The Mehrangarth Fort of Jodhpur

View of the city of Jodhpur from the fort.
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Try as we might to not be robbed, the wicked taxi drivers of Asia always seemed one step ahead of us. In Jodhpur, we caught a taxi near the train station at about 6am to go to a guest house that had a good description in our guide book. We told him we wanted to be dropped at the clock tower in the main market, as that would be a good place to walk to our hotel from. He said he knew where there was a good hotel we could stay in, but we said no thanks, thinking our room price would get bumped up from the commission he would get. He took us to his hotel anyway. We would not get out of the rickshaw and insisted that he take us to the clock tower. He said that the gates to the market were closed this early in the morning, and this was as close as he could drive. Lies! So we started wandering the streets looking for our hotel. He had dropped us about 2 blocks away from our hotel, and 3 blocks away from the gates, which were not locked by the way. We got a little lost in the windy streets and the taxi driver kept appearing, keeping an eye on us like a vulture, and he offered to take us to his brother’s hotel instead, or to a 3rd  hotel he knew. At least we did not pay him any more than we intended, and we made it to our hotel fine after a confused pre-dawn wander through the streets.

Michael enjoying an omelette from the Omelette Man.
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Jodhpur is as interesting a city as you can hope for. We loved the bustling markets, bought vials of sandalwood, rose, and jasmine oils, drank fruit lassis, and had a great time people watching in the markets near the clock tower. Down the street from those markets, Erin got the fabric to make a beautiful sharwal kameez, which was later executed by a tailor in New Delhi. Through out the town there are numerous houses painted a shade of blue that when fresh, is similar to the blue of the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech. The blue signifies that the family is of the Brahmin caste. When seen from the high vantage point of the Mehrangarh Fort atop a hill in the center of town, the blue houses pop out of the dusty sand colored city like sapphires.

Camel ready to haul some poplars around town.
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Down the road from our guest house we frequently found a very tall camel tethered to a wagon for hauling straight poplar trunks for building materials. He didn’t mind being photographed by tourists, but most people just walked by without care. Further down the road we passed a grapefruit sized rock covering a hole above the sewage ditch running beside the road. The ditch has been covered with concrete plates, but the locals know that they can push aside the rock and squat over this hole to use this convenient road side toilet. We saw a teenage girl using it a couple times in plain daylight, people just don’t seem to notice a person doing private business in public. Perhaps with open windows and crowded quarters there just is little privacy. At night many men sleep on charpoys ("4 footed" beds strung from jute or natural fibers) set up in front of their stalls on the street by the gates to the market place.

Hand prints of queens who died in satis.
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We made the obligatory stop by the Omelet Man's stall in the shadow of the gate to the clock tower. We had a couple of his omelets and they were indeed worth the visit. He told us about the fateful review in the Lonely Planet guidebook that mistakenly described him as an omelet shop, even though he had originally been making many foods. This review changed everything, and now he finds himself making up to 1000 eggs worth of omelets a day.

One day, while enjoying the people watching and drinking fruit lassis, we saw a family of 6 climb onto a scooter and take off. It was ingenious how they fit on it. The father drove, with a child standing on the foot board in front of him. A second child held the baby behind him the father, and the last child was smushed behind them. Then the mother got on side saddle (she was wearing a sharwal kameez with a long trailing scarf), and they took off, smiling at our astonished faces.

A Rajput character smokes his hookah in the Mehrangarth Fort.
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The entrance to the fort is a trip back in history as you climb the windy streets passed the blue painted houses of the Brahmin. Pass the tombstone marking the place where a man volunteered to be buried alive within the wall. He was breaking a curse placed on the fort by a displaced hermit. This hermit was moved out to make room for the fort, and in revenge cursed the site to be waterless forever. Through the volunteer’s ultimate sacrifice, and wise water conservation plans, the fort has apparently not suffered serious water shortages.

Stone masons making a window lattice.
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As you walk through the interior gates, you can see hand prints left behind of the queens who burned themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre, an act of devotion called sati. The last sati recorded was in 1953. The fort has well preserved palaces and is still in possession of the Maharaja of Jodhpur, Gaj Singh, who coincidentally was the Indian High Commissioner of Trinidad and Tobago. We enjoyed looking through the museums, armory, palanquin room, elephant seats (called howdahs), and seeing musicians and a proud-looking sword-carrying hookah-smoking character in one of the courtyards.

The clock tower, as seen from our guest house roof top restaurant.
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The Maharaja of Jodhpur is doing a great job of maintaining the fort, palaces and museums, as well as keeping up a polo club in the city. Horse riding is a long prized skill in Jodhpur; the city gave us the name for those fancy horse riding pants. Outside of the castle walls we watched some masons carving sandstone replacements for window lattices. It’s obviously hard and delicate work. The men squat on their haunches in the sun without shade and chisel out pencil stenciled outlines in thin slabs. One night we booked a dinner of thali on the castle ramparts in the restaurant that the Maharaja operates. It was cool in the desert night, and the walls were lit with candles, rimmed with cannons, and the desert stretched far into the dark night. The meal was great, but it did cost an extravagant $15 each, compared to the $2 thalis we were used to. Looking back, as I write this in Norway drinking my $10 coffee, I’d love to be able to spend $15 for such a delicious thali again.

A howdah, seat for riding an elephant.
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The last day, as per usual, we started the day with a breakfast on the roof top restaurant of our guest house looking out on a great 360 degree view of the sand stone and painted blue city. I was feeling a little unwell, and that turned out to be the onset of a viral fever, quiet like the one that struck Erin in Galle a fortnight earlier. It would lay me out for a few days on our return to New Delhi. Erin had diarrhea, but we had learned to live with constant tummy troubles during the last 3 months in India. We relaxed and enjoyed that last day in Jodhpur before heading to the train station.

One of the stone palaces in the fort.
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Our overnight train ride back was good, and we had the typical questioning by one of the passengers. He was a banker, and I was happy that Erin had sat between us, so he would have to direct his questions to her. It turned out that I under-estimated the Indian male reluctance to talk to a woman who is accompanied by a man. The banker kept asking me the questions, leaning out to be able to make eye contact around her. What is your profession? What is her profession? What is your salary? What is her salary? Really, she makes more money than you?

A courtyard inside a palace in the fort.
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We had to make this return trip to New Delhi to apply for our Chinese visas. We intended on being there for only a day, but due to the fever we stuck around for 3 and a half days. We submitted our passports, and dropped off Erin’s sharwal kameez fabric with a tailor on Connaught Place. I turned in early, and woke in the middle of the night with a fever and pounding in my head and eyes. The most comfortable position to wait out the arrival of dawn was sitting up against the cool wall with a sheet over my head to block any light from the bare light bulbs in the hallway. Erin escorted me to a doctor around the corner who ordered up a series of blood and urine tests and prescribed some antibiotics and pain killers. A couple of days later I was mostly cured and the test results were negative for known illnesses. My worries of a rat having crawled up my nose and burrowed behind my eyes were assuaged. We caught the next train available to visit Agra for a couple of days.

A palanquin inside the palace.
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A good website on the Mehrangarh Fort is:

http://www.tourismtravelindia.com/rajasthanportal/touristattractions/MEHRANGARH.html