Jodhpur, Rajastha, India by Kev

7.4.2025. Time to hop on a bus and head out of town. We're up early this morning as we had a bus to catch to Jodhpur. We got to the right spot, it actually had a sign for the company. Waited for the bloke to turn up, just for him to tell us that our bus was cancelled. WTF, really! “We tried contacting you but you gave no phone number”. Ok, what about an email? Reckons there's no email, I call bullshit, that's how we received our bus tickets. Anyway it's cancelled, what are we supposed to do now? Get directed to another bus ticket place, idk what you call it. Mel did well, they got us some tickets to Jodhpur on another bus. A cheap bus, how most Indians travel we think. Bloody hot, bloody crowded, rough and noisy, for 7hrs. As soon as we step off the bus we get pestered by Tuktuk drivers. Literally as your foot hits the ground it starts. Back tf up and give us a minute champ. We were happy to get to our stay. We have a floor to ourselves. Two bedrooms, two showers and toilets and a sitting area, this is great. Straight into the shower, the kids were starting to smell pretty funky. Hot water system is shit, hmmmm. You know what, that's ok, it's 43°, here the water is already hot. We had this idea that the further north we went the cooler it would get. Hahaha WRONG!! At least it's not humid, just friggin hot, reminds me of Cloncurry actually. We rested for a bit, then later when it got a bit cooler(hahahaha), we went out for a bit of an explore to see if we could find some dinner. Checked google maps(yep it's my go to), and headed to a “restaurant”. The streets where we are, are narrow, but that doesn't slow the locals down. I was probably not at my best after being heat blasted for 7 hours, but Jodhpur did not give a great first impression. Bugger all room and they still race around like they're Valentino Rossi. Back to our search for a restaurant, turns out what they refer to as a restaurant here is a takeaway place, or it's closed(thanks google). We did see the end of another festival tho, they had a camel pulling a cart with people on it and people walking playing drums. After about 45mins or so of walking around looking for somewhere to eat, we ended up back at our hotel and eating there. Time to sleep!
8.4.2025. Today we're going to Mehrangarh Fort. We saw it from the rooftop of our stay last night when we had our dinner. It, looks, bloody, huge! Was only a 10-15min walk to get there, and turns out it is pretty huge. It was a very interesting fort, lots to see, another museum inside it obviously, and an audio guide. You can see where cannonballs had hit part of it during a siege. It was designed well, with a 90° bend just before one of the main gates. Why? Because they used to use elephants to smash down the gates, this bend made sure they couldn't build up enough speed to do any significant damage. I had also wondered why there were spikes on the doors about 2-3m up. As another way of stopping elephants. I took a photo, but it never shows properly what you actually see. This fort was a lot bigger and far more grand than the last one we visited. Lots of stained glass, balconies, carvings, old weapons, armour and clothing. Overall an amazing place to visit. Afterwards we headed to a clock tower in the centre of the “old” part of the city. We'd had enough of the heat by then, so we headed back for a shower and a rest. We couldn't be arsed to go out and look for food, so we ate at our hotel again. Which is actually pretty good food. They make it all from scratch in their little kitchen on the rooftop, you can hear them chopping and blending while you're having a beer. Yep, they even have a beer for you here. We saw some fireworks in the distance from the rooftop and the fort is lit up, it looks pretty impressive at night too. Kids have been bugging us for a movie, afterwards sleepy time.
