2017 March 18th - March 21st, Jodhpur, India 👍

Dateline: March 21st, 2017, Jodhpur, India

Who stole the towns budget?: Jodhpur, Rajastan
The route

March 18th.

Jodhpur, like many other cities in Rajasthan (Land of the Raja's - aka kings), has a colour associated with it. Jaisalmer is the "Golden City", Jodhpur is the "Blue City"
According, once again to wikipedia: "Jodhpur is a City and district in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is the second largest ... Jodhpur is also known as the "Blue City" because of the blue colours that decorate many of the houses in the old city area"
It's also got a fort, a big one this time

All this and a decent beer!
Mehrangarh Fort as our dinner backdrop in Jodhpur. Fabulous evening

Our train leaves Jaiselmer for Jodhpur at 5:00PM. I finally gave up cursing the web ticket portal and went to an agent for these tickets. At least this way is effective.

Jodhpur accommodation
Cows and pigs first floor, tourists,
3rd  floor

If you want to get anywhere in India fairly fast, then you fly, or, not so fast, take the train. Roads unless the army needs fast access to somewhere, are dire, averaging (on our taxi trip anyway), about 30Km/ hour. On a train, its about 50.

The Indian Railway system is, apocryphally, the largest employer in the world. It also subsidises every trip by about 40% according to its web site. It's a massive undertaking.
Anyone who wants to travel in relative

Mehrangarh Fort entrace

comfort (ie, using air conditioning, and a bed for night travel), needs to book in advance.This booking system is in fact quite well thought out, although a bit confusing for neophytes, aka, me. You can reserve any seat/ berth up to 180 days in advance, you can also cancel this booking free of charge, up to 4 hours before departure. This leads to an awful lot of more or less, superfluos reservations. To overcome this, you can also reserve and be placed on the waiting list "WL" in IR parlance. Helpfully, there is a number attached to this, so for this trip our booking code was "WL12/WL6". Deconstructed, this means that your ticket is now 6th in line for a cancellation. This code also tells you that there have been 6 cancellations on this train/ class since bookings initiated. There are several web sites offering predictions on the likelihood of getting a berth on specific trains. Out probability is 96%. As the cancellations continue (or not), you can check your reservations on line. Four hours before the actual departure, a final scan is done and the "chart" prepared. 

Entrance to Johdpur Fort

The system then advises WL ticket holders by text, of the status, which usually confirms your berths (CNF), and tells you the carriage, and berth number. Like A1 3.. In some instances, you have a reservation pending cancellation (RPC) which means you can get on board, but may not have a bed, just a seat. It seems to work, and attempts to give everyone a really flexible and effective way of getting tickets. It also helps if you're a bit of a gambler playing the odds. I wonder who that could possibly be. Getting to Jaisalmer from Delh, 750Km's at a cost about $C30, this for 17+ hours and bedding (yep, pretty clean). Compare this with out CN rail trip later this summer from Toronto to Jasper (about 3600Kms, 3.5 days) for $C1600+. On our way, theres lots of army equipment being transported, I assume, to the border with Pakistan. I guess it's a pretty active area
The train arrives late by about 40 minutes, and we are all super weary on arrival.

The Second gate

A Tuk driver finds us at the station - it cuts out so much aggravation and haggling to have a pre approved pick up.

Kayla's assistant ably demonstrates
the cities blue characteristics

 Tired, and crammed into the back with our multi bags, we drive through what I would assume was a modern day Dickensian dystopia. The dystopian version when the future goes bad in "Back to the Future", Indian style. It really does inspire thoughts of 7 year old chimney sweeps, satanic mills and 2AM under Blackfriers bridge (a long story)
Ugh!

Even at night in our desperately tired state, you can tell the roads are more a collection of pot holes in a city with less than non existent town planning.

Not too impressed with my selection of hotel this time, it's hard to come close to Mud Mirror and Jaiselmer after all, but this is it, and it will do.

At breakfast, we have a great view of the city to the South, but we are so close to the Fort, its just a big rock wall from here. We have a hard time working out who, if anyone, is actually working here. Breakfast is delayed it would appear, so we have a late start. Mad dog and Englishmen weather await us.

These Gods certainly knew how to have a good time
where do they come up with this stuff?

Our Tuk takes us through streets that are even worse than what I imagined last night. Narrow streets, immense potholes, stinky, even more garbage than even I'm used to, cows, cow shit, people, people..... etc. disgusting.

