Colored City #2: Jodhpur

As fascinating as Jaisalmer's homogeneous sandstone hue was, the fact that Jodhpur was, in sections, almost entirely blue was even cooler. Lore has it that brahmins houses were painted blue (sweet, I can have a blue house!) but nowadays, people paint their houses blue because... well... everyone else's house is blue, too. The entire blue mass of a city sits at the foot of a large hill ontop of which the old Maharaja of Jodhpur built the gigantic, romantic, and idyllic Meherangarh Fort.

Our quaint Sarvar Guesthouse sat right near the foot of the hill and gave the most spectacular view of the fort from its rooftop restaurant. Of course, if you've read this blog, you know my opinion of forts in India. Well, let me be the first to say that Meherangarh Fort would have been like any other fort if it were not for Narrowcasters' excellent guided tour implemented by the Meherangarh Museum Trust. The current Maharaja (who by the way lives in his own half of the famous Umaid Bhawan Palace) set up the MMT because he believed that Meherangarh should not die even if the Maharajas did. So the palace is under constant restoration, the guided tour tells about what life as a Maharaja or courtier was like, and even has a person paid to sit and smoke hookah while the audioguide teaches about the opium culture of the olden days of Rajasthan. Listening to that tour, I could imagine what it was like to be a Maharani, required to stay behind the purdah ('veil' - meaning, out of sight of the public), moving through backside corridors and watching over the courtyards through the intricately carved jalis (windows).

Admittedly, there were only two things to do in Jodhpur, one was visit the fort and see the blue city, and the other was to eat all the mava kachori and mirchi vada and drink all the makhaniya lassis that we could handle. So we asked around for the best places to get each of them, and Kim and I visited each one - in fact, we walked 30 minutes to get to Chaudhry Namkeen for "Jodhpur's Best Mava Kachori." And we did just that. The place to get lassis was so famous for them that the owner came in every morning to make the day's batch in secret, then, instead of giving out glasses of water, the waiters would dole out a lassi instead! In fact, EVERYONE I ever saw walk into that restaurant had a makhaniya lassi. I think to walk out without having had one would have been tantamount to sacrilege. Which of course, wasn't a problem for us.

So after our fill of forts and food (it took a good three days to do it!) we bailed and headed for the hills... well, the hill, since Mt. Abu is Rajasthan's only hill station (and from the looks of it, the only hill period).