Enjoying the “Calmer” Side of Rajasthan in Jodhpur and Udaipur

Our first few stops in and around the Indian state of Rajasthan were in a trio of cities known as “The Golden Triangle” – Delhi, Agra and Jaipur – which were wonderful and beautiful, but also a veritable viper’s nest of con artists and scammers attempting to prey on us at every turn. Without fully appreciating it at the time, we were able to leave some of this poor behavior (but rest assured, not all of it) behind when we commuted from Jaipur to Jodhpur. Located on the eastern end of Rajasthan, Jodhpur is commonly referred to as “The Blue City” because the Brahmin followers of Shiva used to paint their houses blue. Nowadays plenty of people in the city paint their houses/buildings blue for non-religious reasons, but the result is a beautiful cityscape of blue homes when viewed from above.

It’s blue! Mostly/kind of.

After settling into our hotel in Jodhpur, we were pleased to go up to the roof and be greeted by a jarring sight – the massive Mehrangarh Fort, which looms impressively over the city – along with a number of other blue buildings dotting our sightline leading to the fort. This was part of the overall charm of the city, where the blue buildings are connected by quaint alleyways (except for their lack of sidewalks and the nonstop traffic flowing through them); there’s a rooftop culture where everyone enjoys coffee, meals and drinks up there throughout the day; and the city is built right up to the base of the fort, so it constantly has a presence over the city. [Editor’s note: After seeing the forts off in the distance in Jaipur, it was a bit shocking to see one so huge and right there every time you got to a rooftop! It was also beautifully lit up at night, and (though almost nowhere has elevators, so each meal requires trekking up at least 5 flights of stairs) the rooftop café and restaurant culture really helped to add a peaceful element to the city, removed from the motorbikes, dust, and wandering cows below.]

The fort at night as seen from a rooftop restaurant.

Our rooftop at sunset. Not too shabby for our first view of the city!

View from our rooftop of the fort looming over the city.

Clearly this fort was kind of a big deal, so we had to visit it for ourselves. The fort was only 2 kilometers from our hotel, so it was super easy to get to. An audio tour was included with our entry ticket, so we were able to throw headphones on and just enjoy the experience. As with every other fort and palace in Rajasthan, it had beautifully ornate architecture and artifacts (frankly, we’re becoming a bit numb to them at this point, which is sorta sad to say). A cool thing about this fort is that we were able to see some of the bedrooms of the kings, which were obviously opulent but, surprisingly, also had a decent amount of European influence to them (given that the kings were often tutored by Europeans brought in specifically for that purpose).

View from a cannon on the ramparts of the fort

Rorie walks along the ramparts

A guard in traditional uniform inside the fort.

In some more great archways at Mehrangarh Fort

Intricate stone screens and beautiful architecture.

Looking out over the blue city that juts right up against the base of the fort.

Amusingly, they were filming a movie on the walls of the fort while we were there – a period piece about the East India Trading Company, replete with British soldiers in frilly red uniforms and Indians with swords. As we were leaving a large, bearded Indian soldier approached me with his sword and said that I should be in his movie. Putting aside the fact that I’m not sure that a random foot soldier has casting authority for a Bollywood movie, we begged out since we were leaving early the next day for Udaipur. With that said, I was thisclose to becoming a Bollywood star! Next time…. [Editor’s note: The actors took no note of me, of course (I suppose white women don’t have a lot of roles in this type of period piece), which was a little disappointing. I think they just wanted Rorie for his beard; he’s gotten a number of facial hair compliments while in India so far.]

Actors from the Bollywood movie rest during a break at the fort.

Other than visiting the fort, we spent our time in Jodhpur just wandering through the alleys in the city and seeing what it had to offer. One cool thing that we basically just stumbled upon was a stepwell located right in the middle of the city. The cool thing about this stepwell, as compared to the one we saw on our way to Jaipur, was that it was still full of water and there were no access restrictions to the well, so folks were sitting all along the steps just hanging out for the day and kids were playing around in the water. We met some random Canadian backpackers there and spent an hour just chatting away, enjoying the scene and trying to fend off lecherous Indian males who wanted pictures/selfies of Jess. Between the fort, stepwell and comparatively relaxed vibe of the city, Jess and I enjoyed our brief time in Jodhpur. It didn’t awe us or anything, but it was generally just a nice spot to visit for a while.

Blue on the streets of Jodhpur.

Local kids hang out on the steps at the stepwell

Jumping in the water at the stepwell

I can’t get enough of the patterns of stairs at these stepwells.

We caught a 6 hour bus ride from Jodhpur to Udaipur, the next city in our travels. This city had a very similar vibe to Jodhpur (quaint alleys, rooftop and café culture, etc.), with the big difference being that the presence of the fort was replaced by several lakes in and around the city. This feature has earned the city the nickname of “Venice of the East” which is a bit overblown, but it is fair to concede that it’s a pretty cute and relaxing city – by far my favorite place to just exist in India.

