Jodhpur

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The blue city

Keeping with the colored city themes of Rajastan, Jodhpur is known as the blue city. Blue is the color of the Brahmin caste (the highest of the four Hindu castes) and Brahmins would distinguish themselves by painting their houses blue. Eventually non-Brahmins also painted their houses blue believing that the color kept away mosquitoes. The color of Jodhpur is much more striking than the small area of pink buildings in Jaipur or the warm golden glow of the sandstone in Jaiselmer, and the different bright blues make for a gorgeous background for everyday activities.

The old town can be a little nerve-wracking to walk around in due to the

The market around Jodhpur's clocktower

very skinny streets and buzzing traffic trying to fit through them but after picking our way through gutters and over trash we eventually made our way to the clock tower where we treated ourselves to refreshing Makhania lassis. We spent the next few hours walking around the area surrounding the clock tower through the bustling market place admiring handmade rat traps (like miniature raccoon traps at home), smelling spices, and wondering how so many eggs could be stacked on one another at the omelet kiosk.

The following day we made our

Inside the fort

way over to the Mehrangarh Fort which could be seen towering high above the city from our hotel. If the best palace we’ve seen in India is in Mysore, then the best fort we’ve seen in India is in Jodhpur. The fort is located at the top of 400 foot cliff and surrounded by walls which when combined with the huge spikes protruding from the gates and the narrow entry way made it very difficult for enemies to penetrate. Not to sound like a nerd, but the audio tour for the fort was very interesting and informative. It was fun to get a comprehensive history of the place while looking through its rooms and artifacts. One of the stories told of how when the site for the Mehrangarh Fort was chosen the hermit who lived on the hill was kicked out of his home by Rao Jodha, the ruler at the time. The hermit was naturally pretty mad and he put a curse upon the fort to ‘suffer a scarcity of water’. Rao Jodha was worried about the curse and decided that to counteract it a human sacrifice was needed and a local man volunteered to be buried alive in the foundation. The audio guide never did fill us in on whether or not the human sacrifice worked.

Our time in Jodhpur flew by and before long we were on a sleeper bus to Udaipur.

A cannon on thte fort wall.