I am in the surprisingly colorful city of Jodhpur, the Brahmin city of Rajasthan. Much of the old city is painted with indigo, so it is, like Chefchaouen, swimming pool blue – indigo also serves as a natural insecticide (and is much more pleasant that the insecticide used in building materials near Bikaner; cow dung and urine mixed with plaster). The city is lovely, and the old city relatively calm with narrow streets and consequently fewer cars. It still has the flavor of India (a mix of exhaust, urine, burning garbage and burning dung patties used to heat peanuts and such on the street), but it felt more like Jaisalmer than Jaipur (which is a good thing). It, like every other city in Rajasthan, has a fort on a massive rocky crag which houses an impressive palace with monuments, stories and battle scars.
A few bits – the orange hand prints are from the widows of the maharaja who died in 1847 or so, they made their hand marks on their way to the funeral pyre – yikes! The monument in the wall with the wreath is from a guy who volunteered to be sacrificed to appease the gods – the fort took a hermits home and he cursed them with a water shortage. The guy volunteered to be buried alive in the foundation of the fort and is still there. Dead I assume.
The city of Jodhpur itself is pretty big, 800,000 I think, but the old city is windy narrow streets and lots of colors. I tried taking lots of photos of doorways and the like to give a sense of it all. The blue is beautiful, rich, and there is something almost supernatural in the way it is indiscriminately applied to all kinds of surfaces. Sorry for the non-sequitor here but it thunder-stormed here yesterday! A full our rain storm complete with thunder and lightning! It both alleviated and intensified my longing for Minnesota. I was chatting with Grant from Missouri who agree about missing weather (any weather really) – and it was so great to have something dramatic to compete with the honking horns and shouting vendors. What a great thing – a thunderstorm. I was sleeping on a rooftop mattress waiting for a bed when it rained, so I was dry but somewhat in the middle of things. It was a fabulous experience.
Here are some photos of Jodhpur, an attempt to capture some color:
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As everywhere else in India (and most everywhere else it seems), it is really hard to capture the combination of smells, honks, smiles and friendly or begging people following me around. I guess I can say that it is as insane as it sounds, sometimes much more so, and that so far as I’ve seen it gets to almost everyone. At the same time it is a way to live like Seward or NE Mpls is a way to live. I am adjusting to being here, having a much easier time bumping into people (this is the single biggest advantage of the Lonely Planet), and when Mom suggested traveling in Italy a week later (giving me another week in India) I was excited at the prospect. I would not have anticipated that two weeks ago. Thanks for reading!
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