The Blue City - Jodhpur

Although we had a bit of a rough early morning Will slept well after his last fever episode. He was much perkier especially after I jubilated "it's a hot shower". After grabbing our leftover pizza and topping up our water bottles we jumped in the car and was soon on our way to Jodhpur.

So why is known as the blue city? Well a lot of the buildings are painted blue. But why? There isn't actually any historical reasoning for the blue colour but their are various guesses including the Blue color was associated with Lord Shiva and there were lot of Brahmin followers of Shiva , they consider blue color to be sacred, or because blue color reflects most of the heat and because Jodhpur is known as suncity as it has sun all year round. And I can believe it. The scenery was completely different along the way. It was even drier, very little trees, flat and possibly the most real India we have seen. Although Rajasthan is seen as the Kings Home the poverty in Rajasthan is unbelievable. Ajay told us that the residents were given only 100 days work through the government and so it's very normal for families to go without food for days and weeks. Also the roads were basically rocky dust tracks that were just full of bulls and oxen. They would come about an inch away from our moving car without a care in the world of our drivers manic beeping. I must admit it gave me a few heart attacks along the way!

We soon arrived in Jodhpur and our first stop Umaid Bawan, but it was closed. Now I believe it has made international news of a famous bollywood actress getting married. That's here in Jodhpur!

Next was the famous Mehrangarh Fort. I think out of the many forts we have done (and let's be honest it's been daily in Rajasthan) it's my favourite. You get a free audio guide with your ticket and the views of the blue city and along the Fort walls were just stunning. I think we must have spent about 3 hours going round!

It was now well after 2pm and I was getting grumpy with hunger so we went to our hotel, checked in, had a quick half an hour chill time and then walked out into the chaos of the bazaar. And it really was chaos! I had to bang on a rickshaw that nearly ran me over! It was a bit of an odd time for eating so we decided to just have some small street food and have dinner later. We had a bite to eat, bought some bananas from the market, feared for our lives a bit on the streets and could barely breathe because of the dust. However, I must admit it is one of the most real cities we have been to. Some of the others feel quite touristy, maybe it's the location of our homestay but everyone is just getting on with their lives. There's no tourist prices, everyone just pays the same. So although there's not much to see here it's just a really good city to sit have chai and people watch and this is exactly what we did. In the evening we had chai, went to the famous omelette man (omelette sandwiches an obvious winner), had another chai, bought snacks and then had a simple dhal and rice for dinner.

Luckily Will is on the mend but now I'm getting a cold! Typical!Read more