I’m writing on the 7 hour train between Jodhpur and Jaipur, which is considerably more luxurious than the bus we took described at the beginning of this blog. We had shortened our time in Jodhpur to 3 full days to be able to get to Mount Abu. In this blog, I will cover those 3 days, plus the day of travelling between Mount Abu and Jodhpur.

Thursday –

Given the relative success of the bus journey from Udaipur to Mount Abu, we had decided to get another government bus from Mount Abu down to Jodhpur – a 7 and a half hour journey. The bus departed at 8am, so we were up early at our AirBnb at The Cub’s House and packing before Lalit brought us up aloo paratha with curd along with a thermos of chai for breakfast. Fortified, Lalit gave us a lift down the bus station and seemed more nervous than we were that we get on the right bus and that we hadn’t left anything in the room. The bus was standing in the depot on arrival, and the seats we had booked were unoccupied. So far, so good. We were sat towards the front of the bus on a 3 person bench seat, and we were quickly joined by an elderly man sat next to me on the aisle seat. Before long, the bus pulled out of the station and down the mountain road towards Abu Road.

The bus driver careened down the switchback mountain road, usually in the wrong lane. For the cars coming up the other way it was a case of not being on the road when the bus was coming down. About half way down, the lady infront of us was vomiting out of the window which we could all sympathise with. All looking a bit green, we eventually made it to the bottom of the mountain and pulled in at Abu Road station. The rest of the bus journey was a whirl of people, arid landscapes, car horns and hawkers trying to sell Ellie things through the window when we stopped.

The bus was non-AC and the daytime temperature about 35C, but when we were hurtling down the highway it was tolerably cool with the breeze from the window. In the larger towns, however, the bus was stopped at the station for 20-30 minutes whilst the conductor and driver wandered off. During these times the bus would fill up until all the standing room was occupied and without a breeze it was stifling even in the seats. I don’t know how the people standing crammed into the aisle coped, but I suppose they were more used to it than we were. Given we were on a seat for 3, we also had a succession of people sat at my left elbow.

The first of these was the old man that had got on at Mount Abu. He began talking to us at the Abu Road stop, and told us he had a hotel up in Mount Abu and his brother had a leopard safari somewhere in Rajasthan. We made vague promises that we would try to visit if we could. He then proceeded to show us almost literally the entire camera roll on his phone, including photos of someone’s wedding, several videos of his hotel, and a number of selfies of himself. Fortunately, once we started moving again he stopped the slideshow. Other guests included a large man with sweaty elbows, and a grandmother and her daughter who kept shuffling me up towards Ellie until she was taking up half the bench, and Ellie and I the other half. Fortunately she got off after only half an hour or so.

All things considered, the journey was a success. We weren’t expecting luxury given we had paid £3 each, but the bus arrived bang on time and we had seats the whole way, so we can’t complain really. As usual, a queue of rickshaw drivers made a bee-line for us at Jodphur bus station. We were quoted the outrageous fee of 500/- (£5) to get to our hotel about 10 minutes away, but we were both too tired to argue for the sake of a few pounds. Jodphur had a very distinct old city and new city. The old city is clustered at the base of the Mehrangarh fort perched high upon a rocky outcrop. Many of its square building are painted blue. This was original because it was a brahmin (priest caste) city and blue was the brahmin colour, but now anyone is allowed to paint their house blue in the old city. The new city has grown up around Jodphur and houses the majority of the 1.6 million population. Our rickshaw dived into the winding, narrow streets of the old city where the roads are blocked with bikes, cows, fruit vendors and other scenes of life. Even some of the rickshaws are built narrower to allow them to fit through. After a considerable amount of dodging around and honking, we arrived at Singhvi’s Haveli.

We had changed our accommodation in Jodphur to Singhvi’s Haveli as the reviews were unanimously glowing and the Haveli we had booked several months ago looked as if it was going to be a little run down. We weren’t disappointed. For the first couple of days we were the only people in the hotel, and we were put into the Maharani suite on the top floor, with a view over all of the blue city and up to Mehrangarh fort. The decor was a little eccentric as can be seen in the photos, but the whole place was clean, well maintained and very comfortable. There was a staff of at least 5 young men at any given time who practically fell over themselves to be helpful. We dropped our bags in our room then came downstairs to the restaurant on the lower floor for a snack given we’d had no lunch except for a few biscuits whilst on the bus. Here we had the classic snack of some vegetable pakoras and ketchup, then headed back to the room for some well deserved rest.

