Return to the Blue City
Trip Start
Sep 19, 2002
1
126
129
Trip End
Sep 22, 2003
Jodhpur, Rajasthan,
India
Saturday, August 30, 2003
Family Life
. Such a simple and unexpected pleasant evening and all seems well with the world!29th - Set off on our village tour with two young Scots girls and a mad driver. Our first stop was a cow dung hut in the middle of the savanna. We looked around while the young lad of the family interrogated Pip as to his cricket knowledge. Luckily Pip's a bit of a fan so the lad took him off to his sleeping area to show him his posters and chat about Nassar Hussein and Mick Jagger (not sure what Mick has to do with cricket but I wasn't going to show my ignorance by asking.) Then Pip got a hard time about his beard from the old woman of the family. I asked our guide what the problem was, religion maybe? He replied "No, she's just a bit crazy!" We all sat on a mat and the old lady made us opium tea. She put opium paste into a little conical fabric bag and poured water through it several times into a little silver vessel which she then used to pour it into our hands for us to slurp it up. As the only male guest, Pip assured the crazy lady that he now felt much stronger and full of sexual prowess although none of us felt anything at all! While all this was going on the little girl of the family tried to relieve the girls of their jewellery and took a particular liking to my engagement ring. Luckily I used my knowledge of Hindu to distract her - this worked because they knew the same word in Hindi as I did
Junky Pip
! After assuring them that we wern't all married to Pip, we took our leave and headed for the next village.This one was bigger and could realistically be called a village and there were lots of people milling about as it was yet another festival day. We looked around another simple house with holes cut from the cow dung walls for shelves and a cupabord with holes in which was the larder. Pip tried on a turban (didn't really fit his big head) which was 9 metres long when we unwound it! There are so many versions of this Indian headgear with the various colours and styles all meaning differnt things that it can be very confusing! The kids here spotted our sweets and we were soon swarmed with little people hiding their hands behind their backs and pretending they hadn't had any yet - children are the same the world over!
We stopped briefly at a bird park which was a fenced off area around a water hole but most of the birds were out for the day and we only saw goats and sheep. We did see one egret though (the ones here look a bit like herons). We then stopped at a durry house where the man makes rugs from heavy duty fibres as part of a co-operative. He showed us all the pictures from the posh magazines around the world featuring his work but unfortunatly none of the rugs appealed to any of us so we moved on to lunch
The Opium Lady
. We stopped briefly to have a game of hide in the hedge with some wild peacocks and also saw some gazelles hopping about the fields.We had lunch at a rich villagers home. Rich meant they had land, it didn't mean they had a toilet, we had to use the field around the back! We played with the new born calf and then had salted melon while they cooked for us on their little bricks. We had to try and eat watery curd and vegetable soup with chapatis cooked over a cow dung fire. I got hungry in the end and tipped it up to my mouth which actually wasn't rude despite my initial concerns. We also had some sort of flower bud from a tree so all in all quite interesting but I wouldn't want it again. On our way out we saw them washing up in cold water using dirt and grass as scourers with cows wandering nearby!
On the way to our penultimate stop we saw a very cute tiny donkey desperately trying to keep up with mum as she trotted through the scrub land. We arrived at the potters place and were amazed at just how cool the pots keep the water. We'd seen so many women and girls carrying these great pots on their head from the village wells and we could now see the use in them. The potter got on his knees in the yard and threw a small cosmetics pot and matching lid all by eye in about 3 minutes - we were enthralled! The two scots girls had a go and it didn't go so well but he was very complimentary. I bought a decorated version of the pot he made for 52p and after careful contemplation decided not to haggle with him. There was just enough time to stop at the block printers and make more purchases of bargain table cloths and bed spreads before continuing back to our guest house. As we got to the city I spotted a tiny baby elephant and our driver screeched around so that we could go and say hello. He was so sweet but he kept trying to eat my camera so I don't know how the photos will come out! We returned home tired but happy with great memories (and hopefully photos) of yet another side of Indian life.
30th - Our last day in Jodhpur and we couldn't leave without seeing the fort so eventually we plucked up the energy to walk up there. We got lost among the alleys and steps but kept climbing and now and then someone would stick their head out of their front door and shout hello or tell us which way to go. Because of the pilgrims the fort was crazy with people, many of whom are not used to westerners. We were given an audio guide here amazingly but this just made people stare more as they don't do them in the local dialect. People kept trying to talk to us while the earphones were on as they didn't know what they were and they wanted photos of us or us to take photos of them if they didn't have a camera! At one stage while I was listening to the guide, a large group came in and starting touching my clothes and the camera and the head phones as if I was another exhibit! The fort itself was amazing as we've come to expect here but we are always gobsmacked by their ability to build on jagged rock so high up! We saw marks from cannon balls where the fort was attacked and hand prints of the 15 maharajah's wives that they made just before they all jumped on his funeral pyre (sati). We were most amazed by the zenana which was amazingly intricate. Zenana refers to the area where women lived in purdha (meaning veil) which kept them protected from "the lustful gaze of men" which I could appreciate. The jali screens around the courtyard meant they could see what was going on around the palace without being seen themselves. Here we both had our palms read - this is another story which we won't bore you with, suffice to say it wasn't completely accurate but did provide us with something to talk about. His parting advise to us was that he thought we were thinking about living together and we should go ahead because it was the right thing. He looked a bit miffed when we told him we'd been living together for the last 11 years and were heading for our 5th wedding anniversary - he'd obviously missed my wedding ring and the fact that we had the same surnames!
After a good couple of hours bimbling about we headed for the beautiful white mausoleum for the maharajahs. It was eerily quiet compared to the fort and we again had amazing views of the city. Although not particularly blue overall, parts of the city are very blue indeed as painting the house in this shade is believed to keep away the mosquitos. Does it work you ask? Has it taken on elsewhere??!!
