9: Jodphur

Today we are bound for another of Rajasthan’s famous cities, Jodhpur or the Blue City as it is otherwise known.

It’s called the Blue City because many of the Brahmins painted their homes in the old city blue, a tradition which has been continued to this day.

On the way we make a detour as Ravi would like to show us the Bhadariya Library.

Ravi explains that the library is situated underneath the Shri Bhadriya Mata Ji temple… intriguing!

The library was the idea of Harvansh Singh Nirmal, a religious scholar who was revered by local people and described as ‘A humanitarian. All religions have the same message: that man’s skin may be different, hair may be different, inside we are all the same’ we can’t argue with that.

The library, temple and about 20,000 acres of Oran (sacred grove) are now under the stewardship of a Trust.

Wow, what a place. A little unexpected to say the least!

The library, which was completed in 1998, is quite a thing; built below ground to protect the books and their readers from the heat and dust of the desert environment, it covers 50,000 square feet and has 562 cupboards containing over 200,000 books.

The books cover every subject you can imagine. There are even some texts that are over 1,000 years old.

We’re really glad to have seen this hidden treasure trove, though it feels more like a museum now than a library. Nick points out that the information contained in all those books could probably now all be stored on a single micro SD card the size of a fingernail!

One thing we’ve learned about India is that as a rule of thumb you should always double the amount of time you think it‘ll take to get anywhere. We arrive at our hotel in Jodhpur much later than we’d hoped and we feel travel weary.

The hotel which is a former haveli, is very central and has lovely communal spaces for guests, including a roof terrace overlooking Mehrangarh Fort and we sit in the sunshine enjoying the view and a G&T. We feel revived and keen to explore.

Nick has researched restaurants and found a real gem - Indigo - it also has a roof terrace overlooking the old blue city and the fort… as well as steps to elevate Janette to a sensible height for photographs!

It’s really atmospheric. The staff speak very good English and are keen to chat to us about our travels - and the food is delicious.

When we leave Indigo we see, in the street outside a line-up of several antique wooden doors. The chap selling them tells us they have been removed from old homes and replaced with newer versions. He’s selling them for about £300… so peanuts compared to what they’d cost at home and we are sorely tempted but the shipping costs are a killer, about £6 per kg. The shipping would cost more than twice the price of the door.

The centre of things in the city is based around the Clock tower & Sardar Market and things radiate out from there, our hotel is just around the corner which is great and we’ll explore further tomorrow.

Our first stop this morning is the imposing fort which towers above the city seamlessly merging with the rock into which it is built.

We opt for the audio tour and it is really excellent - clear and informative - and for us more user-friendly than a guide as we can go at our own pace.

This place is awe inspiring, it is truly a mighty fortress but part of it is also an exquisitely crafted palace.

The fort has seven defensive gates, the second of which is up a steep slope and round a right-angled bend, designed to hinder any enemy elephants charging the gates.

Just as a back-up, the gates are fitted with elephant-height spikes, which act as the ultimate deterrent.

As we pass through this gate, we see on the wall the handprints of Maharaja Man Singh’s widows, placed there in 1843 as they left the palace for the last time, dressed in their wedding finery to commit sati on his funeral pyre. Very poignant.

As we’ve mentioned, although this place is a fort, it also housed the royal family in a palace within the fort.

This palace is breathtaking in its opulence.

Some of the rooms are given over to exhibits from the old days - howdahs (elephant saddles), royal baby cribs, weaponry and palanquins (a couch carried on the shoulders of bearers).

Some of the palanquins are enclosed so that the female occupant could maintain purdah.

There’s a funny story about the present Maharajah’s grandmother visiting London in 1925; the fact that she was in purdah caused a great deal of curiosity in Britain and the press were hot on the scent of a forbidden photo. They managed to snap a glimpse of her ankle and the Indian entourage was so outraged that they bought up all the newspapers they could find which carried the photo to prevent the British public catching a glimpse of the royal body part!

We really enjoyed our visit to this fort, it was informative and not too busy.

We should mention the entrance fees to these various historical attractions. The most we have paid is the equivalent of £5.67! Imagine how much the tickets would be back home probably around the £40 mark and you’d likely have to book in advance.

Entrance fees for Indian nationals are a fraction of what foreigners have to pay which keeps these wonderful historic assets accessible to most.

The Jodhpur royals no longer live at the fort, they’re now to be found at the Umaid Bhawan Palace on Chittar Hill on the other side of town.

The last of India’s great palaces - Umaid Bhawan is also one of the largest in the world.

It was commissioned in 1929 by Maharaja Umaid Singh who sadly only lived for three years after it was finished in 1944. The palace itself covers an area of eleven acres and there are a further fifteen acres of garden.

During construction, the palace employed three thousand people; it took half a million donkey-loads of earth for the garden beds; a hundred wagon-loads of Makarana marble; a million metres of steel conduit; fifteen thousand feet of copper and lead wire weighing two hundred tons.

