The Blue City

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Sunday 3-6
How fast do you think you can sightsee in around a 400 year-old city with a population of nearly 1 million? We tried it in 15 hours. After dropping our bags off at a hotel for the day, we wandered around the ancient city of Jodhpur, known as the blue city, which was spectacular! The blue comes from the blue paint most homes in the old section of town used to paint their roofs and outside walls. Blue is the color for Brahmans or highest class of Indians in the caste system. So from up above, looking down on the city, the landscape is a beautiful array of multi-textured homes, colored baby blue, set against the deep yellow and reds of the desert scrub. Wandering thru the city was a lot of fun, trying to navigate tiny alleyways that could barely fit a motorcycle, dodging cows and their many “gifts” on the ground. (Nick almost got run over by a rogue cow running down the street.) Saying hello to the curious kids playing on the house steps, watching women prepare breakfast or wash the laundry. It was a very cool experience, walking through a medieval town build of sandstone; it felt like another time period altogether. We wandered up the hill and visited Jaswant Thada, a marble cenotaph built in 1899 in memory of Maharaja Jaswant Singh II, with beautifully carved marble lattice windows and an amazing view of the city.

Next door was the jewel of the city: the Mehrangarh Fort, or Citadel of the Sun, built in 1459 and so well fortified that it withstood every siege incurred over the next 400 years. Words cannot adequately describe our experience at the fort. It truly is a place that has to be personally experienced to be fully appreciated. It was AMAZING! There were so many additions and add-ons to the palace fort over the centuries that it was a veritable maze of texture and style, design and hidden passageways. SO BEAUTIFUL! Back in the day, men and women were kept separate in everything but procreation. There was a separate wing for men and women, the latter of which was ornately decorated with innumerable hand-carved sandstone lattice screen windows. No two were a like. Women weren’t allowed to be seen from outside, but they could look through the holes in the screens to see out. The craftsmanship and artistry of the palace was breathtaking. Room upon room of ornately painted ceilings, lattice screens, brightly colored stained glass windows, beautifully carved balconies…ugh, it made you weep it was so stunning! And the palace attendants today (all male) wore traditional dress and turbans. Each region in India has a certain way of tying their turban and are represented by different colors. At the palace, we saw several turbaned guards on display and the mustaches! Ugh – if only I could take pictures with my eyes! The men in India clearly love their mustaches. It’s hard to find a single man past puberty who doesn’t have a mustache, large or small. But outside of Delhi in the smaller towns, men sport more traditional mustaches (turned up for Hindu or down for Muslim) and they are huge and fantastic! Some are wider than their faces, some curl up to their noses, some join mutton chops that cover nearly the entire face! It was like a game to find the best mustache of the day.



After overloading our senses at the fort, we headed to Umaid Bhawan Palace – a more modern art deco palace built in 1929 for the last maharaja of Jodhpur. Strangely enough, this palace took 3000 builders and 15 years to make as part of the maharaja’s attempt at a jobs creation program during the last great drought of the city. Part of the palace is still used by the maharaja’s descendents and a small part is set aside as a museum, but sadly, most of the palace is closed off to the public for use as a high end hotel. Bummer.

We took a break after the first 8 hours of our day in Jodhpur, Nick visited the ATM, and realized we forgot Nick’s driver’s license at the fort! We had left it as collateral for our audio guide and forgot to collect it before we left. Fortunately, Chatty Cathy (also known as Nick) had made friends with a musician who was setting up or an evening concert at the fort and scored us a persona invitation. So we quickly changed into some clean clothes (remember we’ve been traveling for 3 days straight at this point), put on our new Rajasthani camel leather shoes (we were so giddy after our amazing tour of the fort we willingly fell victim to the strategically placed souvenir shops at the exit), and tuk tuk’ed it over to the fort to try and get his license back. After several phone calls and signing an affidavit that he had received the correct i.d., Nick got his license and we were ushered into the private concert. Upon reflection, we probably shouldn’t have been there; it turned out to be a private concert for family and friends of the musician, a flutist, who was holding a concert for his benefactors. Awkward! Fortunately, we befriended a college student who spoke English and was a friend of the flutist and his cute little daughter and she helped put us a little more at ease. The concert itself was beautiful. It was a collection of traditional Rajasthani music played with a flute and pair of small drums. The flutist was very talented and clearly his sound was supposed to be the focus of the concert, but Nick and I were captivated by the percussionist. He sat in front of two small drums, one wooden and one metal, angled in towards each other and dusted with powder. The sounds he made were amazing! He didn’t just drum with his hands, he drummed with each finger and each finger made a different sound. I was mesmerized and couldn’t take my eyes off the movement of his hands! Crazy sounds! Nick got some video which I’ll try and put up to give you a better idea of what it was like.

As we left Jodhpur that night, a sprawling starlit city below a glowing fort rounded out a very romantic and awe-inspiring day in Jodhpur. And thank god we got out own seats on the overnight train to Jaisalmer!

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