India Episode 7: Rajasthan

Our entry into Rajasthan - the Land of Kings - marked the beginning of extraordinarily hot India (well over 40°) - fortunately it made up for this with some fantastic sights

The cities of Rajasthan, with the hill-top forts and palaces at their heart, are synonymous with colour - the white city of Udaipur, the blue city of Jodhpur, the golden city of Jaisalmer, and the pink city of Jaipur - in direct contrast to the stark desert landscape of the state.

The incredible setting combines with the chaotic, heaving, colourful streets to make Rajasthan a totally different experience to other parts of India.

Our first port of call was the city of Udaipur and its (in)famous Lake Palace of James Bond's Octopussy fame - only problem was the lake had totally dried up pre-monsoon! Taking this disappointment in our stride, we took a cooking class and are now expert curry and chapatti chefs - turns out its really easy!

The timing of our visit was ideal as we arrived during some sort of religious festival, where poor mothers lined the streets sitting on coloured cloths and begged wheat or grain from passersby. The queue for the temple stretched several blocks! By night we sat in one of Udaipur's many rooftop restaurants and enjoyed watching hundreds of children (and adults) fly simple paper kites from the flat roofs of their houses.

Stop #2 in Rajasthan was Jodhpur - which we unanimously decided was our favourite city in India. Above the city sits the stunning Mehrangarh fort (as seen from our guesthouse in the panorama at the top of the blog), looking out over the Blue City.

Mehrangarh was by far the most impressive thing we'd seen in India to date, not to mention the best organised! Our 250 rupee entry fee (roughly $8 - which seemed to be standard for palaces and forts) included a nerdy but excellent audio tour which the Indians didn't get on their cut-price 10 rupee entrance fee. Sucks to be them...

In the old city of Jodhpur, the multi level buildings were crammed in so tightly that even Simon lost his sense of direction! The tiny unpaved alleys were filled with spice, vege, antique and clothes markets, with auto rickshaws beeping and skinny cows wandering (and shitting) all over the place. Like much of India, Jodhpur was sensory overload!

On our bus ride from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer we were shocked to realise that it was cooler with the windows closed than open - perhaps heading into the depths of the Great Thar Desert on the back of a camel wasn’t such a great idea...

After a night in the giant sandcastle that is Jaisalmer Fort we headed out to Khuri, a tiny village right on the edge of the sand dunes where we stayed in a family home. We ate with the family, met all their animals, and slept outside under the full moon and starry sky - which apparently is normal behaviour for 10 months of the year!

We donned long sleeves and pants (which seemed insane in the heat) to avoid getting lobsterfied, loaded our camels with a whole case of mineral water, and set off into the desert with our camel driver a la Laurence of Arabia. We rode through a number of totally isolated (except by camel of course) mud-hut villages where the animals somehow survive eating sand...

While we rested under a tree during the hottest part of the day, our camel driver cum gourmet chef whipped us up a great feed of curry, rice, and chapattis on a small fire and washed the dishes with sand - then repeated the feat for dinner! Very impressive and delicious.

Going to bed in the dunes under an incredibly starry sky with the full moon rising over the horizon was a wonderful experience which we will never forget - being awoken a few hours later by a small sand storm which turned Amy into a sandcastle will also remain in our memory for different reasons! We were still getting rid of the sand days later.

As for the heat in the desert, if you imagine yourself being locked inside a sauna where the steam machine is broken with someone blowing a hairdryer at your face you’ll still be underestimating it. You go for your water bottle in a futile attempt at refreshment and you realise its warm enough to make tea with!

The first cold coke when we got back to Jaisalmer was heaven, as was the swim in the pool at our hotel! Left with a day to kill before our train on to Jaipur, we began what was to become our North Indian shopping spree and ransacked the markets of Jaisalmer looking for leather bags. We got a goat leather handbag for Amy and a camel leather ‘man-bag’ for Simon for a bargain.

Our arrival in Jaipur was offensively early and early impressions of the Rajasthani capital were not that flash. However, it was a place that really grew on us - helped in no small part by the quality of the shopping (including a pair of jeans for Simon that actually fitted). There was also an old observatory filled with massive sundials and bizarre structures for measuring the stars.

Jaipur was a planned city built by the Maharajah once he’d beaten all his neighbours and felt safe moving down from his hill-top fort at Amber (which we also visited and was fantastic). We loved the way the old city was logically set out with the markets divided up depending on what they sold - land use zoning 1700’s styles!

The women of Rajasthan were by far the most beautifully/over the top dressed with brightly coloured clothing and competed adorned in gold, from their nose to their toes. Amy felt rangi sitting on the bus next to them! Not to be outdone, many of the men wore the most elaborately tied turbans we'd seen, and sported incredible pointy twirled moustaches.

Our two weeks in Rajasthan coincided with the first real onset of travel fatigue, hardly surprising given that we’d been on the road four months to the day when we left Jaipur. Despite this (and the incredible heat), the sights, cities, and people of Rajasthan broke through our weariness more often than not, and left us with some of our favourite Indian memories.

We headed to Agra as experts on Indian forts pretty sure that we’d saved the best for last - but unaware of just how awesome it would actually be...



It’s taken us over two weeks in England to get this blog out, but the final one shouldn’t be such a wait!

For those who are interested (or have nothing better to do), now that we’ve got the time and the tools to do it we’ve added big panoramic photos to most of our blogs - right back to Hong Kong!

Makes a perfect excuse to go and look at all the old blogs (and track Simon’s weight loss).

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Part of trip: The Asian Adventure

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