Bye bye Jodhpur

We’ve loved Jodhpur. Probably our favourite place in Rajashtan. Its got lots happening but without the population and chaotic traffic. Bazaars, kite flying, walking around lakes and parks, navigating monsoon flooded streets and chilling on the roof top restaurants with views out over the fort.

Durag Niwas Guest House has been great. A relaxed easy place to stay with interesting and friendly owners. And two cool dogs Chilli (sausage dog) and Pepper (pug dog)

We spent a few nights at Gopals rooftop restaurant and got asked for interior design advice. The wooden windows we chose were in by the time we returned to Jodhpur from Jaislamer, and last night we chose natural wooden furniture and suggested chairs with bright lime or orange cushions! Fun.

Night sky over Jodhpur 

Our trek around the fort

Blue buildings

Kite flying and fighting

Blue city and kite flying

Stepwell street flooded

Swimming in stepwell during monsoon 

 downpour. The boys can get away with swimming because the police are all hiding from the rain. Noone is meant to swim here!

Stepwell the day after monsoon rain and flooding 

 Our tuktuk driver after a massive bomb

 

The stepwell cafe rooftop and a nice Sav

Flooding

Jodhpur and Jawai Greens

Back to Durag Niwas a funky guest house away from the old town. It is in a quiet street next to a sports hub and university. We like Jodhpur . It is not as crowded as Jaipur but has more happening in it than Jaislamer. The bazaars are fun to walk around

One little job can take hours over here. We had a package to send home. We headed to the main post office at 4.30pm. A tuktuk driver intercepted us in the driveway of the post office and suggested that the PO was closed. He offered to take us to a courier place. We figured that this was not quite correct and wandered into the post office. It is 4.55pm by this time. And like many government places all over the world the guy behind the counter was not at all interested in helping us so close to the end of his shift. He did tell us we had to wrap our parcels first though. There are no bubble bags or anything available in the PO. This required visiting some other guy across the road! When we came out into the sunshine “this other guy” from across the road is waving at us from the median strip. Hes a big solid guy - looked more like a Pacific NZer actually. He then gets into an argument with the tuktuk dude who it turns out was trying to steal his customers. It was a good argument, in the middle of the road, amongst tuk tuks, motor bikes, cars, people and cows.  ‘Our guy’ gave the tuktuk guy his marching orders. So, we get to our guys little shop and it does have a “packing parcels” sign on the window. However...the post office is now closed so he suggests a courier. He is the middle man between parcel sender and the courier company. Hence the big argument with tuktuk man! We hope our parcel makes it to NZ.  

We spent last night at Jawai Greens. A little place near Sumerpur. Craig discovered it when searching for Leopard Safari options. It is the most stunningly scenic place we have seen in a long time.

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The safari business is more or less in its infancy and usually only caters to very wealthy Indian tourists. We think that Jawai Safari is a business run by a high-cast family - they consider themselves Rajputs (son of king) . This cast who consider themselves more or less royalty of Rajasthan. We are not sure there is any official acknowledgement of this. It is a bit like linking your whakapapa all the way back to Maori royalty. Anyway this appears to give this family the rights to operate safaris  all over the land. Im not sure who actually owns the land but we get the impression that they are claiming ownership that their royal ancestors once had pre the Colonial times!   Interesting similarities  to NZ . However this family do not appear to want for much...the local villagers who farm the land do not live a  luxurious life and we are not sure that safari money reaches their doorsteps.  

We didn’t  see a Leopard . He was there...but wouldn’t  come out of the bushes. We had such a cool time exploring the area in the jeep though. Itis a part of India we would never have though to come to, off the beaten track so to speak.The area is covered in volcanic domes with nooks and crannies and caves. The jeeps drive straight up the rock faces and you end up on top of the dome  sitting looking out over a vista that looks like something out of  a movie set.

The guest house plunge pool. Filled up  just for us from the well.

We stayed at a 2 room guesthouse. We indicated to Jawai Safari that their first suggestion of accommodation at $500 per night was a little out of our league. They then offered us this seriously cool guesthouse. $300 for accommodation, 2 x 3 hour safaris, breakfast, lunch and dinner. One of our most expensive nights yet - but real value for money in  NZ standards.  Close your eyes and we are in the middle of Greytown in a restored stone cottage.The place only opened in March and they have had no visitors during the monsoon. We were their first foreigners ever. They were a lovely couple with 2 teenage boys like us. Nareesh’s  family sell Massey Tractors and Mahindra vehicles. We were enjoying their farm house as they live in town  during the week - about 15km away. Their eldest son is studying tourism in Bombay and will come back and take over the family business. After the arranged marriage of course.  They had 350 lemon trees surrounding the property. We enjoyed home cooked Rajasthani food - a lot of food in fact. Nareesh was so excited that we were there - he kept feeding Craig and mixing new tastes and combinations of food for him. A pampered boy...but craig ended up having to eat way more than he wanted!   They were so keen that we tried every local delicacy.

