The Rajasthani Sojourn

Mehrangarh Fort: Rajasthan's sentinal

From Udaipur we travelled to Jodhpur, whose eponymous pants were unfortunately nowhere to be seen. I found Jodhpur to epitomise what I expected India to be like before arriving. Crowded, crazy spice bazaars, wailing beggars, sleepy-eyed camels and cows stopping traffic, and of course the ubiquitous eruption of colour against terracotta terrain and sapphire skies. In addition to its managing to live up to my expectations, Jodhpur has become a highlight in my Rajasthan sojourn for two other reasons – both to do with the city’s municipal design.

Mehrangarh Fort is the biggest thing I have ever seen. It is a megalithic creation, the size and impressiveness of which has left me straining for superlatives. I’m going to have to leave it to the experts’...

"From the bastions of the Jodhpur Fort one hears as the Gods must hear from Olympus…” (Aldous Huxley)

"The work of angels, fairies and giants" (Rudyard Kipling)

The fort is the first of the world’s great attractions that I have found to live up to the dimensions measured out by my mind’s eye. The Empire State Building, Big Ben, the Hope Diamond and so on are indeed amazing but were all unfairly assigned boots too big to fill by my imagination. The Mehrangarh Fort did not suffer this mis-calibration of expectations.

The fort’s size belies its delicate carved intricacies. Its courtyards, spires and even its ramparts are sculpted into beautiful crystalline features. Elaborate stone latticework entwines around coloured glass to transform windows into kaleidoscopes that turn colours with the arc of the sun. As the fort grows out of sheer cliffs several hundred metres above the city, it’s impossible to notice this elaborate detail until actually within its walls – a feat made much easier by the resident maharaja’s opening up of his fort to the general public several years ago. A massive renovation and the installation of museums and other tourist-friendly attractions within its edifice has secured Mehrangarh Fort (and indeed Jodhpur) a place on India’s must see list.

From the fort’s parapets one can easily see Jodhpur’s most unique attraction. Almost all of the city’s buildings are painted blue. Originally used as a method for identifying domiciles belonging to the Brahmin caste, the painting of a house blue has become the staple decoration throughout the city, thus making the view from the elevated fort quite spectacular. We spent an afternoon walking through Jodhpur’s old city, with the Rajasthani charm combining with the maze of cerulean buildings to effect a surreal impression of Jodhpur.

After remaining a fews days in Jodhpur, we drove through the Thar Desert to arrive in Jaipur six hours later. Jaipur is known as ‘the pink city’, as many of its buildings are painted a salmon hue – the Indian colour of hospitality. This is a deception that must rank alongside Erik the Red’s name-swap of Greenland and Iceland to attract hoodwinked settlers to Greenland’s desolate shores.

Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and is a mess of a city. It’s big enough to attract the grime and sleaze of an emerging metropolis, but too small to have the infrastructure to deal with it. It has amazing shopping if one is into buying grossly inflated tourist shit. Just outside of Jaipur, however, is another of India’s fine fortresses. The Amber fort is accessible by elephant, which is a pricey but worthwhile mode of transport. It is hard to fathom the immense size of an Indian elephant until perched precariously atop one. It’s odd to see the tops of buses from the elephant’s howdah as it heaves its way up the road.

The Amber fort cannot hold a candle to Jodhpur’s titanic equivalent, but it is of interest because of the state it’s in. Bereft of a promised facelift and consequent cordoning off of its more hazardous sections, the Amber fort is left entirely unrestricted to tourists to happily scurry over its features. I’m sure it will take only one footloose elephant to lurch through a fort wall and bring a turret down upon a busload of gawking holiday-makers before the structure receives the remedial attention it deserves.

We spent New Year’s Eve in Jaipur. Our hotel laid on an extravagant dinner gala that ensured an appropriate medium through which to drink spectacularly. Not knowing anyone else present, Jen and I managed to assemble an impromptu gala table made up of a few random travellers and locals who happened to be milling about the buffet. One local who we were sat next to turned out to be a producer for an Indian radio station, who was receiving live crosses from his studio during the evening. He asked us to go on air from our table to inform the listening public of a foreigner’s impression of the night. By the time this request was made, I’d drunk enough to believe this to be an excellent idea. My new producer friend went live and threw to me, and I began commanding the airwaves with a colourful but penetrating diatribe on the Indian New Year’s Eve scene. After an intensively brief period it was apparent that the producer didn’t have much faith in my ability to connect with the listeners and so cut me off, instead attempting to interview Jen. Unfortunately Jen hadn’t inhaled as much booze as her libertine other half and so wasn’t as verbally lubricated as I had delightedly found myself to be. She had a ‘deer in headlights’ moment when the producer asked her to sum up, in a couple of words, what the night – indeed what India – meant to her. With a mind frozen by the thought of a million Indians bent toward their radios in anticipation of her response, Jen broadcast her summation: “Kashmiri aloo”.

Scholars of Indian cuisine will quickly recognise Kashmiri aloo as a dish comprising potato with dried fruit and coconut. It’s a sumptuous dish that can function as an entrée or side, and is both filling and refreshing. Despite its many gastronomic merits, I would doubt it’s ever been used as a term to appraise an entire country in celebration – on live radio no less.

Interesting discoveries:

• Walking through rancid Jaipur backstreets while nursing a New Year’s Day hangover is not pleasant.
• Domestically made batteries do not work – especially when housed in a camera during crucial photographic opportunities.
• Rickshaw-wallahs (the guys who take your money in exchange for frantic pedalling) are actually insane.

Administrative facts:

• Curry-o-meter: 80 consumed.
• Jaipur’s population: close to three million
• Jaipur’s climate is dry but is subject to the extremities of cold and heat during the warm and cold months – with the mercury ranging from 3 to 48 degrees Celsius.

Song of the moment:

Gang of Eagles, by Jefferson Airplane.

Udaipur's beautiful Lake Palace

Jain temple: Ranakpur

Detail of Mehrahgarh Fort.


Jodhpur's blue city from the fort.

Jaipur's meloncholy transport.

Contemplation at the Amber Fort.