North to Jodhpur

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Hampi was our last stop in South India. By rickshaw, bus, and then train, we traveled some 1,200 miles over 3 days to Jodhpur, in Rajasthan, the desert state in Northern India.

The 37-hour train journey started badly: uncomfortable, cramped, cold, and hungry, surrounded by snoring men, and already sleep-deprived. But things always work out: within two hours, we had a comfortable private sleeper berth to ourselves; we ate abundant delicious food from the enterprising station vendors (such as homemade yogurt in a little clay pot); and the slow rocking induced probably the best sleep mom had in India.

I sat in the open doorway and watched miles of country and city go by, and when I saw camels pulling loads of bricks hay auto parts alongside the auto-rickshaws on the highways, I figured we were in the desert.

Jodhpur is an ancient city dominated by a huge red fort on a hill. The streets were impossibly narrow and twisting, cars were off-limits, and even rickshaws couldn’t reach into many of the nooks and crannies. Many of the buildings are blue, the result of an old treatment aimed at eliminating ants. The image is spectacular.

We stayed 5 nights in the Old City, in a house built over 500 years ago, a 5-minute walk from the fort, on a hill with an amazing view of the city. We spent our days walking the varied street bazaars, visiting the sights, and touring nearby rural villages. The colors in Jodhpur were even more spectacular than what I’d experienced in South India: lots of bright reds and pinks, dazzle and bling adorning everything. Some of wildlife: blackbuck and nilgai in the fields just out of town; camels, elephants, cows, and dogs on the streets in town.

It seemed sharing the narrow twisting streets with all the usual vehicles and wildlife amplified the typically Indian sensory impacts. There is constant horn-honking everywhere in India, but the very narrow streets in Jodphur meant a single cow could block the whole road, hence more traffic jams and honking, easily carried up to our 4th floor room by the tall walls. There is cow manure and litter on streets everywhere in India, but it is that much more challenging to step around it when the traffic is so close. There are foul walls that men urinate upon all over India, but I rarely had to walk so close to them that I needed to hold by breath. Despite these intrusions, Jodhpur is beautiful and ancient and rich, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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