Jodhpur, Rajasthan

From Ahmedabad it was possible to get a train to Jodhpur, my next chosen destination. However, I have found that trains are particularly well-used here in India. They are almost always booked up days in advance. It is possible to get emergency tickets a day in advance and there is a foreign tourist quota of tickets as well, but I am fifty/fifty on how well it ends up. One time, my wait-listed ticket got a bottom berth that sucked, big time. The other time, I ended up not too badly off. I decided to give the night buses here one more chance. I purchased a ticket for a night bus and moved on to Jodhpur the next day.

The bus was a bit late in leaving, but this makes no difference really when it is a night bus. As long as it's not 2 or 3 in the morning when it leaves, there is not much difference. And it was supposed to arrive at 7:30 or so in the morning, still a bit early to be trying to find a place to stay, so the extra hour I waited to get on the bus was not a big deal.

What almost was a big deal with the guy who was sitting in my bed. He had a ticket for seat number 1. I had the ticket for bed berth I. He just decided that his “1” was an “I” and took my spot. It took the bus conductor to convince him to move. Actually the conductor just looked at the guy and pointed away from the bed berth and the guy sullenly moved to where he belonged. I don't know how Indians handle this sort of situation, but I doubt they have to go to an outside authority to get it handled. Did the guy think I was going to just go away?

But in the end I got my seat. It was pretty fancy. I had glass doors to shut out the entire bus. Of course they weren't opaque doors, so I could only shut out the noise, but that was enough. And I got a decent amount of rest if not very restful sleep. It was enough that, once I arrived in Jodhpur in the morning, I had no trouble being awake the whole day before bed.

There are premium bus services in India, and that is the ticket that I bought. They are in nicer buses with good suspension systems and all of that. It makes for a smooth ride. And they are well maintained. But those buses have a hard time getting to the center of town because they are also a bit larger than the average bus. Some municipalities don't allow them to the centers of town. Ahmedabad was that, and I gathered that Jodhpur was as well. This meant that I had a fifteen minute rickshaw ride to get to the bus place in Ahmedabad and I also got off the bus in Jodhpur nowhere particularly close to a useful area either. But, for once, there were no pushy rickshaw drivers. I wasn't assailed by buzzing rickshaw drivers asking where I wanted to go or telling they knew of a good hotel or wanting to show me the sights before I even had a chance to get off the bus. This was very welcome. It's probably because they just knew that I was going to have to go to them to get anywhere, but they weren't competing for it which was so peaceful in a way you cannot know if you haven't experienced that hassle before.

So I got off the bus. There were rickshaw drivers who followed me over to the step where I just sat down for a moment to get my breath and bearings. But they just watched me. Eventually I looked up, ready for the battle. But it wasn't even a battle. The guys asked me where I was hoping to go. I told them I didn't know, that I had no hotel. So they started making a couple of suggestions. I thought maybe I could go around the train station, as that's always a useful sort of place for hotels. They said I should go to the tourist part of town, which was close enough to the train station. There would be lots of places to stay there. I acceded and one of the drivers was sorted out of the ones who were there and we were off.

I was taken to the Sarvar Guesthouse. It is in the Lonely Planet, and I presume in Rough Guide and other guide books as well. And it was also mentioned in Wikitravel, when I eventually and belatedly got around to looking up the entry for Jodhpur. I really do need to do that sooner. It almost always points the way to the good areas to stay.

Jodhpur is dominated by a fort that rises somewhat ominously over the old town area. It sits on the top of a fairly precipitous cliff. Most of the guesthouses in the old town tell that they have rooftop views of the fort. I imagine they do. Sarvar certainly did. It's quite impressive. And the guy at the desk was friendly and helpful as well. I got a room with a good view, for a bit more than I wanted, but not outrageously so. I thought it would be outrageous, but I suspect that the preponderance of other places with similar views makes competition fairly stiff and that keeps the prices down on rooms like that one.

I got settled in my room, freshened up after the long bus ride, and then set out to see some of Jodhpur. Jodhpur is also known as the Blue City. There are a few coloured cities in Rajasthan. Jaipur is the Pink City. There is another one that is known as the White City. And I think there is yet another colour as well someplace. The reason Jodhpur is called the Blue City is that a lot of the houses around the old town are painted blue. It makes for a nice view from up above.

From the guesthouse my first stop was the post office. I had gotten photos of the temple foundation ceremony in Assam developed and it was time to send them to the Saikia family. In the post office, I was told that it was going to be a package and that it would need to be wrapped accordingly. Outside the post office, this guy approached me and asked what I was looking for. I told him I needed a package wrapped and he said that was his function. It felt a bit planned, but I suppose his livelihood is to be on the lookout for people who need things wrapped and to get to them before someone else does.

This guy was a talker. I really just wanted to get the package wrapped and sent and then be off to see some of Jodhpur, but this guy just kept telling me all sorts of things. Some was useful, some was confusing (to what I might plan to do), and some was just noise. I had thought to go and have a desert experience. There was a desert experience that the guesthouse was promoting, and it was at a little city an hour or so away from Jodhpur. But when I mentioned that to my package wrapper, he kind of pooh-poohed the idea and told me that I should go to Jaisalmer, a city 300 kilometers (ie. 5 to 6 hours) away. They have a beautiful fort and it's possible to ride up to it on camel during a camel desert trek/safari. It sounded good, so I said I would look it up. He wanted to take me right away to book a bus ticket at the office of a friend of his (surprise, surprise). But knowing nothing of where Jaisalmer was in relation to Jodhpur and where I wanted to go next, I declined to do so just then.

