Update to the Jodhpur march post...

to be found here. I finally uploaded the movies.

Jodhpur back-blogging

Is my new term for blogging about things that happened in the past, as if they are happening now. Forgive me if I muddle my tenses.

So ok I got sick in Jodhpur, which was a lovely city to get sick in. I was staying at Joshi's Cozy Guest House, which I highly recommend. I didn't feel like doing anything so just stayed in the hotel. I met a few travellers my age, which was fun. Neil, a Yorkshireman who was just about to go back home, an American/Swedish couple who had been travelling for 2 years and were also sick, and Olga (briefly), a Russian girl who I also met in Bombay on the Bollywood day. We ended up drinking, playing cards etc, was a nice time.

Once I felt better I did a day's sightseeing. It's marriage season here and everyone was getting together the day before the wedding. The women look a lot more photogenic all over India because the men mainly dress in western clothes.



In town there was some kind of procession involving camels, tractors, people dressed up as Hindu gods, marching bands and a holy man. I'll post some video later when I can get a better connection.


I went up to the fort, which was quite impressive.






Hmm, where did I leave my camel?


Cheeky monkey back at the hotel.

Update: Here's the video of the procession.

Jodhpur

I took an overnight sleeper bus from Udaipur to Jodhpur which rocked up around 4 am. A guy at the bus stop tried to get me to go to his hotel, but I said no cause that's a common commission tout scam. Eventually got a taxi to the general area where the hotels are, but everything was still dark and a little creepy, and the same guy turned up. Finally I thought ok, I'll let him take me to his crummy place, pay the extra commission rate, get some sleep and get a new hotel tomorrow.

It was called the "Cozy Guest House" which immediately rang some alarm bells. But we got there and it was cozy, and it was his hotel, and it was fairly cheap, and he'd got up really early just to show people to it, and man did I feel bad. These are smaller towns in Rajasthan, I have to re-calibrate my trust levels.

This was the view from my room when I woke up:

I went for a walk around the markets and it was a lot less touristy than Udaipur, which was a bit of a relief. Similar architecture to Udaipur, see what I mean about like a Greek fishing village? All the buildings are white-washed (in this case blue-washed), open plan, very cool and breezy. The floors are made from marble inlay:

Tomorrow I'm going on a camel safari. Yes I'm a despicable tourist.

By the way, this image was for a temple back in Udaipur. These carvings go all the way up, about the size of a three story building.