9.4.2025. Had a bit of a sleep in so a slightly later start. We headed towards a place called Toorji Ka Jhalra Bavdi. A huge square well built around 1740, with a depth close to 100m. Several steps leading down on three sides and a covered section that had a water wheel driven by bullocks on-top of it, to draw the water up. It had fallen into ruin, but in recent years has been revamped. It was originally built upon request from the wife of the Maharaj, for the women of the city, for fetching the household water. The day we visited, it was being used by some young blokes as a place to relax and have fun, by swimming and jumping from the various high spots and ledges. We'd skipped breakfast, so by now people were starting to get hungry (Mel mostly), we found a cafe near the step well, and remedied the situation. We walked for a while after, looking for and finding a lake nearby. This one had no-one swimming, it was green and horrible looking, with rubbish everywhere. Apparently there is another step well close by, but we didn't find it. Maybe led astray by Google again. By now we're hot and have had enough. I had found a science centre on GMaps, we thought that might get us out of the heat for awhile. Grabbed a Tuktuk and took off. We got there around 12:30, turns out it just closed and won't open again until 4. GMaps said it was open, yep double checked it, open. I have learned not to be surprised when GMaps gives me useful information, that's completely false. Well what now? There's a “mall” just a short Tuktuk ride away. We need some stuff, toothpaste and whatnot. Let's go there and see what happens. We turned up, there's workers all over the place grinding and welding. Cables running here and there. We asked someone at the door “are you open”? Yep, come on in, don't let a little construction stop you. We found a small arcade on the 3rd floor, handed over Rs2000 and got a card to use with the games. The kids found some games they really liked, Andrew a racing game and Em a fishing game. We all had a go at a new take on air hockey, started with one puck, at some point the machine dropped in another 3-4 pucks. Later it dropped in more and more. I reckon there was 7-8 pucks on the table at one point. The kids were laughing their arse off and their arms were buggered by the end of it. Mel had slipped down to have a look around for the few supplies we needed. Nothing, only clothes and stuff for sale. Oh well, the kids finished all the credit on the card and we tuktuked it back to our room. Later we headed out to a rooftop restaurant I found, a little disappointed with it, but it fixed a craving I'd been having for chicken, our stays rooftop restaurant is vegetarian only. I haven't had much problem with the menus here, love veggies, but after awhile I need to let the carnivore out. What they did well was, masala tea. Mel ordered a pot, and it didn't disappoint, really nice. Saw some fireworks, which is every night here so far, looked at the fort lit up for a bit then headed back. The traffic around our area is crazy at times, especially in the evening. Motorbikes, people and Tuktuk's all trying to go somewhere at the same time, horns and yelling. Throw in a family from Aus trying to get where they wanna go and it's pandemonium. After dinner it had settled down a bit and we had a reasonably stress free walk back. We are much better at navigating the traffic than when we started our trip, but we still have moments. We made it home without incident, if you don't count Emma going arse up in a gutter, should of said without further incident. Cleaned and disinfected, there's shit everywhere (dogs/cows/donkeys/camels), savlon applied, time for bed.
10.4.2025. We headed out this morning to meet up with a guide to take us on a walking tour of the blue city. First stop was a samosa store, we watched the guys mixing the ingredients and making samosas. They're so much neater and faster than we were when we had a go. Tried a few varieties, but my favourite was the oval shaped chilli one. You take a whole green chilli, wrap it with potato mix, dip it in batter and deep-fry it. Turns out pretty good. After that we walked across to a store that specialises in lassi, sweetened yoghurt drinks. We tried three types, I preferred the samosas, kids like the lassi. Now our tour began proper. We walked towards the fort, talking and asking questions. We were shown some of the better wall paintings in the streets, were told why they had chosen blue, which was Indigo, which we had used to dye some stuff in Laos. The blue colour helped the buildings stay cooler, Indigo mixed with other ingredients created an insect repellent. One more reason he would tell us later, was because of the caste system here. The Brahmin caste was the highest ranking caste, and they wanted everyone to know who and where they were, so they painted their homes blue. Anyway, we saw some pretty cool street paintings, some tight little alleyways, the very first gate to the fort and a look out upon the first city of Jodhpur, the real old city. We were shown were they got the water from, a small lake near the fort, you could see where the water wheels used to be for bringing up the water. We also say where Andrew and Mel would be starting and finishing the zipline in a few days. Turns out our guide knows the zipline business and booked us in. We tuktuked it back to where we had started and our guide bought us a chai tea and showed us a few more things, like the spices. Then it was over, it had taken 3hrs for the tour and now what do we do? We thought, well we're right in the middle of the market district, why not just have a look around. We tried to just have a look around, but couldn't, the sellers are pretty pushy and don't/won't take no for an answer. We're just looking means you just haven't been convinced yet. We soon had enough of that and decided not to hang around anymore. Since it was almost 1 we went to find some food. I had something new, Kashmiri pulao. Fried rice with nuts and some fruits, beans and peas. Probably some spices in there somewhere, it is India after all. It was really good, I'm always pretty keen to try new foods, fantastic when it turns out good. We headed back, we all blogged a bit and kids did some math. Afterwards we mucked around making a family “coat of arms”. Kids really got into it and we ended up with a reasonable prototype. We couldn't be bothered going out again, so we went back to the rooftop and had dinner here again. The guy makes the food all himself, tonight's meal was really creamy and delicious. We put the kids to bed and decided a movie would be nice, half way through I was starting to fall asleep, so we called it quits for the night.
