It's hot I say-damn Hot!!!
Trip Start
Apr 25, 2010
1
3
49
Trip End
Mar 30, 2011
Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India
Monday, May 3, 2010
My next stop was Jodhpur, the blue city. As with Udiapur, it got it's name from the colour of the buildings. It was said that the blue helps stop bugs, but if the amount of bites I experienced is anything to go by then they need a new lick of paint!!
I had arrived very early here and I was tired and searching for accomodation was not high on my priority list, that being said my reasons for chosing where to stay are usually simple.
Clean- check!
Bed(no bugs)-check!
Cost(cheap)-check!
Well at 5.30 in the morning all that goes out the window and the strangest of reasons will come to the fore-this time it was my love of a picnic basket stealing bear!!
What are you on about, you must all be thinking!!
Simply, there was a guesthouse named Yogi's, so with all my childhood memeories flooding back-I became 'smarter than the average bair-dy and made my way there.
I didn't spend too much time here in Jodhpur but what little time I did spend it reminded me of everything I had experienced since arriving in India. The streets were wild, if I wasn't trying to negotiate the streets while avoiding walking into a cow, it was trying to avoid cow shit on the streets!!!
When that was mastered, I turned my attention to evading the on coming cars, people and rickshaws!!! Now I've sussed it, I'm six foot, pasty blue in colour and in India that equates to me sticking out like a sore thumb-so I have taken to just walking in the middle of the road and let everything else avoid me!!!
So far, it's working a treat.
Jodhpur has some impressive sights, it has an old and new part of the city apparently. To be honest, I can't tell the difference between the two as it all looks the same to me.
There is an impressive fort that overlooks the city, now normally this is not an every day occurance although in India it does seem to be the case that most cities have some fort or another. Anyway, normally you would venture in and have a look around but this time I decided to look at the fort from the point of view of the attackers.
How shrewd and different you must all think!
Not really, I was tired, the heat was taking it's toll a little and low and behold there were over a million steps to climb to get into the fort(well not really-more like a 200 or so). This could prove to be incorrect as I was told this by a rickshaw driver wanting to chauffeur me around!!
On the subject of heat, I guess in an ideal world it would be all blue skies and pleasant temperatures (Hell in an ideal world I'd have won the lottery, have 10 wives, well maybe not wives, em girlfriends, na that's still a little excessive......I'm way off on a tangent here, where was I?)
Oh yeah, pleasent temeratures!! It would certainly make it easier not to be sweating profusly after a 5 minute stroll(plus I guess not traveling to India in their summer months would have helped too!!) but the heat does play a huge role in shaping your day.
I've only been in India for a week or so at this point and I'm still acclimatising myself, plus my Scottish genes have never really endeared my to the scorching heat. It has been a little difficult to settle in to the country but what I need to remember is that if everything were the same the world over then it would just be boring.
Essentially, the world would be beige and there would be no need to go explore different countries. Thankfully this is not the case and infact, it is the reason for my traveling. So despite the heat, I have had a stern word with myself and I'm gonna make more of an effort to get up and at them!!!!
Oh yeah, my Scottish genes might have not blessed me with a capacity for the heat but they have ensured that I have gorgeous blue eyes, a flat stomach, a rock hard ass and an ability to eat as much cake as I like without gaining weight...............so it's not all bad!!!
So with my new found enthusiasm, it's off to Jaisalmer.
To get there, it involved another bus journey. Now after my last experience I was kinda looking forward to it.
The thing with Jaisalmer is it's out in the desert and that pretty much means sand, sand and bloody more sand!!!
What surprised me more than anything travelling to Jaisalmer was the amount of people that got on and off in the most remote areas that you'd ever see.
Out of nothing but sand would appear a little hub of buildings, remote farm land and some of the most hardy, rugged looking individuals you could meet.
To give you an idea of how it was, imagine you are on the 240 bus and it starts to head down into the scheme, the desolation, the despair of the inhabitants,the barren land, the burnt out cars, the lawless kids, the windowless buildings, shops with
metal bars for windows, the fear that your bus would be bombarded with rocks and that the road may be barracaded...................well the road to Jaisalmer was like this only no where near as bad!!!!!!
In fact, the hardy, rugged Indians would probably refuse to stay in the scheme, citing unliveable conditions as their main reason!!!!
