Jodhpur, the blue city

by Vincent

Jodhpur, seen from the fort. No wonder why we call it the blue city.

The fort of Jodhpur

Traveling by night bus in India is fun (or not).

Spices and rices...

The cow gang in the street!

Calling parents in the street from a small shop...

Berit with a lot of kids while visiting country side villages

Trying pottery. Not so easy!

Visiting a weaver community. It takes up to 3 weeks to make a carpet...

The opium ceremony in the Bishnoi family

Berit trying a turban. 

A guy smoking in the fort

Inside the fort, a lot of decorations

To go from Udaipur to Jodhpur, we traveled for the first time in India during the night and by bus. And of course, it's like nowhere else in the world. Instead of a seat, we had a kind of box for both of us, with a closing door. It looked a bit like the frozen food compartment of a supermarket. Obviously, night buses in India don't have any place to put luggages so we had to take them with us in the box. They don't have toilets either. So we had very little space left for us but we managed to be comfortable anyway. But the problem of traveling by night bus in India is not really the confort, it's the state of the road: the roads are so bad that we've been jumping in our box all night!

After 8 hours, we arrived in Jodhpur. You have to guess it because the driver will not announce anything. He dropped us in te middle of nowhere in Jodhpur at 5am. Fortunately, we found a rickshaw to drive us to the hotel. Close to the hotel, the rickshaw driver went out to ask for directions but he forgot to put the hand brake (I don't know if rickshaws actually have hand brakes...). The road was a bit steep so we started to move backwards. We started to wonder if we just had to jump out of the rickshaw or wait to hit a wall when someone coming from nowhere managed to stop it for us.

After sleeping a bit more in the hotel, we went to see the city, famous for its huge fort and the blue color of its houses. The city itself is not exceptional and we don't realize that it's blue when we walk in the streets but the fort and the views from it are really worth it. From there, we can see clearly why we call Jodhpur the blue city.

While we were walking in the steep streets, on our way to the fort, a guy invited us to his home. As usual, we didn't really know what he wanted from us but accepted because he was very nice. We sat on the floor in his living room and started to speak. "Which country?", "Married?", "Work?". Then he told us about his family and didn't forget to mention that his wife was doing beautiful henna tattoos. When we left, he invited us to see the money collection of his son. He had notes and coins from all over the world and from very unusual countries like Liberia, Bolivia or South Korea but, strangely he had only two missing: Euro and US Dollar, so he asked us if we could complete his collection...

The second day, we went on a tour with a guide in the country side to see life and communities in the small villages. It was really good to see other things than cities in India. Every community is specialized in a type of work. We visited shepherds, muslim pottery makers, weavers, as well as Bishnoi family. Bisnoi people live with 29 principles such as being vegetarian (not even eggs), protect nature and animals, etc. We call them the "first ecological people". They also drink opium by the way. The guide, who was from one of these villages, was very good and explained us a lot about life in the country side of Rajasthan.