Jodhpur: The Blue City
The first morning in Jodhpur was a lazy morning. Boye and I had partied way too late with Polo and Laura before realising we had a very early train to catch. Boye went straight to the hotel to sleep, while I went to explore some of the blue houses in the area near the main fort. I promptly returned to sleep through the morning, and it was midday when we decided to venture out to explore Jodhpur.
We had a good time in Jodhpur, and saw some of the many popular tourist and sightseeing attractions of the city. The trip to Mehrangarh Fort stands out to me. Standing proudly on top of its own hill, surrounded by the blue painted houses that gives the city its nickname. The fort was very impressive both for the many eye-catching exhibits shown within the many halls open to tourists. The medieval style chess board stood out to me, as I am quite the chess lover. But I also remember being told many well told intriguing stories about different members of the local dynasty throughout recent times.
What you might have noticed by now is that “the land of kings” really lives up to its name. Every major city in Rajasthan has its own nobility or “rajput”, even still in 2024. When India was taking shape back in 1947, the young government was afraid not all the states would agree to a union. Many compromises were made to get as many as possible to join the young country on its new path. As every government is headed by its own local king, politics function a bit differently in Rajasthan than you might be familiar with. While the kings that rule our European countries mostly only have a ceremonial role in the day to day political workings, this is not always the case with the raj’s (kings) of Rajasthan. As a result some of the cities we visited here stood apart. This was evident already in Jodhpur, but would be even more evident as we continued our journey to Udaipur and Bundi, which belong to different kingdoms.
In this one picture from the entrance area to Mehrangarh fort I caught an interesting moment. To the left you can see a young man snapping a photo of the fort on his phone. He’s wearing a typical Sikh turban. A little behind him to the right an old man is wearing typical traditional white Rajasthani robes. These robes also sometimes come with a white tunic, but an orange rather than white head piece. In the background behind the Sikh’s back two Hindu ladies in colourful light blue and yellow dresses are talking about something, and one of them is pointing towards something. Closer to the cameraman (me) a man is holding a pipe looking instrument that has several strings attached, a very typical instrument in Rajasthan to be played by street musicians. The street musician is surrounded by men wearing the Western jeans and shirt, a dress which is now prevalently worn by young men across India. The second picture shows some Hindu girls dancing, while two musicians play local instruments. One of them plays the same instrument seen in the first picture.
In the evening we visited the market area near the Ghanta Ghar (clock tower), which had quite some different things to offer than what we had seen in the markets of Delhi. While the clock tower and the surrounding plaza is very British in its style, and the main market street Stretching southwards from the tower was also particularly straight in comparison to Delhi Chowk (markets). We called it a day after not too long, as we were both quite exhausted after doing too much and sleeping too little recently.
The next day was a day fully packed with sightseeing. I will try to include pictures of as many of the interesting things we saw as possible. A list of the main attractions we visited would be: Warrior caste family house, Blue City heritage tour, Jaswant Thada (Royal Burial Ground), a large well (Rajasthani wells are truly impressive constructions, and great pictures of these will be shown in my blog post about Bundi), Badla, Ajay and Vijay Chowk (markets), Shri Vishwakarma temple and Shri Sheetla Mata Mandir temple.
Warrior caste house tour
We had a great day sightseeing. Much of what we saw and experienced can be seen in these pictures. The one thing I chose to not include was the many, many children begging us to take pictures with them. I have many funny pictures of Boye and I together with groups of children doing grimaces, laughing, joking and telling their stories to Boye and I. I even remember one of the children excitedly talking about Haaland, the most famous Norwegian football player, when we told him we were Norwegian.
This last evening in Jodhpur we ate dinner at the hotel, while one of the Indians working there kept us company every time he had a smoke break. He knew Omer, and bonded through our common acquaintance. This was the day of many firsts for Boye and I, and we had many things to reflect on and talk about as we bonded with Omer’s friend in the evening after dinner. Maybe I should also mention that we had a lovely dinner in a nearby restaurant to the hotel the evening before. All in all Jodhpur turned out to be an exciting place, with many historical things to see, and many interesting people to talk to. Next blog post Boye and I head out on a road trip, which leads us to the beautiful city in Southern Rajasthan, named Udaipur. I wish all my readers a great weekend. Cheers!
PS: There is an interactive map of Jodhpur below, were you can explore the blue city yourself.