DAY 11 - UDAIPUR/JODHPUR

We arrived at the coach station shortly after 7 and drank some chai as the morning warmed up. The coach journey was interesting, travelling with a whole variety of Indians, from peasant land workers to men in suits. The landscape continued to become more barren and mountainous, the occasional spread of crop fighting its way through the parched land as farmers tended to their fields. People jumped on to the coach at every stop as others departed, a constant stream of people filtering through the aisle. The ride was pretty painless despite its 6 hour length, the coach bumping along over dusty, rock-ridden roads as we listened to music, stared out of the window and tried to get some sleep as the day ticked by. Eventually, after some confusion as to where our stop was, we arrived at Jodhpur and got a rickshaw straight to Yogi's guesthouse, slowly honking our way through the bustling Sardwar market. The views of the Mehrangarh Fort from the guesthouse were amazing, the hostel sitting at its base, making the largest fort in Rajasthan look all the more towering and impressive. We had some lunch at Yogi's very spacious and chilled-out rooftop restaurant and decided to try and find some speakers for our iPods in town. After a couple of hours strolling through Jodhpurs myriad of sidestreets and chaotic main roads, we gave up, realising that most of the small electronics shops in the area didn't seem to stock anything manufactured after circa 1998. We returned to our hostel where we hung out into the evening, sipping a beer as we lay down on cushions on the rooftop terrace, enjoying our views of the blue-walled old city below and the magnificent fort above.