Our own private dining room!

Craig and his new mate!

Leaving Jaisalmer

Leaving Jaisalmer
It was hot - too hot at times. Into the 40s.

 Adding metal clasps to Craig’s bag

Hiding from the midday sun

We spent this morning exploring on a scooter. The photo above is us having coffee and paratha at a hotel in the middle on nowhere! There were very few guests as you can see!
The desert is a desolate, harsh and unforgiving country. Folk survive but they certainly don’t thrive. The monsoon has been poor for 3 years. The fields are ploughed ready to plant the minute rain arrives. But - they are standing bare. We saw one field near a pond which we think must in the monsoon be a water course, sprouting something green. Goodness knows how it will survive if no more rain comes.
The farmlets or villages are literally mud and stone huts. I would predict the kids work with parents and don’t attend school. These places are only 30mins out of Jaisalmer.
The absurdity of it is that some of these kids have cell phones and internet connection. What do they think looking out at the world on YouTube


Jaisalmer is a lot more traditional than the rest of Rajashtan. You don’t see many woman around. Once married your job to stay at home and raise children. Arranged marriages seem common all over RJ but we hear that the arranged marriages in this part of the state are quite young girls to older men. There are therefore a lot of widows needing support.
Once women are married it is expected that they wear a sari. We met a lovely couple in the fort. He was a cricket enthusiast, hence our long chat with them. They indicated that they followed family expectations while at home but that they didn’t when they headed off on holiday.
Wind turbines line up along the horizon. It makes the desert look quite surreal.

We keep disappointing our host by not eating enough! They are so concerned that they have offended you or prepared poor food . We found a superb hotel and order a tali, plus one other dish. The tali was massive but delicious. It’s arrival at our table coincided with Craig getting over heated. He only ate a tiny amount and then needed to head home. The poor worker took money off our bill! We have only met lovely, kind and welcoming people to date. The rip-off merchants and scam guys that filled our days, way back in the late 80s!, are not so dominant.

In saying that we were looking at camel satchel bags and getting the hard sell from a young dude. They looked great but something didn’t quite match up. I tried to get Mr Google to help me and could find nothing about the manufacture and general camel leather industry. We then visited a shop with a perfect trip advisor rating and chatted with the owner who told us there were no camel leather bags around and that it is all bullshit. The bags are goat leather (it is really nice) . Camel is thick and too difficult to work, plus there are not that many camels to provide the raw materials. I think the camel brand is exotic and pulls the punters. So, we have 3 goat leather satchels!

Camels, desert and stars

We’ve just returned from the Thar Desert. After Sonja and Monja (Sun and Moon) carried us out there we watched a beautiful sunset over Pakistan, ate a simple curry cooked on an open fire (one of the simplest and yummiest so far), and then lay down and watched the starry sky come alive.

Craig was super excited that Scorpio shone large - he looks at it over Pukeatua when he climbs Pukeariki (Maungaraki hills) And even better, we chose not to sleep the night in the sandy desert and are back in our nice guest house, showered, and lying in clean sheets and a comfy bed! Age and maturity do count sometimes.

Jaisalmer is very chilled - even though it was 38degrees today. The train ride from Jodhpur was rocky ( I thought I wouldn’t sleep but somehow you do) and 4 hrs late; but we had a 4 bed sleeping berth to ourselves . 2nd class air con. The rail system is quite something. I can booked online, track the train’s timing online, show my ticket via my phone...and somehow our name gets ticked off on this worn paper list of names by the guard. Our train had been travelling 2 days non stop by the time it reached Jailsalmer with us.

Delhi Belly hits the team

The last man standing is Craig - Bazz followed by Anna and then me all succumbed to some 24hr bug. Lucky we were in a nice guest house!

Anna and Bazz leave for Delhi today and we head to Jaisalmer on the train...38 degrees! The airport here is mainly for the airforce. Hopefully their plane has seats!

Jodhpur has some super sights. The fort towers over the blue city. Like most Indian places they are struggling to cope with rubbish collection in amongst dusty crowded streets.

There is a restored stepwell - the cleanest water we have seen in India.

Jodhpur journey

We are home in our new guest house - Baijoo Niwas in Jodpur. It is another rennovated old style building. Simply gorgeous.
Our journey with Mr Singh has finished . He is already back on his way to Delhi. He’s been good company. He had limited English but enough for us to understand each other. He had a dry sense of humour and wicked laugh. We may look to get him to drive us to Leh.
He took us to a Sikh temple and shared the appropriate way to worship; He seemed to know every Punjabi on the road - who needs Google maps when you just wind down your window and ask a stranger. He was stoked that we were happy to share a meal at a roadside Punjabi eating establishment. Establishment probably brings a Speights Ale House type setting to your eyes. That - it was not. A mud lean-to; the chef cooked Dahl and Okra over an open flame; there was a wee mouse who popped up from one of the kilns... however the food was delicious.

