Mini Delhi

Trip Start Aug 28, 2005

Trip End Dec 10, 2005

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Flag of India Jodphur, India
Monday, November 28, 2005

My first impression of Jodphur was that it was a mini Dehli and in the 2 days we spent there thats impression didnt change. Jodphur is the Blue City of India as many of the houses are painted blue. We found out that this has a purpose, 1- to keep the houses cool in summer and 2- to keep away the mosquitos, which we felt it was not doing that at all. All the blue did look quite cool from the guesthouse rooftop.
There are a few things that im struggling with and finding hard to get my head round in India. The first is the poverty. I have seen poverty and have recently visited 2 of the poorest countries in the world but the gap between the rich and the poor in India is just insane and the poverty here is so in your face everywhere you go. There are sooooo many poor and homeless people including children which I find sad. I feel a terrible as here the other day, we were waiting to cross a main road and I felt these cold hands grabbing at my legs and when I looked down I saw 3 grubby, malnourished homeless kids touching me, pulling at my clothes and bag, holding out their hands for money and I just freaked, shaked my legs, shooed them off me and dashed accross the road

Cricket Practice

. What a terrible way to react, I felt aweful while I ate my lunch but at the time it really gave me the creeps. I love kids and it is so horrible to think that those kids have nothing. As we ate lunch the kids still sat at the side of the road and were smiling and waving at me so maybe they forgave my reaction towards them - I hope so. Everyone wants a rupee and I just do not have a rupee to give to everyone.
Another thing I am struggling with is how dirty this country is. The streets are lined with rubbish of every kind and the stench is aweful. It definatly doesnt help that cow are owned by city people and are allowed to roam everywhere. There is also goats and boar and huge numbers of stray dogs that just do their toilting anywhere and it is not cleaned up plus the homeless people. It is easy to understand how disease spreads so easily here but what I am really struggling to understand is why dont they clean it up and put the animals where they belong in set areas???
Sorry about that - I just had to get those things off my chest and still trying to process them every time I leave the guesthouse.
Back to our travels in Jodphur - we hired a tuktuk driver who took us to the Palace, the White Palace and the Jodphur's Mehrangarh Fort sightseeing. The fort tour was a goodie until my episode (see later). We got headsets to explain the history

Definatly blue!

. The fort is the only undefeated fort in India and was built in 1459. It maybe helps that it is 500m up on a hill which is dificult to climb but still amazes me how they had the technology to build places like this at that time especially with the lovely delicatly engraved stonework. A crazy story is that a raven once put a cast onto the fort that it would suffer from severe drought and what goes along with a severe drought and to break the spell they needed to sacrafice someone living. A man offered his life for the spell to be broken and was burried alive in one of the stone walls! Crazy crazy stuff!
There are two things I enjoy when travelling and that is meeting the people of the country and of corse eating the food but in India, it is hard to trust either of those! Jodphur was to be my first Dehli Belly experience which arrived part way through our tour of the Fort. The vege curry for lunch the day before was the one! Nasty curry, tasted yuk at the time so I didnt eat it all (thank goodness otherwise this would have been much worse) then started feeling a bit funny about 30mins after and it just took off from there. After the fort it was back to the guesthouse for the afternoon and night. Not at all pleasant but everyone knows that only a few lucky people get to leave India without getting Dehli Belly not that I have ever spoken to anyone that has escaped!
I was glad to be leaving mini Dehli and heading to Udiapur known as the romantic city of India which is hopefully a much nicer place.