthan ("land of kings") is India's biggest state, taking up more than 10% of the area of the entire country. It has over 75 million people, almost 90% of which are Hindu, which is somewhat surprising to me given the history of Northern India being invaded by the Mughal empire over the years. Rajasthan is pretty much the exact opposite of Kerala, which is one of the main reasons we wanted to take the girls here.
The Fort, built in the mid 1400's, is just one of many fantastic examples of Mughal Empire architecture in Northern India. One of the awesome benefits of seeing the Fort is to get great views of the blue city below - more on that later.
The girls were pretty giddy about the whole feel of Johdpur and the Fort. Comparisons to Aladin, Morrocco from Epcot (lol) and Egypt were coming to mind and it seemed like they were infused with a new energy. Abby in particular loved the curves and arches of the Fort, and took a bunch of cool pictures that she liked.
The palace sits perched on top of the larger Fort area, which in turn sits on top of a sand rock desert atoll. It reminded me of the potential of Sigiriya in Sri Lanka, if its palace had been built out of rock. Using wood there probably wasn't the best long term strategy.
Walking up the cobbled ramparts, you could easily imagine what life would have been like here so many hundreds of years ago. This Fort was actually used right up to the mid 1900's, so that may have contributed to the excellent condition we found it in.
After getting to the main palace area, instead of going in, we continued through a large field area within the Fort walls, seeking out a view of the blue city. The old city of Johdpur is contained inside a ringed wall surrounding the Fort mountain at the city level. Many older buildings within the old walls were painted blue, though it's a bit of mystery why so many were painted blue - some say it was linked to the colour of Brahmins, though many castes had blue houses, some say it was to prevent termites (adding copper sulphate to paints and dyes), others say it was a lucky, environmentally friendly choice of using Indigo in the dyes that led to all of the blue houses.... Regardless, it's beautiful.
And so are these two!
What would a palace visit be without a cheesy cutout of Mughal Empire royalty...
I had to delete about fifty pictures of arches from my phone. I apologize to the the prospective owners of the first few houses Abby designs if she becomes an architect. Your house will be beautiful and unique, but may feel very Islamic.
The city continues to grow and sprawl out beyond the old city walls, but even the new construction seems to have a lot of character.
The stone work throughout the palace was amazing. One interesting part of it was that those same building techniques, materials and designs are still being used in modern buildings everywhere you go in Rajasthan - they've survived the test of time in many ways.
We finished with the Fort at around four in the afternoon, so we clamoured back in our car and headed off along a narrow winding road in the outskirts of the city in search of the road to Jaisalmer. What everyone noticed right away were the cows.... They were absolutely everywhere, and they did not give two shits about cars or trucks driving on the roads - this was their country and dammit, they were going to walk, sit and sleep just about anywhere they wanted.
The next four plus hours was a nice drive - really varied terrain to our entire trip, and almost alien culture to anything we'd seen to date. The women were beautifully dressed in full covering, though see-through on extremities, colourful outfits. The men wore white, light cotton clothes with often a white turban to protect them from the sun. The cows? They continued to be a factor on the drive. In fact, nothing about the driving itself, nor the amount of traffic on the roads was dangerous at all and the roads were in fantastic condition.... But you really had to watch out for cows.
We drove through the setting sun. As we got closer to Jaisalmer, we noticed that there where dozens of groups of people walking along the two lane highway. Some bore flags, most looked like they had been traveling for a while, though they travelled lightly. I found out later it was an annual pilgrimage to a nearby city that sometimes involved people walking a thousand kilometers.
We got in at 8:30 and were greeted by Ashraf who apologized for the problems with the car. Within minutes, we were settled into two nice rooms and up on the roof top restaurant ordering food. We immediately felt a wave of relaxation wash over us... Beth and I had forgotten how chill Jaisalmer was, and that was much needed after a long day on the road.
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