We are not used to the heat yet. We need to drink lots in this heat. About 1 litre per 2 hours if you're active. Just drink all the time is really what you need to remember. Luckily, water, bottled is available just about everywhere, and very cheap.

The missus is beginning to wilt in the heat. Kayla & I are still only pending maybe wilters. As long as there's shade, it's not too excessive. Probably mid to high 30's today, Ilge is fighting various exhaustion's, probably as a result of the cold I've given her.

Central courtyard of 

the  Harem

I guess it was the Maharaja's version of a Rolls Royce

It's gets pretty torrid, but we (mostly), have a great time scaling the fort and the audio tour really helps out.(Discounted for seniors). It takes about 3 - 4 hours. The scale is massive, the current status, mainly very good. Musicians are all along the trail through various gates.

The audio guide distributed as part of the entrance fee (a really good idea if you are as cheap as I am when it comes to "tourist stuff"), gives a lot of details.

View from as far up as you can get

It comes as a great surprise to me, that on the the audio guide, the Brit invasion of the 16th - 19th centuries are actually looked upon as a good thing. This detail was also on the Jaisalmer fort audio tour, so maybe this is now orthodox thinking. The given reasoning is  because once the Brits subdued the sub continent, the Raja's didn't have to show each other who was boss any more. Thus saving everyone from ongoing expenditure of incredible amounts of blood and treasure previously spent annihilating opposing clans, factions and chick pending burning. Seems that everyone except the ruling classes could then count on being royally oppressed, but no one would need to go to war unless you joined the army. At this stage, the British one.

The Jaswant Thada

"Elaborately carved white marble funerary 
monument built in 1899 to honour 
Maharaja Jaswant Singh II." 

There's obviously some inherent contradictions in the official accounts of Indian history, as artifacts of the Indian Mutiny, I believe in Delhi are labelled as belonging to "Indian Freedom Fighters" Hmmmmm

After a few hours, we relax over really over priced snacks (ie, more than a few cents), and a cup of tea (naturally), we look for a tuk for the "Jaswant Thada" a white palace, just down the road

It's quite the mausoleum. All white marble

Tuk drivers abound, I ask how much, they give me the tourist price, I laugh. I tell them my price, they laugh. What fun this is. Eventually I lead our troupe off, and only then do we agree on a price. Honour retained all round.

According to Wiki, "The Jaswant Thada is a cenotaph located in Jodhpur, in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It was built by Maharaja Sardar Singh of Jodhpur State in 1899 in memory of his father, Maharaja Jaswant Singh II,^[1] and serves as the cremation ground for the royal family of Marwar"
Kayla & I have a quick look, mainly for photo ops. It looks spectacular, but...... Age and budget cuts have sapped the reality of the place
Inside this "marble marvel", I spot some riveting work on the main (marble) beams, and there's definitely some water damage on the ceiling marble. It's actually bubbling.
I don't think the budget or the expertise is up to Maharaja levels any more

The Fort, from the White Palace, fronted by fat dude

When we return, I realise why it stinks so much here, apart from the fact that it's getting much hotter, there's also the cattle barn next door to our place.

In need of refunding our pleasures, we head into town for cash machines. My debit doesn't work here, but for some reason, credit cards do. We celebrate with an up market restaurant, "Indique" with decent beers (as in above pix). We are surrounded by supplicant waiter, all asking us for our order, another beer, hows your food et al. We bear up under the pressure

That night, seems that there's yet another festival here as we watch fireworks light up the sky for about an hour from about 6 or 7 separate locations directly looking out from our balcony towards the city

An ancient monument at left, and some

buildings at back

The many stray dogs dogs bark all night

Mandor -
Kingdom Of Parihar
Warrior's

Next day, we  have heard that Manfore Garden is worth a visit. They are not. The only noteworthy item was trying to decide what the remains of skin and bones of some long since deceased animal was in one of the previously ornamental ponds. I went for monkee, Kayla for pigAs there is no direct train, or even bus route from Jodhpur to Pushkar, our next destination, we hire a taxi.

It's 185 Km', we leave at 3:00PM, lots of time? Not really. Lots of cows without lights on major highways, Tuks, trucks and busses, also with no lights, other traffic doing death defying feats around you.

We had a competent driver so we arrived alive, and at least, physically unscathed.

Trains and Uber for me from now on

From Your Correspondent