11.4.2025. We headed to Mandore gardens today, where the original city was once, about 10klm away. There are buildings and a fort here from the 4th century and up. It was where “Jodhpur” started, tho it wasn't called that. The then king thought the fort was not high enough, and therefore not defensible enough. So, he looked around and found the new spot for his fort, which was both much higher and had a water supply. The new fort was built, the city was moved. They were attacked, and the fort was never breached, so a good choice I guess. There's not much left of the old fort and temples at this site, but there are several of the newer buildings still in good condition and we enjoyed exploring the whole site. When I say newer buildings, I mean 400 years old, ya know, new. The gardens themselves were ok, a bit dry but it's that time of year. We are getting regular 40-44° most days here. There's was a temple here that was quite busy, they were burning something out the front, looked like coconut husk among other things. Not sure if it was a special thing or an everyday sorta thing, and we'll never know. We'd had enough of the park and we're getting hungry. Tuktuk back to the step well, we know there are restaurants there and had some lunch. We chose a restaurant on a rooftop overlooking the stepwell. The kids and I had our fill of chicken again while we watched the young locals jumping off the sides into the well again. We were getting close to finishing when we heard some music. Where can that be coming from? It's getting closer, around the corner came a small truck with heaps of speakers in the back and people following, dancing along behind it. What is going on here? There's another small truck all decorated with people following and dancing. What is going on here, what is going? It's India so we're used to seeing things like this, we're just wondering what it's all about. One of the waiters had walked up behind me and was looking also. He said what I thought was “merry”, whats merry, like a festival I asked. No he said “marry”, ah I get it, it's a wedding procession. Yep, that's it, I'm guessing that's all the people involved heading to the wedding, dancing to bloody loud music and having fun the whole way. They had passed a corner and we're heading towards us a bit now, “BANG”, everyone jumped, what was that, another loud bang. They're setting off crackers in front of the procession. They kept moving, and the music and crackers slowly became quieter. Afterwards we wandered back to our room and the kids did some study ladder, gotta keep the schoolwork up. Andrew played with his Spotify playlist a bit. He likes his music, though I think he likes being able to muck around on his computer more. He found an artist who makes music about Minecraft and SpongeBob and some other games, he loves it. We get a song about creepers going “boom boom boom”, followed by Thunderstruck, he has a very diverse love of music. It's surprising how quickly the afternoon goes by when you are sitting around doing bugger all. We showered and watched a couple episodes of blown away, kids love it. Then it was bedtime as we had an early start the next morning.
12.4.2025. This morning we got up a bit earlier and made our way back to the fort. Mel and Andrew were going ziplining for Andrew's birthday. Mel is shitting themselves, Andrew is just excited as he loves ziplines. Emma doesn't like the idea of it, scares the crap out of her. She couldn't bring herself to do it in Laos, not allowed to do it here because she's not tall enough. It's funny, they didn't care how tall you were in Laos, you could do it if you wanted. Similar to Cambodia and the waterpark, kids could do everything. In India they have height and weight limits. Mel and Andrew got their harnesses on and went down to the practice line for a tutorial. Afterwards Em and I got told we could follow and watch, hell yeah let's go. Where we stood was the starting and finishing point, it worked out we got to see all the ziplines, just from very far. I managed to get a video of them all, some a bit blurry. After seeing her mum, who is scared of heights, do the ziplines, Emma said she wanted to try again if we got the chance. We'll see, can't force her to do it, just encourage a lot. Mel got back with a massive grin, was very happy to have done it. Andrew just wanted to do it again, he has no concerns stepping off and gliding through the air. Once the adrenaline had worn off a little, hunger kicked in. We found a cafe in the fort and had some “ok” food. What now? Well I thought we would like to maybe just walk around a bit. We're usually walking to somewhere, or to do something. What if we just slowed down and just walked, slower, taking in more of the place. So we did, we walked. We never had a destination in mind, we just walked. In our walking we found a sweet shop, bought heaps. Continued on, found some people making some other stuff. Deep fried and soaked in a sweet syrup, so we tried that. Once we'd had enough of our strolling, we slowly headed back to our room. Ordered a pot of chai from the guy at the desk, waited until it arrived and then got stuck into the sweets. Too sweet for me, I had a try but I'm a savoury bloke. Now I'm blogging again as we're going to post tonight. Probably head out for dinner somewhere tonight. I found a place that has some live music on Saturday nights. Hopefully google hasn't lied to me about that, we'll see.
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