Town and Country

What a breath of fresh air Jodhpur is, literally. We are in the countryside on the edge of the city, and it is wonderful. Our hotel is in the style of a Rajasthan Palace with open corridors and a central garden courtyard. There is a fine cotton mesh over the corridor arches and the courtyard to stop birds flying in. Our view reflects our location, countryside from the corridor and the courtyard from our room. Our first night the courtyard garden was set up beautifully for a party in anticipation of an Indian cricket World Cup victory. I need say no more . . .

We only had one day actually in Jodhpur and our guide proudly told us that Mehrangarh would be the nicest Fort we’d see in the whole of India. Being something of experts on Forts now (🤣), we were sceptical but by the end of the morning we had to agree with him. This Fort complex was high on the hill and a wall surrounded it and the palaces and courtyards. The mausoleum and the cenotaphs (Jaswant Thada), ands the lakes are outside the Fort wall but close by.

Our guide went into great detail about the difference between Hindu and Moslem burial rituals. This is a Hindu mausoleum unlike others we have visited. Moslem mausoleums contain the body of the deceased, Hindu one’s do not. They are a temple to worship them. The cenotaph outside the mausoleum is where the body is cremated. He also described ancient Hindu rituals. The sons had to shave their head and moustaches off and he told us about Sati, where a woman (or women) couldn’t bear to live after their husband or King died and they voluntarily burned themselves alive on his funeral pyre. The photo of the hand prints shows the hand prints of the 15 wives of the Maharaja before they were burned doing Sati, as they left their handprints at the Iron Gate on the way to his funeral pyre. The mausoleum to the Maharajas is made up of the same high quality marble as the Taj Mahal and is translucent and you can see the sunlight shining through the stone in one of the photos.

The Fort and palaces are made up of intricate carving out of sandstone. The reddest has the most iron in it (see the Red Fort in Delhi), the pink is a natural mixture of sand and clay and golden sandstone is almost pure sand that has sedimented to stone. This gives the various colours in the Mausoleum, Fort and palaces. The Mehrangarh Fort has some of the most intricate carving in sandstone we have seen. Considering it is so height up, it is spectacular. Again there is a heavy use of glass including a large amount of Belgian coloured glass – the King’s bedroom is so full of glass it’s almost the pre-cursor for a 1970s disco! The Palace of flowers (Phool Mahal) with this gold filigree ceiling is far more tasteful.

Whilst there are separate gates and courtyards for the men and women, we were told that there is a heavy emphasis on couples in Hindu culture. The coronation courtyard has a single chair for the King. But high up to the right are the rooms where the queen would watch through the lattice work. One of those windows has a large round hole in it. Allegedly the Queen’s sacred thread (that Hindus wear) was passed through this hole down to the King and was then tied to him, so that during the ceremony the couple were “together”.

Like all the palaces there are artefacts from the past. Here there is a collection of toys, Palanquins (the covered chair that people were carried in), elephant howdahs (the seat on the elephant) and paintings. The paintings are exquisite. The detail is incredible, and if you magnify them you can see the individual hairs in the moustaches. One interesting fact is that if you look at all the paintings (and statues) of horses in this area you will find them with both their ears upright. That is to denote the high breeding status of the stallions.

From the Fort you can see a huge proportion of the 10km of city wall. You can also see the abundance of blue houses from which the city gets his name as the “Blue City”. The blue is from the historic colour of the priests’ houses as they worship Lord Shiva whose throat was blue. Jodhpur is also known as the Sun City as it is the gateway to the desert. It has the temperature of the desert and in summer the temperature rises to 49C. Allegedly no thermometer will ever show it rising above 49C because if it’s hotter than that then the government is obliged to put certain cooling processes in place eg spray the roads with water etc. I’m not sure I believe that bit of political propaganda. We did a quick walk into the old city through one of the seven city gates to the clock tower, Ghanta Ghar, the clock of which was allegedly bought from the same company that made the clock of Big Ben.

The afternoon was spent out of the city and in the “country” or more accurately, the desert. There are different types of desert. The Sahara is all sand and the desert around Jodhpur is over 60% rock and sparse shrub. However it’s full of wild life. We saw a spotted owlet, whole flocks of demoiselle cranes, female deer and male blackbucks, a camel and an abundance of peacocks and peahens. As we aren’t in the rainy season the peacock tail is short but at the end of the rainy season they will be magnificent. That’s probably why they are so colourful in wet Blighty! Acacia trees are ubiquitous here as they grow easily in the arid climate. Allegedly a King was distressed to hear how far his people had to walk to collect firewood so he thought he’d help by spreading acacia seed. Now with modernisation and less use of wood, the acacia has taken over and as it has deep roots is difficult to remove if they want to use the land for anything.

The people that live in this area are the Bishnoi community and they are genuine eco-warriors. They were founded in the mid 1400s with 29 principles which included that they couldn’t kill animals or fell trees. In the early 1700s a King wanted some wood for furniture and ordered this men to cut down the trees. 363 Bishnoi villagers were killed protecting the trees as they wrapped themselves to them. More recently a famous Bollywood actor shot a Blackbuck and was prosecuted and there is now a memorial statue in the place where the animal was shot.

We visited three different communities in a 15 mile area, each with varying degrees of modernisation. The first family have a more recent built house on the proceeds of their tourism, but the older family members still live outside or in the old huts and still use the old stove with cow dung patties and acacia wood as fuel. Cow dung patties are also used as insulation for their houses and it’s common to see them drying by the edge of roads, even main roads, as you drive round India. Opium is an essential part of the Bishnoi people’s religious ceremonies and we were shown how they prepared it. As there is a steady stream of tourists all day he didn’t actually consume it and we weren’t offered any samples, thankfully. We had a turban tying demonstration and I politely declined the chance to wear it. Steven didn’t have a choice!!👳🏻‍♂️

The second and third communities were of a potter and a weaver. Both use traditional methods and are clearly very skilled at what they do. They do live traditionally but you can see some more modern influences on their lifestyle. Certainly the weaver is part of a co-operative that the Government promotes and he is clearly benefiting from this. It’s always fascinating to see how resourceful and innovative mankind is and the beauty and quality that can be made so very simply. I think it is true that we are losing that in the 21st Century. It is the job of the guide to be proud and to use superlatives and quite rightly so. However we are fortunate enough to have travelled and have seen very similar primitive techniques being used by the Sami people in the arctic and also in South Africa. I’m sure there is similar in South America and Australia, and elsewhere. The colours and designs are different and the wool/hairs used for the weaving may come from different plants/animals but the brilliance and ingenuity of the human brain is ubiquitous across the planet. Thank goodness.

Finally, as we have survived, I can mention the journey back to the hotel in the evening. The afternoon was a safari into the desert and we went out in a jeep through the desert. With the sun setting as we left the last house we came back the “quick way” i.e the Indian version of a motorway. For 11 miles at 50-60km/h, surrounded by crazy Indian drivers swerving all around us, in a jeep open at the back and sides and a tarpaulin on the roof, no seat belts and where we were sitting along the sides. I think we’d call it a “death trap” in the UK. Neither of us have ever been so frightened before in our life. If you want to do this excursion, go in a proper car!

After a shower to remove all the dust and a hearty meal we are packed and ready for the modern metropolis that is Mumbai.