Rajasthan: Part 2 - Jodhpur, The Blue City
Jodhpur by night. Outside the train station, people sized bundles of rags huddled together on the pavement, fighting off the sting of the night air. A light smog peeled from the walls of buildings and rolled insipidly down the dark streets. Skinny dogs padded around looking for a castaway idli or a warm place to rest.
I looked around for a moment, trying to get my bearings. It was 11:00pm so most of the hawkers were tucked up in bed - if they had one. I was greeted by an auto-rickshaw driver holding the name of the guest house I had booked. I relaxed.
We rattled down the tight, claustrophobic alleys of the Old City before arriving at my new abode. So far, I had been luxuriating in low to mid range hotels, so a guest house was a departure for me. However, I needed to be more frugal if I was to have any chance of seeing out a whole year of travel. Luckily, The Blue House was not only cheap, it was clean and friendly.
Unfortunately on arrival, I was beset by another bout of diarrhoea, but it wasn't incapacitating and seemed reasonably controllable, so I wasn't too dismayed.
The next morning I made my way into town and began the long clamber up the hillside that led to Mehrangarh Fort. This huge and intricately designed fort containing several palaces was first built in 1459 by Rathore ruler Rao Jodha, who buried a man alive in the foundations to ensure its prosperity. However, much of what can be seen today was built by Jaswant Singh in the 17th Century.
An audio guide is part of the entry fee. It was the best audio guide I had heard in India - excellently written and researched with a narrator whose fine resonant tones and witty anecdotes reminded me of my friend Jay Kembhavi, making it all the more entertaining.
The fort has a number of gates, leading to the main entrance and as you look up, you feel the scale and enormity of the structures within the fort.
There are a number of palaces within the walls of the fort and various period rooms are maintained as they would have looked when in use. The walls of these palaces are beautifully rendered.
The Moti Mahal (or the Pearl Palace) is a State Room for the Maharaja to meet his ministers and nobles (these events were known as Durbars). With multicoloured windows and a gold filigree ceiling, it is one of the finest rooms in the fort.
There are also a few rooms dedicated to the museum of Mehrangarh, which has an excellent collection of paintings, costumes, furniture, palanquins - you name it, they have it. Many of the rooms are hosted by Fort employees in period dress.
A man with a grand moustache.
The views from the walls of the fortress over the city are stunning.
Mehrangarh Fort walls with Jodhpur lazing in the background.
Enlarged view of the Blue City.
On leaving the Fort, I noticed a number of handprints - some of them tiny - on the wall by the inner gate. These were the prints of Maharajah Man Singh's widows, all of them taken just before these girls and women climbed upon his funeral pyre and burned to death - probably in an opium induced stupor. This horrific and tragic tale really affected me for some reason, and I couldn't stop feeling both sadness and anger about it for the rest of the day. This ancient rite known as sati has its origins in prehistory, and was often voluntary on the part of the widow, although there is much speculation about whether this was always the case - especially in royal households where traditions had to be maintained. Now outlawed, it still rarely occurs in some parts of rural India.
I descended back down the steep slopes and into Sardar Market. A distinct counterpoint to the sedate Fort, this ancient, bustling marketplace was actually so chaotic that I found it really amusing.
The clock tower that fronts the market place.
Wonderful chaos. There are even people on the roof...
I made my way back to the guesthouse through the labyrinthine, mediaeval streets of the Old City and climbed to the rooftop restaurant. There I watched the sun go down, saw monkeys scampering across the rooftops and hawks alight on nearby mobile phone masts. Across the town, innumerable mosques began their call to prayer, each voice vying and intertwining with the other in a strange, ethereal harmony.
I looked at the fort on the hill and thought about the Maharajah's wives who had immolated themselves on his funeral pyre. I stared at it as if it were some ancient, venerable figure that had been involved in every aspect of life in this small town. It surely had answers - and I wanted it to speak, to tell me what had really happened to those poor women; that it had not all been a tragic waste of life. The fort stood resolutely, imperiously as it always had, cradling the town below as the dying sun made it glow.
This blog covers the period 9th December 2009 - 10th December 2009.
