Fort to Fort

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The yoga lesson never happened, the guy turned out to be a fraud. It's still hard to know who to trust and who is just telling stories. So many Indians are such good story tellers, it's incredible. There was no time for swimming either, but we did have the massage, followed by the ayurvedic treatment which involves pooring a special oil with herbs on your forehead. The massage was a little rougher and faster than what we are used to, but I could have "endured" it for longer easily. The oil running on my forehead made me feel like I was no longer there, sometimes realizing I had been away and wondering where I had been and how much time I missed.

The next day (last Friday), I was a little sick. Probably due to the continuous heat and fatigue. It's been 38 degrees Celsius all the time ever since we got here, and it doesn't cool off enough at night. I had no energy to get up, and the odd cramps made me feel almost feverish. So I stayed in bed until 2PM or so. Meanwhile while Gaelle got up early to get a massage lesson at 6AM, then she has been rewriting the hotel web pages, and in return got an invitation to have lunch with the family in a small desert village. When she got back, we went to see a few haveli's (houses built by rich traders during the times of the maharajah's). On the way back, we went into a small shop that sells local textiles: patchwork bed covers and pillow cases and table clothes in the most fabulous color combinations. We were both drooling from the beginning to the end, and we both spent more money than we should have. Gaelle got a purple bed spree, I got a bunch of pillow cases, some to give away when I get back, some for myself. The only problem is that we have to drag a lot more weight with us now. Gaelle doesn't feel safe about sending it via the mail, but I will have no other option, so I'll send it off one of these days.

As we were chatting our last evening in Jaisalmer away on the rooftop terrace, the hotel people were very worried, because some trouble has been happening between Hindu's and Muslims about 30km from Jaisalmer. Some Muslim people got it into their heads to force a bunch of (holy) cows to walk in circles for some time in the scorching heat. 20 cows died, one had a miscarriage because of it. The Hindu's were angry and started burning trucks etc. Last night, a truck driven by a Muslim crashed into a Hindu motorcyclist. The Hindu died, and all Hindu's in the area now believe the Hindu was killed on purpose.
Our bus was reserved for the next morning at 6:30, but there was a chance that no bus services would run because the danger of revenge violence was realistic. Fortunately, our bus did take us to Jodhpur safely by 1PM, we just noticed that all shops in the villages were closed, there was more police on the streets, and the bus driver didn't give us much time to buy some snacks (we hadn't had breakfast yet) ; they just wanted to move on to get past the danger zone.

Being dropped at 1PM was not the best time of the day. It is a time when most people here stay inside to avoid the heat. But we had to get a place to stay and take care of our heavy luggage. In order to avoid being jumped upon again, we let a rickshaw take us to the train station so we could put our backpacks in the lockers. That way we didn't look like we were particularly looking for a hotel, and the rickshaw drivers didn't jump at us in masses to drive us to a hotel of their choice in order to get commissions. After walking around for more than an hour in the city area, we ended up in a nice guest house (a haveli even), and got some nice Indian food. We were both exhausted, so we rested for an hour or so. Gaelle had a severe headache. So we didn't do more than just go get our backpacks at the train station that evening.

Sunday we slept a little longer, and wanted to walk towards the clock tower area to have some breakfast.
It took us 3 hours to get there... a few shops held us up. First, there was a shop with essential oils for prices much much lower than in Europe, and we have a common interest in essential oils. Rose oil for example, will cost a fortune in Europe, and here they sell it for 300 INR/10ml. Drool drool again, not a good time for self discipline, we each bought a few bottles. Next, we entered a wholesale store of high quality Rajasthani and Kashmiri textiles... ah we shouldn't have.... 8 floors, each floor containing piles and piles of all the bed sprees and shawls (saris also, but we didn't look at them anymore). The shop people spent 2 hours showing their most wonderful designs. Drool drool drool some more.
They told us that some of the designs were created on demand for all the big Italian designers (Valentino, G. Armani, Chanel, etc), and we got to see pictures of Richard Gere buying stuff in their shop. Impossible to find out if this is just another of their sales stories or not, but the things we saw really made us wish we could afford to buy them. Some of these bed sprees are sold here for 5000 or 8000 INR, but would easily sell for 4 times that amount in Europe. I might wait until we get to Pushkar to buy a bed spree. We are told that everything is less expensive there. Lack of self discipline again: we each bought 2 Kashmiri shawls, majorly spending more than our budget. But I am sure we will not regret it, and this area just has exceptional amounts of the things that we like. After Rajasthan, I will stop buying things for a while.

Then we went to the Fort. I am sure there is much info about this fort on the web, so aside from the pictures, I can only say we were again both drueling at the sight of these luxurious rooms that have this 1001 nights style. We both love this style of building, arts, decoration and general atmosphere.