We finally built up the energy by the evening to go out into the town to find some dinner. The hotel was in the west of the old town, whilst most of the restaurants were by the clock tower and markets in the town centre. This was about a twenty minute walk away down tiny winding roads past vibrant blue houses which largely had their doors open so you could see family life carrying on inside. We quickly found with Jodhpur that the city felt more “real” and less tourist-y than Udaipur, especially as we were now in the summer season when tourists tend to stay away given the heat. We found a rooftop restaurant to eat, which had another stunning view over the city. The food was good, though the single waiter did get distracted towards the end by the group of three British girls that were the only other occupied table in the restaurant, and his boss had to drag him away to take our dessert order. From the restaurant, we walked back down the bustling roads and to bed.

Friday –

We woke relatively early on Friday as, given we had only 3 full days, we had a few things we wanted to do. We had breakfast at Singhvi’s, which has been the only place so far in India that served tea in a large mug much to my delight. Once fed, we walked the same way as we’d done the night before into the town centre. We were about halfway there when a man getting off a scooter shouted to us “remember me?”. We are pretty used to people’s strategies to getting you to stop and talk, so I said I didn’t and we kept walking. He then said something like “I’m from Singhvi’s Haveli”, which made us pause. He said that he had been in the kitchen so we must not have seen him but he saw us arrive the day before. He then went on quite a long and boring narrative about how hawky the town centre could be and marched us to a local fabric shop which he said was frequented by a list of unlikely celebrities and famous fashion brands. He then gave us the address of a spice shop that we should go to, and went on his way. We were both perplexed by this, especially since we never saw him at Singhvi’s during the rest of our time there. In any case, he hadn’t tried to con us out of any money so if it was a rouse, it was quite a benign one.

We walked through the central market, which was no more hawky than other places we had been, and found a coffee shop that had been recommended as one of the best places in Jodhpur. As with most places we went, it was completely empty and the owner was asleep on a sofa when we came in. The took our order, carefully made the coffee from an ancient espresso machine, then lay down and went back to sleep. The coffee was pretty exceptional, and the shop was on the 1st floor so gave a view over the bustle of the market below.

From the coffee shop we made our way up the steep hill to Mehrangarh fort at the summit. Compared to the rammed City Palace in Udaipur, the fort was also blissfully quiet. We paid for our audioguides and made our way around. The fort was built by another of the rajput kingdoms that were common in Rajasthan (hence the name of the state) that did battle with each other and the Mughals over the past centuries. The audio guide walked us through the many rooms and courtyards of the palace and gave us interesting tidbits of information about each of them. Highlights included the sharp 90 degree bend before the spiked fort gates to prevent an elephant charge from battering them down, and the handprints of the wives of one of the Maharajas that had been made before they went to their deaths by Sati (self-immolation) on his funeral pyre.

We ate in the fort cafe, I having a chicken wrap which in hindsight is chief culprit in what was to come over the weekend. There was an ajoining, smaller palace a short walk from the fort which was the Jodhpur answer to the Taj Mahal in that it was white and built as a mausoleum. The palace had only one large room in which hung portraits of all of the Maharajas dating back to the 12C, and the grounds of the mausoleum were beautifully cool, green gardens in such an arid landscape. Dotted around were the cenotaphs of other royal family members, and the area is still the official cremation grounds of the rajput family that now lives in a palace-cum-hotel on the other side of the city.

From there, we made our way back down through the old city to a lassi shop that the strange man from the morning had recommended. This hour and a half was not our favourite in Jodphur. We walked through one of the poorer neighbourhoods to get back to the town centre. The kids on the streets made a game of saying “hello” to us as we walked past, and then “what country?”. This was the same hook that a lot of the street vendors used to get you talking. About half of the kids would then giggle and leave us alone, but a significant proportion would then follow us and ask for money, or insist on giving us a “blue city tour”. Once we had shaken the more persistent of these children off, we made our way to the lassi shop. The shop was packed and a little grubby, which was made less tolerable by finding a hair in the lassi. We walked home from there, and I mistakenly took us down the busy main road rather than the backstreets which was very hot and noisy in the scorching heat of the day. The streets intermittently filled up with quite a lot of rubbish and food waste which was cleared away in the morning, but had to be dodged along with the oncoming cars and motorbikes. We finally got back to Singhvi’s, ordered some ice cold fresh lime sodas (an absolute favourite of mine lately) and lay down in the room.

