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Jodhpur, India
21° 52' N 70° 1' E
May 12, 2008 09:53
Distance 1187km

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Other entries in Jodhpur

The Purs - Jaipur, Udaipur and Jodhpur

Text written in: English

So it soon came time to leave the city of the golden temple and where I was a minor celebrity - something over rated, I now know how the Beckham's feel.

My journey was to be a 20 hour train journey to Jaipur for the next leg of the adventure. I got to the station nice and early to ensure I could find my train and to stock up on essentials for the journey in sleeper class (no air con). 6 litres of water were procured along with crisps and other essential junk food. The Jaipur express pulled into the station on the expected platform and at the expected time - things were looking good. I even found my assigned seat without a problem. The train set off, only 45 minutes later than scheduled, through the backwaters of Amritsar with the driver playing with what must have been his new toy - the loudest f'ing air horn in the world. Whenever it sounded it felt like there was an earthquake happening, I think he was using the shockwaves created to clear the way ahead.

Up and down the train whallahs selling everything from food to t-shirts passed through the carriage which was now filling up nicely - I was the only tourist in sight. Feeling a bit peckish I bought a few of the items from the food whallahs and started to settle in  after a minor altercation where I had to kick a family out of my bunk, they didn't have a ticket for the right day, but there again I don't think many people actually had tickets, the evening drew in. My bunk was on the top and the air from the fans totally missed me - the air was getting hot and a good nights sleep wasn't necessarily on the cards.

Then at 2.34am 'it' struck. Now there are not many worse places in the world that I can think of to get Delhi Belly than 8 hours into a 20 (which turned into a 22 hour) journey. Timing had never been one of my strong points and this is a prime case. Over the remained of the journey I got to know the squat toilet at the end of the carriage somewhat intimately and the old lady sleeping by the toilet door started to get a bit annoyed with me as I stepped over her several times to get into the toilet before my guts exploded. Worst of all my sacred supply of Charmin Ultra was taking an absolute beating. Needless to say this time was not totally wasted. I now know just how wide the eye of a needle is. The answer is not very wide at all.

When I was in my bunk the temperature felt like it was rising and I got through the 6 litres of water with 8 hours of the journey left. I started to dehydrate quite quickly and my general well being fell off a cliff - I felt like shit and with no hope of buying drinking water at the stops we made during the night - there wasn't even someone selling chai!!

At 8am we pulled into a somewhat civilsed station where there was the finest gentleman in the world selling bottled water. I stuck my arm through the bars on the window with a 100 rupee note in my hand (amazing how that grabs people's attention over here) and bought 2 bottles of water to slowly rehydrate myself.  We eventually arrived in Jaipur and I still wasn't feeling great when the barrage of autoricksaw drivers headed towards me. Think the delivery of ' will you just fuck off' worked quite well coupled with the fact that I looked like death warmed up meant that I got to my hotel ( the Pearl Palace - a great place) without any hitch. I upgraded my room to one with air con ( blow the extra 2 quid a night expense) and spent the next 20 hours recovering with water and rehydration salts.

Feeling much better the following day I ventured out into Jaipur - the Pink city. My overall impression is that it is not as impressive as the guidebook makes out. The Palace was pretty unispirational and over priced with coach parties of tourists (especially Americans) filling the place.  The bazaars within the city walls also seemed as if they were geared to the blue rinse coach brigade. The best part of the city was just wandering through the streets where the real vendors and traders sold fruits, vegetables, flowers, vividly coloured spices and grains of all types. One guy just sold dried chilies by the tonne and the colour was amazing.  One highlight was my first experience of an Indian barber shave – I watched carefully and ensured that a new blade was used and waited with baited breath to go through the experience, it had to be done.  25 rupees later and no cuts I was as smooth as a babies bottom and he even shaved the top lip so not to have a moustache.  All good and definitely something to repeat.

