Our First Overnight Bus
Once we finally got on the overnight bus, it was actually pretty comfortable. Marieke and Jon had one big bed (ticketed as separate seats, so you wouldn’t want to risk booking one if you were alone) while I had a narrower version, similar to the size of a train bed. It was a bit rocky, but we were exhausted, and were soon asleep. We awoke around 7 for a bathroom break and I promptly fell asleep again, waking around 10am. Only about an hour late, we arrived in Jodhpur around noon and headed to our guesthouse to check in.
Old, Blue City
We were staying in the old part of the city, also the blue part of the aptly named blue city, with most of the old buildings painted a deep indigo colour. Besides being auspicious (a word we would run into many times in India), the colour dispels the summer heat as well as mosquitoes. Practical and beautiful then. Our guesthouse was right in the centre of it, down a narrow, windy and steep alleyway. It also had a great rooftop cafe with a view of the famous fort in the city, Mehrangh.
Ziplining Across the Fort
Being so close to the fort, and with the weather about as clear as we had seen, we headed to the flying fox for a christmas splurge. How they got permission to build a series of ziplines across the 15th century fort is anyone’s guess, but it sure was spectacular. We flew across lakes, desert and fort walls with fantastic views. The three of us were paired with another woman from South Korea and who was living in Delhi. It was her first time on a zipline and she was clearly terrified- making sure we went first every time- but she had a great time in the end.
We wandered further up the fort until the paid portion and watched sunset. As the fort closed, we couldn’t go back the way we came, so ended up trudging along the road for half an hour back to our guesthouse. On the way down we noticed it getting warmer as we neared the town- it had gotten quite cold on the top of the hill the fort was on- definitely the dessert.
Other White People!
We then ordered a couple of beers at the guesthouse rooftop and started our traditional time passing playing a few rounds of yahtzee. Soon, however, two other foreigners appeared. We were shocked. Not shocked enough not to talk to them, it turned out they were also from Canada, and like Marieke and Jon, work in seasonal tourism. They were on a three week trip of India and were also amazed to see us- there were just so few foreigners in the country it was hard to get to know any. We had a great time swapping stories (they had just come from camping in Oman, which had just been added to our future travel list and the reaffirmed that it was amazing) over beer until we headed out for dinner. They had a private driver so were moving very quickly and had an early morning ahead of them. It was a great Christmas Eve.
Celebrating Christmas, Jodhpur Style
We woke Christmas morning feeling very relaxed with very few plans, other than trying to get a good coffee. The chai in the country was fantastic, but we did occasionally miss real coffee. We wandered to old town and paid to go up the historic clock tower. We had a very enthusiastic guide whose family had apparently been caring for the clock tower for generations, proudly displaying the inner workings of the clock and requesting us to take photos of everything. Luckily another family came up and he attended to them, allowing us to escape.
With not a lot going on in the way of Christmas celebrations, Jon had read about a temporary Christmas style fair, which we knew we had to check out. It was everything we thought it would be, with photo ops and fake snow and lots of children activities. We got our requisite Christmas photo and moved on to try and find some coffee.
We never did find a great coffee (a couple of promising places turned out to closed, including the rooftop cafe above a gym that ended up just being a construction site, that we found out after climbing about 8 flights of stairs). But we did find a local version of cold coffee, basically a coffee milkshake, which went down well enough as a christmas treat. For christmas dinner we went back to the restaurant we went the night before, as it was close, good and they had promised a band for the holiday. We went right to the top where what looked and sounded like the owners’ family was playing very loud, very non Christmasy music, and took a seat a level down so we could hear each other talk. It was a very chill Christmas.
Exploring Mehrangh Fort
Our last day in Jodhpur we finally went to see the inside of the fort we had spent so much time gazing at from the rooftop restaurants the last few days. It was packed. Luckily, it came with an audioguide which was very well done, so we spent an interesting few hours learning about the history. A lot of what we learned would be repeated in forts and palaces to come, as the functions, architecture and governance were quite similar around the region.
From there we wandered down to Jaswant Thada, also known as the mini Taj Mahal of Jodhpur, a gorgeous marble building and grounds built to honour Maharaja Jaswant Singh II. We grabbed lunch and spent the afternoon exploring more of old town including the famous step well (also omnipresent across India as water sources and storage hundreds of years ago) and busy markets. With the sun starting to go down and our last day, we had been recommended to go see a park outside of town, so we grabbed a tuk tuk and explored beautiful temples, watched the sun set behind a hill and temple, and waited for another light and sound show. Unlike the one in Khajuraho though, this one was free, included in the nominal cost of entering the park. Waiting for the light show meant it was dark and cold heading back, as we froze in the tuk tuk back to our place.
The next morning we walked to the train station to head to Bikaner.
