Jodhpur Belly

kumbalgarh fort balcony
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For the journey to Jodphur from Udaipur we rented a car and driver.    R2200 wasn't a bad price, and better than trying to get the train, which requires at least 1 change.  Which can be tricky with the lateness of India trains.

It also meant that we didn't have to take a seperate day trip out to two attractions we wanted to visit:  Kumbulgarh Fort and the Ranakpur Temples.

a little pungent

The Jain temples at Ranakpur are some of the finest of their type I understand.  And indeed they are very nice, lots of plain white marble carved into really nice stuff.  Alex took lots of pictures whilst I wandered around.

posing like an indian boy
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Jain's are quite famous for their more extreme members.  There is one arm of the religion called the sky-clad.  I they reject all clothes, which must get a bit chilly at times.  Others wear face masks so that they don't accidentally suck in any bugs, and they all refrain from garlic and onion in case it gets them a bit hot and bothered.

At the temple we struggled because they don't allow leather in.  So we had to remove our belts, and then (for security, not religious reasons) we had to leave our back behind, so all of our valuable s had to be taken out of the bag and put in out pockets.  With the lack of belts this made for some quite low trousers, I think they were trying to get us sky-clad.

fort walls
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Kumblgarh was another or Rajasthan's amazing forts.  Perched high on a hill, and full of nice little courtyards and balconies we took our time exploring it.  Much to the disappointment of our driver who told us that we could only spend 1 hour there.  In fact he was a bit of a pest all day.  Telling us to spend just 15 minutes at the temple (we took about 3 times that long just to look at one of the 4 temples before we were hussled back into the car).  His timeliness wouldn't have been so much of a problem if we hadn't had to wait for him to smoke a cigarette barely 10 minutes out of Udaipur.  He also took us to a 'very famous' restaurant that ONLY served a really watery buffet for R250 (about 4 times more than it should have been).  I think the commission bells must have called him there.  He claimed that drivers got a cheap lunch (only R150...) which was strange as that worked out at more than a day's wages for him.

the village in the fort
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And when it came to paying time once he'd dropped us 200 metres from our hotel (he claimed he couldn't drive into Jodhpur any further, yet there were cars parked with 20 metres of our door) he asked for more money to pay for parking fees, and yet mysteriously had no receipt for them.

Overall, it was worth having the car.  But if you do get one follow our hotel's advice and try to find one that doesn't speak English so he can't tell you what to do.

Jodphur itself was reminiscent of Cordoba in Argentina, although only for the state of Alex's stomach.  I had a nice couple of days doing the audio tour of the fort on my own, and playing a little cricket with some small boys.  Alex left the room after a day and a half only to find the streets very very smokey, and they were.  Jodphur has yet to get all their auto-rickshaws changed over from diesel, so by mid-afternoon it is a little pungent.

roof life
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It is pretty easy to get lost in Jodhpur old town.  I managed it every time I left the hotel, the worst was a 90 minute walk around the wrong fort when I was just looking for a couple of samosas for breakfast.

And finally, whilst the fort in Jodphur is good, the famous blue city, is not all that blue, at least compared with Bundi.  See what you think from the pictures.