A nice comfortable overnight train journey brought me from Delhi to Jodhpur. Did I say comfortable? I had booked a 2AC but unfortunately there is only one 2AC carriage on that train and I was waitlisted, so in some uncharacteristic foresight I also booked a 3-tier (sleeper) ticket just in case I remained on the 2AC waitlist. And I did remain there.
So I went and settled into my sleeper berth and prepared myself for a nice night’s sleep (I love sleeping on trains. The gently rocking action does wonders for me). Unfortunately, I had not foreseen:
a) how cold it would get during the night – I was shivering!, and
b) that the gentleman below my berth would be snoring non-stop and (pardon the pun) loud as a train!
So it was a sleep-deprived me when the train pulled into Jodhpur early in the morning. After a quick shower / breakfast at the hotel, I set about exploring the ‘Sun City’ (apparently the yellow One shines here every day of the year. Edinburgh residents note!)
The city, founded in 1450s by Rao Jodha, is known for Meherangarh Fort which towers over the city. I got there huffing and puffing after a rather steep climb from the (dirty) old city. I made my way through the gates (pols) to the fort complex. One of these gates had the hand-prints of widows of Man Singh who were consigned to the flames (sati) in 1843 when their husband died. These handprints were garlanded and that somehow spoilt my mood.
So I decided to settle for a cold coffee at the fort coffee shop before setting out to explore it. The fort, full of foreign and Indian tourists, had a number of courtyards, temples, and the ever-present palaces (‘Moti mahal’, ‘Phool mahal’, and so forth). I skilfully avoided the overpriced museum shop (even though we were forced to go through the shop to exit).
From the fort one gets lovely views of the city’s blue painted houses (‘blue city’ is a sobriquet often used for Jodhpur). Apparently in the days of yore, the Brahmins painted their houses blue but now thankfully there is no such segregation, so whoever feels like it paints their house blue. The blue colour is supposedly a good mosquito repellent (given my experience with these insects in Jodhpur, they need to paint even more houses blue!).
From the fort I walked over (thankfully downhill) to Jaswant Thada. This milky white memorial to Jaswant Singh, another ruler of Jodhpur, was built in 1899 at the site of his cremation. The view of the city and the fort dominating the skyline reminded me of Edinburgh’s view from Calton Hill (but in mirror image).
In the afternoon I visited the village of Osian, 65 kms from Jodhpur. This village is famous for its temples and sand-dunes. Even though I’m not a temple kind of person I found the Sachiya Mata Temple (an intricate set of around 10 temples) quite interesting. There is also a beautiful Jain temple in the village (Jains dominated Osian during the 8th-11th centuries). After this more-than-usual temple hopping, I went to the Sand dunes near this village. Though not as big as the ones at Sam (Jaisalmer), I enjoyed trudging in the sand here as I was the only tourist there. I avoided the constant, and irritating, implorations of the camel riders who wanted my custom. After a four-hour backside-killing camel ride years back in the Gobi desert in Mongolia, I had vowed never to venture near one of those dromedaries ever again! The sunset was surreal – me standing all alone and watching the yellow ball turn orange and then disappear. Time to go home?
The next day I visited some Bishnoi villages. First stop was Khejadli which is known for the massacre of 363 Bishnois by the King of Jodhpur in the 1780s when they gave up their lives rather than let the King cut some trees for an expansion project. Yes, the Bishnois were the original tree-huggers! May their tribe increase. At the local temple at Khejadli, I had the most bizarre conversation with this local guy who was hanging around – he started with the usual ‘where are you from?’ and increasingly his questions became more and more personal till he got to the point of asking what I did for sex given my marital status / age.
I needed a drink after that conversation! So I was more than pleased when, at a Bishnoi house, I was offered some Opium tea. Apparently that’s their traditional way of welcoming people. Won’t argue with that!
From there, it was off to Guda, another Bishnoi village. It was near here that Salman Khan indulged in his infamous shooting of Blackbuck. I did some blackbuck and deer shooting too (but with a Nikon!). I was enjoying the nice quiet peaceful place till this ‘village safari’ did the ultra-touristy thing and took me to Kakani village where I was forced to sit through demonstrations of block printing, pottery, and durree-weaving. And no, for the record, I did not buy anything!
The next day I took an early-morning (really early!) train to Jaisalmer. I hoped to get some sleep but there was a really loud group of friends who spoke non-stop. So that was my second sleep-less train journey! At Pokhran train station I noticed everyone scrambling outside (much in the manner of the Abu Run!). It was only later that a friend told me that the mirchee-ke-pakode of Pokhran station are to die for! Oh well, there’s always a next time.
