Jodhpur –

• Posted by: Geo Kearley
• Comments: 2

Hi –
I can’t remeber the last thing we wrote, but we’re sitting in Mehrangarh Fort, in an air conditioned room inside the fort gate. The fort is enormous, and it’s built with a wall system around it much like the Great Wall of China. It’s built on a 125m high rocky outcrop above the city, and it’s the only place you want to be here – the rest of the city is a cesspool.

Apparently Rudyard Kipling described this fort as the “creation of angels, fairies and giants”. It’s a fairly apt description. The fort is full of ornamented court yards, recieving halls, Mughal art work, elephant chairs and divans. The coronation chair for the throne of the Jodhpur rulers is sitting in the main court yard, in all it’s resplendid glory (actually it’s a marble bench…) The armory displays a frightening array of implements used to kill people in any number of ways – particularly of note were the “scissor daggers” that ripped you open after they’d ripped into you. Despite the gruesome nature of the weapons, they are all works of art, inlaid with fussy gold and silver details along the length of the blades or shafts – depending on which dynasty you were looking at.

The city of Jodhpur itself is what we envisioned much of India to be before we arrived – full of smog pollution, the stench of human waste, cows everywhere, piles of rubble and garbage on every corner, people selling every imaginable and unimaginable thing from their carpets and carts on the street, child beggars and beggars with leprosy everywhere, and the general population going about it’s daily buisness in the dirt and the din of traffic noise. It makes you feel like the Grinch complaining about the Who’s and all their “Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!

Regardless, it’s worth being here – you don’t go to India for a vacation – you go for an experience. So far the experience has been good. When we arrived in Delhi, there was a lot of construction going on for the Commonwealth Games, which they’re hosting in 2010, but the pollution, the noise and the congestion is nowhere near what we had braced ourselves for. It was easy to hire a taxi driver for the day, and go see the Red Fort, India gate, Humayun’s Tomb, Parliament House, the Mehrauli Archaeological Park, and find a decent meal.

We slept in the Thar desert the other night, and marveled at how different the star patterns in the sky were from those at home. We rode camels out to camp, and saw wild peacocks running the sands between the desert shrubs. It was astounding! We knew peacocks had to come from somewhere, but we had not expected to see them in the middle of the desert in India. As a reality check, juxtaposed with the peacocks was the carcass of a cow that had died of dehydration / starvation. Life here is tough for everything.

The toughest thing about being here is the incessant heat. It’s suppose to be monsoon season, and there has not been any rain. Everything is bone dry, and you sweat several liters of water every day. We’ve been drinking 8 liters of water each a day, and you still wake up in the middle of the night looking for more. You can’t allow yourself to get thirsty in this environment – if you feel thirsty, it’s too late. It will take you days to rehydrate properly.

The easiest thing about being here is the people – most of them are very friendly and interested in you and where you’re from. We went for a massage and aeurveda treatment in Jaisalmer, and the people were amazing – there’s a lot to learn from ancient Indian methods of natural therapy. We’ve sat in an old Haveli and discussed world politics with people who are just pleased to meet us. We’ve been driven by tuktuk drivers who pull-start their engines, smile at you, then take you on a wild race through the city streets to you destination, dodging people, cows, cars, goats, other tuktuks, as if you’re in a chase scene from James Bond, then leave you at your destination, unscathed.

We’re off again tomorrow – we’ll write when we can.
As always, we miss our friends, family, and doggie,
Noel & George

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Date posted :	Jul 9, 2009
Last modified :	Jan 5, 2010
Categories :	India, Rajasthan
Tags :	Dehli, Jodhpur