Ellie had booked a yoga class in the evening at a shala in the new city and so, once recovered, we walked out from the hotel and found a rickshaw. It was nearly a 30 minute drive, but the rickshaw driver said he would wait an hour for us and bring us back for 700/-, which was a pretty good deal. We had booked an intermediate class, which was actually really quite hard. Ellie had booked this one as the reviews had said the instructor, a woman of about our age, was friendly, but this evidentally was on the scale of Indian yoga teachers. We were 2 of the 3 in person attendents, the rest of her students being on Zoom. At one point, when Ellie fell from a particularly difficult arm balance she said “I think you’re going to find this class challenging”, which brought back some yoga school memories. Despite this, we both enjoyed the challenge and it was nice to get some in-person exercise rather than in the hotel room for a change.

Our rickshaw driver picked us up, then went to get some petrol from the nearby petrol station. The queue was huge and took the best part of 45 minutes and it was a little perplexing why he did this after he collected us and not before. In any case, we were in no rush and before long we were back at Singhvi’s. The hotel restaurant had the downstairs seating where we had been having breakfast, but also seating of the roof above our room. Given it was getting late, we sat up here for dinner and listened to the sounds of the city in the evening whilst we ate. The city was full of chanting, singing and music coming out from loudspeakers at all times of the day. The evening, was no different, and from where we sat we could hear the prayers from at least two different temples. Once we’d eaten, we headed back down to our room and to bed.

Saturday –

We had breakfast as usual in the hotel, then took a rickshaw to the Rao Jodha rock park just behind the Mehrangarh fort. The rock park guided tour had been recommended by our guidebook and some blogs Ellie had seen, and was only 200/- per person. We arrived, and our guide (who called himself Denzel Washington for some reason) started by taking us through the exhibition of the different types of rocks that could be found in Rajasthan. This was interesting enough, but it was a good forty minutes before we entered the park itself. From there, he intermittently pointed out to us some plants and a couple of birds, but very quickly got himself talking about a variety of other topics completely unrelated to the park’s flaura and fauna.

At one point, we were stood listening to his monologue about his home state of Goa, and how it has been ruined by Indian tourists (a favourite topic of conversation for many people we have met). We walked a little further and he half-heartedly showed us some more rocks and one or two plants on our direct asking. Finally, we came to the point at which we were to turn around and come back, and we stood for the best part of an hour as he talked about Indian politics, weather patterns, water shortages in Bengaluru and a number of other disparate topics before finally running out of steam and walking us back to the entrance.

It wasn’t the start the morning we had hoped for, and all in all had taken 2.5 hours to walk about 1km. Shaking this off, we headed back into the city centre and to our favourite coffee man. He was again sleeping on the sofa, and again his coffee was excellent. From there, we popped across the road to a recommended omelette stand. We sat on the roadside with the most delicious omelettes with potato, veg, cheese and spicy mayo in a pitta bread. Things were looking up, and we went for a stroll around the market square. We’d braced ourselves for this to be chaos but given quite a lot of the market was actually for locals rather than tourists, we were largely given free roam without much hassling.

We bought a mango each as the season has just begun, and were instructed by the fruit vendor to keep them until the next day to make sure they were fully ripe. Finally, we tried our luck at a different lassi shop that had been well reviewed. The shop was packed with locals and we were served a 50/- (50p) saffron lassi along with everyone else. It was pretty phenomenal – sweet, creamy, fragrant and just what we needed in the heat of the day. We were in a very good mood as we headed back to the hotel for me to tutor before dinner.

We walked our usual route back towards the town for dinner, finding a hotel restaurant (funnily, all of the restaurants seemed to be attached to hotels in Jodhpur) we had heard good things about. There were 3 other tables occupied, which felt busy given how quiet everywhere else had been over the last few days. A young lad was playing live music with his guitar, and the food was very good. I had been having a bit of a funny stomach all day, which was not unusual over the last couple of months and so I thought nothing of it. We walked home, only getting lost once or twice in the backstreets and successfully dodging the street children, and to bed.

Sunday –

Unfortunately, I haven’t got much to write about Sunday. I woke up Sunday morning from a fitful sleep and knew immediately something wasn’t right. I won’t go into the details, but it was the first proper stomach upset we have had thus far. For the rest of the day I was between the bed and the toilet, whilst Ellie looked after me by bringing water, lime soda when I could manage it, and a plethora of medications which made the day at least tolerable. The morning was fairly unspeakable, but by the afternoon and evening I was largely just feeling weak, nauseous and tired. I was concerned that, since I had been sleeping all day, I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night but I was dead to the world until our early alarm went off for the train to Jaipur the following morning.

For all those concerned, I have made a remarkable recovery today (Monday). I’m yet to eat anything, but otherwise we made the train and now are on our way to Jaipur. We are in Jaipur for 4 days not including today, so I will probably cover most of Jaipur in one post, and then the end of Jaipur and Shekawhati ( a new stop, I will explain more in the next blog!) in another post.

Until then,

Rob xx