 

Another experience was that of MacDonalds.  Now this was purely from curiousity to see what substituted Le BigMac.  Turns out it is the McMaharaja chicken burger which is of the same quality as the infamous burger – crap.  Even the fries were just as bad, amazing how shite taste can be universally interpreted so well.  What was in fact the most interesting part of the experience was watching the people who frequented the Golden Archers.  It seemed like they all craved the western society and there was not a Sari or turban in site.  MTV blared out from the plasma screen and it was the place to be seen by the local teen population, very surreal.

 

The hotel where I was staying was excellent with a great rooftop restaurant (which served beer) and had a great menu.  Even the staff were friendly and they were mildly aware of the term ‘service’ which most places thus far had not been so cognoscente of.  Also, I thought a saw a group of 4 girls that I had seen boarding the same train as me from Amritsar, but I wasn't too sure about anything from that particular journey and it was dark.  I passed the event off and carried on reading my book.

I purposefully left a few Jaipur sights out as I was due to return again on my travels east. Overall Jaipur wasn’t the place it was all cracked up to be and I was looking forward to Udaipur. After a 9 hour bus journey I arrived in foresaid town, obviously later than expected. It was late and I found my digs which turned out to be in a crap location, my room smelt like there was a mothball convention in it and it was well overpriced compared to the quoted price in the Bible – not a happy chappie, but it was late and trudging round trying to find something else didn’t seem appealing at the time.

The following morning with a positive spring in my step I left early to discover Udiapur and to get some breakfast. It took all of 30 minutes to see all there was worth seeing in the small town save for the palace and the fabled Lake Palace - the original name for a Palace ( now hotel) surprise surprise in the middle of a lake. Now when they say lake what it actually turned out to was a building in a half filled 'puddle'. The front part of the building was indeed in water, the back was more in a mud pool. Not the romantic site I was expecting to see - more Blackpool than Paris.

Later in the day I went around the palace (the one on land) and decided that it would be good to get a guide to show me round. He was actually quite good and brought the place to life somewhat and all-in-all the life of a Maharaja is a good lot, was especially impressed by the size of the harem that they used to enjoy! 

 

Apart from seeing the palaces there was very little else to do and the temperature in the day was being to touch on the hot side.  Now as most of you know I am a pretty sweaty git, but at times it was getting ridiculous.  I would have been dryer during the heat of the sun if I had just bought a bottle of water and poured it over my head.  My ability to find shade is now an art form as the narrow streets retained and bounced the heat around like a ping pong ball out of a rocket launcher.  There was no other option than to go……… shopping and I must now confess to now owning 3 pairs of fisherman pants (the light cotton trousers that have a generic tie around the waist.)  Sad as this may be to many of you this had to be done, but trust me there are no dreadlocks in sight.

 

After being slightly disappointed with the 2 pus (Jai and Udai) so far, I set off on the 7 hour journey to the next pur, Jodhpur.  Now this place isn’t just know for giving its name to trousers that are worn when riding horses (seriously this is where the jodhpurs was born) but it has a fort (of course it does) and a narrow streeted Old City area, overall I wasn’t expecting much.  I picked out Yogi’s guest house from the Bible as the residence of choice and checked into the Haveli (old style India house – bit like a Spanish abode with central courtyard).  The place had a rooftop restaurant with a great view of the old town, town square and the fort towering above the place on top of the hill behind.  I decided to go walkabout round the place to get my bearings as it was late afternoon.  3 hours later the recckie was completed and I had got to grips with the town.  It had some great street food and dhabas (quasi restaurants) as well as a place that sold the best icecream ever. Things were looking good.  That evening I decided to get a small bite at the roof top restaurant and there was a bit of a crowd present.  The owner, Yogi, asked if I wanted to join him – he had a bottle of whisky in hand and it would have been rude to say no. The conversation was of many things including how the guest house business works in India, very interesting / corrupt.  There were also a few Frenchies with him at the table when I joined and one gave me some great tips for Laos and where to go and what to see whilst there. It was a good night and well spent listening to peoples stories of there travels and the company was welcomed after a few days of traveling alone.

