Blog : Jodhpur

We arrived to Jodhpur station pretty early in the morning, like we're talking 5am early! After a pretty gross train journey where I had to sleep precariously on a very top bunk because of how many 'little rats' were running around the floor under our feet - bleurghh! Needless to say it wasn't our best nights sleep and after being picked up and crammed into a tuktuk (I guess out of season its pretty easy to recognise four western girls in a sea of Indians) we bombed through hundreds of back alleys and narrow streets until we arrived at the guest house we'd booked, in a haveli (a really old, Arabic style building - soo beautiful!) and all flopped into bed in the most amazing four bed suite! We decided to sleep for a few hours before getting back up again. I couldn't really sleep as I couldn't get comfortable on the semi hard, semi soft beds. God, I miss my comfortable bed at home so much! The decoration and architecture in our room was amazing and I was pretty happy pottering around taking pictures of the huge room whilst I waited for the other girls to stir! We had breakfast, I a very Indian banana and Nutella pancake and everyone else similar, very Indian food!! We all showered and decided just after midday to go for a wander to see the blue city - loads of the buildings were painted blue in homage of one of the Hindu gods and also because apparently it repels insects. We headed out into the city to explore a little bit and see what Jodhpur had to offer. We were all treating it as a bit of a bonus city because we hadn't planned to go to Jodhpur for any reason other than the airport the following day, but as wed built in contingency time around all of our travel, that wed not needed from Jaisalmer, we had a day to look around. The streets were similar to Varanasi, narrow and winding, although our area of the city felt pretty clean (not the whole city though!) We walked in the absolutely steaming midday heat up the long winding road to the top of the fort, which was extremely steep and sweaty, with absolutely no shade! We got to the top and were pretty disappointed that the view was quite obscured and the Flying Fox zip wire circuit that we were looking for was closed. It had been recommended on the Lonely Planet and we thought it looked like a cool and different way to see the city (and it was run to European safety standards which relieved us all!!) We poked our noses into what looked like an Indian artisan market, which being at the top of the fort and full of tourists and tat was astronomically priced. We tried a few pairs of the Indian embellished elf shoes on, but they were soo overpriced compared to the markets! I felt quite savvy actually knowing that! And we got raped on water, paying more than three times the usual price :/ but it was hot, we were thirsty and there were no other options. It was a very empty fort we all thought, compared to the Jaisalmer one, which people lived in and was buzzing with life, shops and smells at every turn. It felt a bit sterile almost and we couldn't really work out its purpose? So with the Flying Fox being closed and a random kind Indian tourist telling up it was £15 to do it, we decided against the idea, to save our pennies and instead walked back to the bottom of the fort where after some more hard bargaining and not much budging, we caught a tuktuk which was a tight squeeze to the clock tower, where to markets were and also where Kamal, our Delhi driver, had recommended the worlds best lassi shop for the girls.

The market was a pretty local affair, with some very funky smells going on and so many gross wasps and insects swarming all over the stalls selling fruit, in particular grapes. They reminded me of those strawberries you get at home that have been absolutely ravaged by something and look disgusting and you throw that one out of the packet away - well all of these grapes and other fruits looked like that and Indian people were buying them!!! We got quite harassed in the market by people selling s*** and with us all having been up early and probably a bit grumpy we were quite short with everyone, saying NO, what on earth am I going to do with a bongo drum/men's jeans/meters of material etc. the market didn't really have anything that we wanted (not that we were on the look out for anything particular) but certainly felt very much more local orientated. We found Kamal's lassi shop and the girls thought the creamy fruit yogurt drink looked disgusting so we left - bleurghh, certainly not for me! We carried on wandering for a little whole through the market and stumbled across the material warehouse that some bloke told us supposedly supply's Mulberry, Monsoon and Pierre Cardin with fabric, although when we poked our heads in, mainly for the aircon(!) we didn't see anything that looked remotely like those brands!! Just as we were deciding to head back to our hotel, as we were feeling like a cold drink, shade and a snack (which we didn't think we'd find at the market) we spotted a samosa shop across the road, with loads of locals swarming around it, so we headed over. It was a sort of street stall, where we could see all the stages of making a samosa, from the stuffing to the frying. They had these huge woks full of oil that the blokes were frying battered peppers, curry puffs and samosas in and then flinging them across a gangway into massive metal trays to be sold to the vying, jostling customers. We decided they must be good and so we each ordered a curry puff or pepper and a samosa. They were so good we all went back for thirds, which was definitely a bad idea as we all felt really ill for the rest of the day and I spent all evening sicking up in my throat all of the oily taste and the acid burnt my throat making it really sore. We all spent quite a lot of time on the toilet as well - a not so good street food experience! We chilled, napped and spent literally four hours on the s***ty wifi searching for somewhere to stay in Mumbai that wasn't the most run down out of town place ever, nor somewhere that cost the earth. It was such a struggle to find somewhere, for the following three nights and in the end we just called up a place that was sort of in a good area, that was sort of in our price range and had relative reviews on trip advisor. We'd heard quite a lot about Mumbai being very hot, quite dangerous and lots of theft, so we wanted somewhere were we could lock the doors and cool down with aircon if we needed to! We had success and booked a place but all felt so exhausted after all the travelling, constantly being on the go and the mental frustration of searching for such a long time for a place to stay, that after a late dinner of stale popadoms and a very average mixed veg curry we hit the sack.

The following morning we all shared gruesome toilet stories from that night, of us all nearly s***ting the bed and being on and off the toilet - f***ing samosas! I woke up feeling really head coldy, with a super blocked nose, sore throat and one of those sinus headaches... We packed up our bags and after spending about half an hour dissecting the hotel bill, which was confusing enough as the Indian tally is like a square box rather than the normal lines, let alone being written in Hindi too :/ we caught a tuktuk to Jodhpur airport, which I think must have been a military one, as it was pretty small, run by the army and had only a handful of domestic flights heading out during the day. The tuktuk was a massive squeeze with all our backpacks as well as I had to sit on the front seat with the driver, who was a big fat sweaty man. He kept trying to make me move closer to him as I was balancing very precariously on about three inches of seat but I didn't want to as he was super sleazy and kept trying to stroke my leg when he was signalling, which obviously I glared at him for! The airport was pretty strict, you couldn't even get into the terminal without a print out of your boating card and your passport, which we did have but obviously was right at the bottom of my bag! We were pretty early before our flight so I had a nap on the seats in the departure hall and we ended up being the last ones to board the plane, running across the Tarmac to get into the plane, as all the announcements had been made by a lady in Indian rather than through the PA system and in English too, like all the others had been! To Mumbai we go...