When the train was about an hour from Jaisalmer, two things happened. One, the train carriages were over-run by touts who were trying to sell their hotels and camel safaris. Two, there was a dust storm outside. Even though everyone closed their windows, visibility sank to a real low. I needed a good scrub after getting to my hotel in Jaisalmer.
Jaisalmer is often known as the ‘golden city’ because of its honey-coloured buildings / fort that merge with the desert. Unlike Bikaner and Jodhpur forts, the one at Jaisalmer is a ‘living’ fort i.e. there are houses, havelis (most converted into hotels) where people live. The narrow winding alleyways would be a great place to get lost were it not for the excess of souvenir shops and French, German, and Indian (including me!) tourists. Sadly, the city suffers from over-tourism. The infrastructure is struggling to cope.
The fort was built in circa 1156 by a certain Jaisal and the city developed really fast as it was on the trade route between India and Central Asia. But being a rich city, it was coveted by many marauders including Allaudin Khilji, Delhi’s Sultan Feroze Shah, and also the Mughals. The city is now an important army / air force base given its close proximity to the Pakistan border. One interesting sight on the city outskirts are numerous windmills, the energy from which is used to light up / electrify the border fence with Pakistan.
The Fort, also known as ‘sonar kila’ (golden fort), has a narrow winding entrance road with four formidable gates (pols). The narrow winding road was built specifically to slow down any potential attacking armies. There is a five-storied (or was it seven-storied?) Maharaja’s palace from the top of which one gets lovely views of the fort complex and the city that mushroomed around it. The fort complex also has a set of beautifully-carved Jain temples from the 12th-15th centuries. Having already done more-than-my-regular share of temple-visiting at Osian and (more importantly) not wanting to take off my shoes / socks, I never entered the temples. Wonder what I missed?
Within Jaisalmer city (outside the fort complex) there are a number of beautiful (and rather large) havelis. I visited only one of these beautifully-latticed havelis – the patwon-kee-haveli, which is a cluster of five havelis of the Patwa family. Looking at the lavish interiors, I thought to myself that this family had money! Maybe I should also get into trading and money-lending!
I did some excursions outside Jaisalmer too. The first stop was Badabagh (‘big garden’) which is where the royal cenotaphs are. More interesting than the cenotaphs was the presence of a newly-married couple who had come to get themselves photographed against the backdrop of the canopied cenotaphs. It was fun watching the photographer give them orders, “ab haath chin ke neeche rakhiye”, “left dekhiye”. Wonder how one would enjoy these photographs given that they’re so artificially posed.
And like any other good tourist to Jaisalmer, I visited Sam (pronounced ‘sum’) sand dunes, which are about 42 kilometres away. The dunes are huge – much larger than what I had expected, or seen anywhere else (even in Wadi Rum in Jordan or the Gobi in Mongolia). But unfortunately, the place was crawling with touts offering camel (and camel-cart) rides and dancers and musicians (all of whom seemed to know only one song – ‘aa rrraaa rrraaa rrraaa rrraaa rraa!”). Of course there were too many tourists and too many plastic bottles and chips packets lying around. But despite all this the sunset was really beautiful.
My last stop on the trip was Bikaner. A seven-hour bus journey from Jaisalmer brought me there. I had an interesting cast of co-passengers – ranging from women in beautiful pink, red, and yellow sarees to turbaned men with huge moustaches and even (for a while) a goat!
Bikaner, despite it’s bhujia, was a disappointment. There was not much to do there. Naturally, like any other self-respecting Rajasthani city, there was a fort (Junagarh, built in the 1580s) but this one was not nearly as photogenic or daunting-looking as the ones in Jaisalmer and Jodhpur. There was a guided tour of the fort which I took. Bad as the guide was, I turned out to be fun when one of the tourists decided to rant about how the royals lived off hard-working common people. The guide tried his best to defend the royals but that anti-royal fellow would have nothing of it. Then others joined in too - I also threw in my 2-bit to add to the fun. The cornered guide tried very hard to change the topic with his ‘aur yeh dekhiye yahaan par hai eik painting jo...’.
32 kilometres from Bikaner is the Karni Mata Temple. Despite what I said earlier in the post, I was almost tempted to visit this temple. Rats are considered sacred here and are allowed to roam around freely (ugh!). That is what the temple is now famous. I certainly didn’t want to walk barefoot in that temple and have those rodents scurrying about. So I gave it a pass.
I wanted to visit Lalgarh fort and after haggling with an auto-waala managed to get there only to find it closed for the day. So back to town it was. Then I just wandered about the old town taking in the sights, sounds, and smells (!) before waiting for my train back to Delhi.