 

In the morning I awoke early with a spring in my step (and French toast in my belly) to go off venturing to the fort on the hill above.  My expectation were pretty low after the other Purs, but it was a must do.  I walked up the steep and narrow lanes of the Old City to the fort and when I was close to the top for the first time in some days I could feel a cool breeze which even at 9am was very welcoming.  When entering the fort I was presented with an audio guide which I expected to be similar to that in the National museum in Delhi – poor.  However to my pleasant surprise this was excellent as it told a story around the fort from the scars on the walls from cannonballs to the necessary visit to the harem’s quarters and the fact that only the Maharaja and eunuchs were allowed in – awesome!  The view from the fort was also amazing as the town/city spread out at its feet with most buildings painted blue it was an impressive site.  The artwork and exhibits were also good and really brought the place to life.  After the previous conversations with Yogi he also told me that a Sadhu had put a curse on the fort a few hundred years ago and it was actually coming to fruition – water shortages and the Maharaja would never see their grandchildren as they would die before this would happen – both have been true for the past 8 generations.

 

On the hillside to the let of the fort was a marble building which in effect is a mini Taj Mahal – initially built to house the body of some Maharaja’s missus and later turned into a mausoleum for the dead Maharajas.  Again there were great views of the town as well as the fort  and luck old me got to be in yet another random Indian persons photo – I should really be getting royalties methinks. 

 

The rest of the day passed along uneventful wandering around the streets of the Old City, save for the ice cream – awesome stuff, and the fact that I was able to get a shoe shine boy to mend my slightly battered sandals all for less than 50 pence.  I ate at the street stalls which sold killer samosas and pakoras as the 550 years celebrations, that happened to be on that evening passed by with fireworks and general frivolity in the streets.

 

The following day was to be a ‘chill’ day.  All this running round in the heat was getting almost too much and I needed some down time.  The day started with a late breakfast including a Nuttella pancake.  Whilst tucking into my nose bag I hear a voice in a Spanish accent next to me saying ‘ Erm excuse me but were you in the Pearl Palace Hotel in Jaipur?’  I look up to see an affable female and answer in the affirmative.  She continued ‘ we recognized you from there’ and pointed to her 3 similarly affable friends.  It was the 4 girls I thought I had seen before – my eyes were not deciving me.  They asked me if I wanted to join them for breakfast and I duly obliged and sat with Alicia, Patricia, Sarah and Uni.

 

I turns out that they were basically stalking me as they were in Amritsar at the same time as me and they even went to see the Border Crossing farce on the same day as I did – All very spooky/creepy if you ask me!  We then compared notes on what we had done and they had just returned from a 3 night camel safari in which they had been in a sandstorm, were soar from the camel posture and Sarah had picked herself up a new novio.  I attempted and failed to hablar en espanol but fortunately their English is good!

 

Later on after breakfast I was speaking again with the likeable Yogi and explained my plans to go back to Jaipur.  He counseled me not to return as there is no way I will be able to get any relaxing done there, instead I should go to Pushkar, a small town on the way to Jaipur and from there I could go directly to Agra and be able to get the train that I had already booked.  From previous evening discussions with folk in the restaurant who had been to Agra were also counseling to spend just one day there as apart from the Taj Mahal and the fort there was nothing else to see – it could all be done in 12 hours.  Later in the afternoon I bumped into my stalkers again and they said that they were also thinking of going to Pushkar and not returning to Jaipur.  Therefore armed with all this advise (and incentive!) Jaipur was canned, Agra was squeezed to Friday only and a few days in Pushkar was in.

 

Yogi also invited me to watch him play cricket later in the day.  It was the off season for him and the other guesthouse owners and they played in a league as their downtime, and chance to do some networking with others!  I had nothing to do so obliged on the basis that it would be a chance to see the real India.  The match was played and I was the official photographer.  Unfortunately Yogi’s team got absolutely hammered by their opposition, but it was a great experience to see the match and not the regular tourist thing to do which also included a ride on the back of a motorbike through the streets and alleys of the town.  It was a great end to my time in Jodhpur.  In the evening I ate at the rooftop restaurant – my stalkers were there and we plotted our journey to Pushkar the following day………things were looking good.