Today, the royal family live in a third of the palace, the rest is divided between a museum and a super-luxury hotel.

Honestly? We find the finish of the palace a bit dull but maybe that’s because our tolerance for the ornate has greatly increased with all the opulence and beauty we’re exposed to daily in this amazing country.

One final highlight awaits us as we’re leaving the palace. A motorcade of about twenty vehicles comes sweeping up the drive.

There are uniformed soldiers, armed police and plain clothes bodyguards. A welcome party is assembled on the steps of the hotel and a fanfare is playing.

Someone tells us that this hubbub is for the arrival of Ram Nath Kovind, the former president of India.

We chuckle to see his motorcade includes a personal ambulance boasting ‘Advanced Life Support’. We’ve actually seen some which say they only offer ‘Basic Life Support’ which is presumably a cup of tea and a stern talking to!

Ravi is kind enough to take us to the kind of shop that really interests us this afternoon, an architectural salvage yard!

This place is massive, set over eight floors and it has great stock, the obligatory ancient wooden doors but also fabulous marble pieces from temples.

We would love to buy something but again, sadly the shipping costs are prohibitive.

Next we find ourselves agreeing to go on a jeep ‘safari’ in the countryside around Jodhpur to visit the Bishnoi people. This will involve visiting a traditional village and then various traditional craftspeople… so we brace ourselves for dealing with the predictable hard-sell situations that we’ll no doubt find ourselves in!

There is no pressure on us to take this trip, we only have ourselves to blame for what lies ahead but the Bishnois have piqued our interest.

The Bishnoi community dates back to the 15th century; it was founded by Guru Jambheshwar, a visionary saint who gave the people 29 rules by which to live (Bishnoi means twenty nine) which include rules about protecting the natural environment - the harming of trees or animals is strictly forbidden. Back in 1730 hundreds of Bishnoi people laid down their lives by hugging trees to prevent them being felled - the original tree huggers.

We visit one family’s home to see how they live. They have built a modern home but the traditional round huts made of thatch and dried mud walls are still in use.

In the main hut there is a huge silo made of dried cow dung and clay. It keeps the millet fresh and supplies are taken as needed from a hole in the bottom which is bunged up at other times to stop the millet coming out.

There are two traditional kitchens, one right inside the main hut and another in a more open hut which is used in summer.

The Bishnoi are strict vegetarians and filter their water and milk before drinking it to prevent any bugs being killed… so far so good; they are however partial to a drop of opium tea even though one of their twenty nine guiding rules expressly prohibits the use of the drug!

Opium is illegal in India but it seems that the Bishnoi have an exemption on the basis of medicinal use.

We are treated to the tea ceremony whereby opium is crushed, placed in a cloth strainer and water is poured over it, the resulting liquid is strained several times more and then we are invited to try some. It seems rude not to!

We cup our right hands into which some of the liquid is poured and we slurp it up. This happens three times, we don’t feel any effect whatsoever which is probably for the best!

It’s then off to witness carpet weaving in a nearby village. This is done on a traditional loom with natural fibres coloured with plant-based dyes.

We very much enjoy learning about this ancient craft but we aren’t so keen on the hard sell afterwards and our host is even less keen on the fact that we don’t make a purchase.

Next stop, a block printing studio. This is interesting too and we do buy a table cloth here as there are more modest products with commensurately lower prices.

With hindsight we probably wouldn’t have taken this excursion if we ‘d thought it through properly although it was interesting to meet the Bishnoi.

Whilst we are having dinner this evening, we hear a commotion in the street outside and are treated to more wedding celebrations.

The groom is processing to his wedding astride a white Marwari horse (for a rare-breed we’ve seen an awful lot of them!), preceded by his friends who are dancing and by drummers and flanked by women carrying parasol type things that are lit up with light bulbs. The lightbulbs are all strung together by trailing wires which connect to a petrol generator, housed on the back of a tuk tuk which brings up the rear! It’s all very jolly and bystanders join in with the dancing.

We have a little time in the morning and there’s one last thing in Jodhpur that we don’t want to miss, the Toorji Ka Jhalra or Toorji’s Stepwell.

This beautiful and complex structure was built in the 1740s and was once an integral part of the city’s water harvesting and storage system; it was primarily used by women for collecting water for their households.

The stepwell fell into disuse and was submerged in stagnant water for over a hundred years until restoration work in recent years have restored it to its former glory, revealing the many steps with their beautiful carvings.

We’ve neither of us ever seen anything like this before, it’s a thing of great beauty and we can only wonder at the skill of the designers and craftsmen from so many years ago.

Our next destination is Kumbhlagarh, a place recommended to us by Ravi, not one we’d ever heard of.

We’re leaving the busy city life and heading up into the Aravalli Mountains. It’s much greener and more rural than we’ve experienced lately - we’ll report back on what we find next time.