When we arrived back at the hotel, the owner told us we had paid too much for the shawls we had bought, and we should have gone to another shop in the same street. Gaelle was quite upset about it. We went to the other shop, to see if he was right. The prices were indeed lower, and their shawls felt the same and looked the same. So we went to the shop were we bought them, to ask for a refund. They were willing to return our money, but they wanted to explain why their quality was higher. He even gave us 1000 INR to go and buy a shawl from the cheaper shop, and gifted it to us. We did notice a quality difference, so we probably did get value for our money. But once more, it's sooo frustrating that it's impossible to tell who is telling lies and who is honest.

We took a night bus from Jodhpur to Udaipur, found a good room quickly and spent the day relaxing and walking around a little. Udaipur is quite relaxed overall. It's somewhat cooler here, and the nights are and there seem to be much more tourists around than in the other places we have been. Or maybe they are just all concentrated in a small area. A side effect of taking rickshaws when you arrive in a new town, is that they will take you to hotels where they get commissions. This means you always end up in the old and dirty and poorest part of the place. The "high class" side remains out of your sight, unless you really go look for it. We drove through the rich part of Udaipur on our way to the bus station. We went looking for it, and walked around in an actual supermarket and an antiques store, and we had a snack in an almost normal cafeteria. Gaelle enjoyed her Cappuccino.

In our hotel, we met a nice Dutch/Polish couple, and we spent a day with them (shared a taxi) going on a day trip to the Jain temple in Ranakpur, and an arts school in a small village. Ranakpur is about 90km away from Udaipur, but it took us 2,5hrs up and 2,5hrs down... a long ride, but the scenery was wonderful, and the temple really was worth it.

Today we head off from Udaipur to a small village called Chittorgarh, where another Fort is awaiting our visit. It's on the way to Pushkar, our next destination. We will probably share a taxi again, with a Spanish couple this time.

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Photos

Jaisalmer - Haveli
Impossible to capture the beauty of the architecture on a picture :-(

Jaisalmer - The Oven
No microwaves, but you never know... perhaps they knew how to make pizza's already ;-)

Jaisalmer - 2 www's
The "guide" who took the picture gave us a kiss and a hug. Towards Indian women, this behavior is
. We felt a little disrespected.

Jodhpur - Small streets
Jodhpur is called the Blue city, because so many houses are painted blue. Easy for the paint shops.

Jodhpur - Going "out" for lunch
Kids and women eating on the street. No plate, only a piece of newspaper to hold the rice. Traffic passing by all the time.

Jodhpur - Maharani Textiles shop
This is where we bought our shawls, and were told afterwards that we had paid too much, but changed our minds again after comparing quality. This shops has 8 floors, each double the size of what you see here... all piled up with textiles. ** D R O O L **

Jodhpur - Maharani Demo
Just to show some of the beautiful things they showed us. They spent 2 hours unfolding their sprees, and we were just stunned... money must be funny in a rich man's world. (This one - they say - is a custom design for a famous Italian designer)

Jodhpur - Maharani Demo
It's hard to tell on the picture, but the embroidery on this one is made of silver.

Jodhpur - Maharani Demo
Gaelle trying a Kasmiri shawl. Richard Gere - they say - bought 108 of these when he was here.

Jodhpur - Maharani Demo
This purple bed spree was my favourite, but the picture can\'t really show just how nice it looks.

Jodhpur - Maharani Demo
Each and every shelf is filled with the most colorful designs.

Comments

[R R from G, NL]

Moi Gurl! Rspct frm Grnngn, NL
Ha meisje! Binnen 1 a 2 weken meer nieuws over de situatie hier @ work. Niet erg positief, denk ik.. Dankjewel voor je telefoontje!! Lief dat je aan me denkt, ben trouwens erg benieuwd naar de foto's en ik sms een berichtje asap! Je laatste blog:Prachtige foto's, jammer dat je reismaatje terug moet naar Belgie.. Tot later!! xxx Rutgerius

[david lambert]

shawls and bed throws
do you have a website i can choose items from? I was in your shop in Jodphur a few years a go and bought several items, you shipped to the Uk for me I wish to buy more David Lambert

[inesd]

i been there!
yeah ive also been there! in the clock tower market thing right? this one is costum made for armani...fsklnvewnve sorry my bottom jaw just hit the key board

[inesd]

custom made for hermes

[Garth]

great experience at the Maharani Textiles shop
I and my two companions thought this would be another case of the Indian hustle - have a seat, some tea and we will tell you our story, no pressure to buy. At this point, we were pretty shopped out, having spent a lot more than we had anticipated, already. To some extent it was that, but the difference was we soon saw we were getting exceptional value for the money here. We all bought hundreds of dollars worth of textiles, of various sorts, to have shipped back to Canada and filled out a FedEx shipping document on the spot, which was encouraging. In my case, I was back in Canada four days later and my purchase was at my door the day after that, very nice, unlike other purchases that I had to send repeated emails to get the shipping info on. I am trying to contact the store to make other purchases, if possible, because many of my friends would like to buy their products, especially the shawls. I would recommend the shop highly.