He also asked me if I sought cultural experiences. I told him yes, and he told me about a little village just outside of town where I could for a few hours and experience real life. In fact, he told me, he liked to talk to people and so he wanted to take me on his motorbike out to the village to spend a couple of hours, and then I could go and see the fort after that. We could do that the next day. Initially, without thinking about it too deeply, I said that sounded good and I agreed. And when I asked him how much it would cost to do that, he seemed a bit offended and said he just wanted to spend time. I persisted a bit, having heard such wonderful offers before (yes, I'm talking to you Lando in Manila), only to have the end come and it be costly to extricate myself from the situation. We eventually settled on my paying for some fuel for his motorbike to cover that cost. Of course, when he told me fuel was 90 rupees a liter, I was a bit amazed, and I knew it was going to be a bit costly for me. I am not stupid (although sometimes I do wonder at my stupidity), and I do pay attention to my surroundings. And there are lots of gas stations about. And they have consistently been between 69 and 75 rupees per liter for fuel. But if he was going to pad the deal a little in his favour, it was still going to be a fairly cheap tour.

He also said he provides entertainment on occasion for people having weddings and other events. He plays the sitar. And people have, over the years, given him a number of sitars as gifts. I wondered at the relevance of this direction of the conversation. Then he said he wanted to give me one as a gift. Again, given the matter of the cost of fuel, I was a bit suspicious about what this “gift” was going to cost. But he said it was a gift, again putting on a bit of an offended air. Perhaps it was too suspicious of me, but... In any case, I demurred because I don't want to be carrying something big like that around. But he said he would send it to Canada. All he asked was that, once I received it, I would send him something Canadian in return. I told him I would think about it.

Finally I broke free of this guy, who was such a talker. And I got on my way to see something of the city. I had found out about Jaswant Thada, a tomb built on the top of a hill near the fort. It was supposed to be quite beautiful, so I set out to find it. My new friend had given me directions that went like this: Go up the street to the traffic circle, and then turn right. Get to the larger traffic circle and the turn left. Go to the clock tower and the past it. You will find some steps that go up and you can follow those and they will lead right to Jaswant Thada.

He didn't really seem to understand that although I had glimpsed the clock tower, I really didn't know where it was. But it's right there, he told me. Couldn't I see it? My no really didn't seem to register. Eventually I just headed off rather than riling him any further.

I retraced my steps in the direction of the guesthouse. I knew that the clock tower was somewhere close by. I thought it was on one side though. So I turned to find it. I guessed wrong however and, although I did find a nice way up towards the fort, and was rewarded with a nice view over the city, I was no closer to finding Jaswant Thada.

I climbed back down and headed around the other side of the fort. The streets are quite confusing to navigate and I walked way out of the way that I needed to go. But along the way I met lots of nice people willing to point the way. And unlike other spots I have been in India, the people I met didn't act confused about what I wanted. Most of the people I met didn't speak English, but they knew that I was a visitor and they understood where I was headed and pointed the way without much prompting. With the number of times I have had to do incredible pantomimes to get my message across about what I wanted, this was refreshing.

After a good deal of detouring and wandering, I finally found the hill I needed and climbed up to the Jaswant Thada, the White Temple. I do owe the young boy that was trying to help me a huge apology, even though I will never get to see him again to tell him in person. So I will apologize to him through everyone reading. He pointed the way and then changed his mind when he realized that I was walking. And I allowed adults nearby to override his recommendation, and did so while he was still watching. He seemed a bit sad that I didn't believe him. And in the end, he was right. I got to the spot he must have meant, using a different route, but had I followed the route he seemed insistent was the correct one, I would have gotten to the same place. And I offer him my deepest apologies, and my gratitude for trying to help me. He's the one in the beige jacket. Please help me send him thanks.

At the top, I went into Jaswant Thada and had a good look around. It is supposed to the be the Taj Majal of Rajasthan. It was quite nice, in its own way. It is the mausoleum for one ruler in the region, built by his wife after he passed away. It took some years to build, with all the intricate carving and architecture. I wonder what is done with the bodies of these people who are awaiting these elaborate mausoleums.

While I was wandering around the outside of Jaswant Thada, I saw a hawk of some sort sitting in the nearby lake. It was bathing and then it took off. I managed to get a photo as it was taking off. I love my new camera.

After the mausoleum, I headed across the way to the fort, just to find out how much a visit was going to cost and the hours it was open. It was then that I realized that it was much bigger than it seemed from down below. I felt that I was going to be needing more than a couple of hours to have a good look. And that was when I began to have some serious misgivings about going to the little town with the man who wrapped my package in the morning. I wasn't sure that I wanted to do that, particularly since he was such a talker and I didn't for one minute think that the trip was going to take the 2 or 3 hours he claimed it would. I started thinking about how to beg off without offending him. But that was going to have to wait for the next day.

I headed down the hill from the fort and found a nice man selling stuff from a shop he had just opened. He apparently had been making things that he sold to other shops in the area as a wholesaler. Now he was moving into the retail business and had just opened his shop three months before. He brought me in and asked if I would help with a few phrases in French (he already had some good vocabulary in Korean), offered me some chai and then just chatted with me for a while. He never asked me to buy anything, but that was the way he said he wanted to operate. He wanted to be nice to people and let them decide if they were going to buy something or not. I hope he continues to have that philosophy. He will do well if he maintains it.

Then it was dinner and in for a well earned sleep. The problem was it had gotten dark and I hadn't a really clear idea of where I would find the guesthouse. So I wandered around for a while longer, finally finding the clock tower in the process (completely by accident of course). It took me about an hour to finally find the guesthouse, but at least it was a nice enough area to be lost in.