A random street cow with our bus at a rest stop. Typical India.

Pretty lake views from a rooftop café in Udaipur. That’s the Lake Palace from the James Bond movie Octopussy in the distance!

Our time in Udaipur was fairly uneventful on the whole, in part because we were able to meet up with some of our friends from Delhi and hang out with them in the city. One activity we did with them was our Indian cooking class, which ended up being a nice time. All the cooking classes in this city are basically in people’s houses, so it was a pretty cramped setting and we weren’t able to do much hands-on cooking. We also didn’t really learn that much about Indian food or cooking. Frankly, it was probably our worst cooking class to date, but the quality of the activity was salvaged by having our crew of 5 folks with us who made it fun and jocular (plus I negotiated a pretty favorable group discount for us, so that helped). [Editor’s note: Yeah, it wasn’t really a “cooking” “class” per se, which was a little disappointing, but the woman was really nice and the food was delicious, and it was a fun afternoon with our friends getting to see a little bit of how life in an Indian kitchen works. I also appreciated that she cooked like real people do rather than some forced authenticity – for example, instead of hand chopping and crushing tomatoes for a sauce, she would toss them in a food processor. Most classes we do seem to avoid all modern conveniences, so it was kind of amusing to see it done in a more realistic way.]

Our group at the cooking class, complete with aprons and chef hats.

Rorie and the boys chopping up a storm.

Demonstrating my gravity-defying “chapati edge roasting” technique.

Other than the cooking class and enjoying coffee/meals on various rooftops, the rest of the major sightseeing was done by Jess alone. I suffered some kind of allergic reaction (we have no idea from what) [Editor’s note: Don’t worry, family! Not the life-threatening kind of reaction, just the annoying sneezy not-feeling great kind.], so I passed out for an afternoon after taking Benadryl while she went off to explore the City Palace and other sights. Here’s Jess’s commentary on the experience:

Taking over from Rorie for a moment here: While Rorie slept off the Benadryl, I headed to the main attraction of Udaipur, the City Palace. Luckily all the attractions and cutest parts of the city are extremely close together and walkable, and between that and the fact that Udaipur is the safest and calmest city we’ve seen so far in India, it was no problem for me to head out alone (whereas I never would have tried this in Delhi or even Guwahati or Jaipur). The City Palace at Udaipur was nice, but coming after a number of other palaces and forts throughout Rajasthan, it was a little underwhelming. I got the audio tour, which was just ok, and wandered around for a couple hours. It’s huge, and contains not just rooms of the palace but also a number of museum-style exhibition halls with things like intricate, royal silver items from local silversmiths (including an entire silver chariot!) and a hall of musical instruments from the time, which was also interesting. Given the heat of the day, I spent a while hanging out in a beautiful garden courtyard that had been built for princesses to enjoy, and also happened to have a family of mischievous monkeys running around and completely ignoring all the humans, which was a lot of fun to watch.

Wall art and extra chairs at the City Palace.

This is labeled “cage for carrier pigeons,” which I thought was fun.

A monkey jumps through a garden at City Palace.

An incredible peacock mosaic on the wall of a courtyard.

After the Palace, I wandered past the Jagdish Temple next door, which has been under continuous worship since 1651 (!) and is covered in intricate, beautiful carvings on all sides. I then wandered the streets of town for a while, window shopping and looking at the beautiful decorated sarees and bracelets for sale before meeting back up with Rorie for dinner. All in all, a nice afternoon. Back to Rorie!

Looking up at the incredible carvings of Jagdish Temple.

By the end of our time in Udaipur, we truly enjoyed the feel of the place and having the ability to just relax in the setting. It was lovely and much needed after more…ummm…arduous travels through the rest of India. Naturally, we weren’t able to ride this wave of joy all the way to the airport to fly to our next destination – Mumbai – because India just refuses to go easy on us. We attempted to hail an Uber to go to the airport, but drivers kept cancelling on us because they didn’t want to try to navigate the narrow alleyways in Udaipur’s old city (despite accepting the fare in the first place). This forced us to hail a rickshaw at an agreed rate of 500 rupees…which he promptly tried to jack up to 600 rupees once we were inside (forcing us each to yell at him for a while until he acquiesced). Then he took us on a bumpy ride for a while before pulling over on the side of a random street and telling us to get out and wait for his friend to show up in “1 minute” to take us the rest of the way to the airport. At this point Jess and I both exploded at the guy, banging on his rickshaw and demanding that he take us to the damn airport as promised! I’m sure he was unfazed by my fury, but the sight of Jess’s blind rage promptly caused him to drop the issue and take us to the airport without another word uttered. [Editor’s note: I’m finally learning how to handle this country, for better or worse!] Just another day in India, I guess…but at least it put us en route to our final stop in the country: Mumbai!