We shared our 200km journey with pilgrims today. They effectively took out one lane of the highway there were so many of them. And considering cows often take the other lane it was a stop start journey. 1000s of people are walking on pilgrim to a special temple outside of Jaisalmer. Some were starting in Udaipur as we left in our AC car today. It’ll be over 400km by the time they get to the temple. Unlike the 100km non-stop relays of NZ, these men, women, boys, girls and babies are in jandals or bare feet, women often carrying a small parcels on their heads. There were large tents providing free food and drink, and I guess a sleeping mat marae style along the way. The pilgrims are heading to Ramdevra Temple - this is a sacred temple that anyone of any religion can worship at. It is the resting place of a prophet who cared for the poor. Many socially conscious people go to the temple today.

Town on the way - splashes of colour everywhere.

Jain temple - the oldest around. Situated in a mountainous and jungle region

Check our the weeds!

Monsoon rains yesterday - again, our timing is exquisit

Udaipur - a wee gem

Udaipur  - the city of the Octopussy movie. The Taj Lake Palace (where Beyonce recently sung for some rich dude’s wedding) sits in the middle of one of the lakes.I think James bond hooned around it in a speed boat. He stayed at the Shiv Niwas Palace - a very nice hotel.



This place is gorgeous at night.
It is a place to chill and soak up the atmosphere. We’ve had heavy monsoon rains for 2 days. But it hasn’t stopped us doing anything. It was a good excuse to complete a little retail therapy today. We all bought beautiful block printed duvet covers...and a few other bits and bobs.
We continue to gain friends as NZers . Every Indian we’ve met is gutted at the way the cricket final played out.
We cruised around today in tuk tuks - such a good way to see the life of the city. There are so few tourists that the tuk tuk drivers are only too happy to spend the day ferrying us around.
I went to buy a SIM card. $10 for a month with 1 GB/day of data. No wonder everyone here is glued to their phones!

We did a cooking class last night with Sunny at Millets of Mewar. Check out his instagram - he’s into sustainable, vegan food. It was devine food. We’ve all stayed vegetarian and have had the most amazing food. Egg plant curry still rates up there - but paneer curries are gaining favour now. Indian gin is not too bad either!

Spice rack

Chittorgarh Fort - Awesome

2 nights in Pushkar
Our first night was shared with 1000s of Indian domestic pilgrims coming to bathe in the holy lake during a public holiday. It was full of families and friends celebrating their presence here. The streets were noisy and chocka.

Our second day was so much more chilled - the public holiday over, we more or less had the place to ourselves. It is a place the positively glows at night - the lake shines with the reflections of buildings and ghats. The grime and dust of India quickly forgotten. We found a superb dinner place that overlooked the lake, served good food and played rolling stones and other classics.

Oh - and Anna and I may have found a silver shop!

We had a super ayurvedic massage - 1 hr of bliss followed by 10 minutes of life advice from the guru like masseuse. Each of us had a personalised take away....Craig’s was to eat slower!!
Between us we have to drink more lemon juice, eat a variety of food for breakfast, drink less coffee, plan less, organise less and worry less!

View from the Fort to the town below

Tonight we are in Chittorgarh Fort. Absolutely incredible. We didn’t expect to be quite so in awe of the forts that we have seen - but they are awe inspiring. This fort is set on a huge lump of rock that rises from the plains like Uluru.

Sitting on a window ledge 1500 years old.

We are staying in a restored Haveli. Padmini Haveli. (Www.thepadminihaveli.com). Check out the rennovations of this place on their website.

Here’s the view from our rooftop. The monsoon rains are approaching. The guy ducking down is Craig who is fixing us a sneaky gin as this a dry place.

We’ve been reading the book Raiders from the North - Empire of the Moghul series. The story is of the rise and fall of various moghul dynasties ...effectively the forts we are visiting are those that Barbur and his descendents
lived in.

Our 5 a day selfie limit was broken today...we must by now be emblazoned across 50 plus FB pages. Our mugshots with family groups are very popular. The good part is that Anna and I get to see the beautiful saris up close.

 

Our meal last night was preapred in the haveli - effectively a homestay. Delicious vegetarian tucker. So tasty . We served in the middle of a monsoon downpour but grandad who crossed the open courtyard in his grand daughter’s pink rain coat. Cute as!
Our haveli is bankrolled by a swiss couple who now come out 3 times a year to check on things. The results of their rebuild has provided 17 jobs in this little village . A very impressive commitment by them.