Driving along the grand National Highway 8, connecting Delhi to Mumbai, we passed Ajmer on the way to Jodhpur. Ajmer is home to the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti. Dev, our driver, mentioned that the city was also famous for its nearby marble market in Makrana. It was marble from this region that was used in the building of the Taj Mahal.
The sun was beating down on us as we moved further towards the Thar desert. The landscape being drier, though still without the sand dunes that would have been prevalent in Jaisalmer. We had difficulty keeping our eyes open and we were worried that our driver might also doze off. I was keen on not getting into a road traffic accident a second time and kept checking in the mirror to confirm Dev was awake as well. My mother was finding the heat very taxing for her eyes and I was wishing the car windows had been tinted or had some shades to provide some relief from the desert heat.
We stopped midway for a lunch of vegetable pilau and spinach and paneer curry under a tent. We eventually reached Jodhpur and were taken to Meharangarh fort.
We met our Rajput guide at the entrance of the fort, which was built in 1459. It was a steep climb to enter the fort and by the time we came to what looked like the entrance, the guide told us that we were on the 15th floor of the fort. Gasping for breath, we were thankful for the guide’s lecture to give us a minute of rest. The guide paused by a plaque and pointed to the opposite side of the fort wall, where it looked as if someone had patched up a square hole in the wall of the fort. The guide said that at the time that the fort was built, the King had been adviced that if a man was buried alive in the foundation of the fort, the fort would withstand the test of time and onslaught of enemies. The King’s Meharan (palanquin-bearer) volunteered to be the sacrificial being and the patch was the last stone placed as he was buried alive. While the story of the sacrificed man is true, it is not clear whether the fort derived its name from the buried man or the Rajasthani word for sun, which the ruling clan was connected with. It was a ghastly tale of origin for such a magnificent fort that still stood strong and powerful.
Walking up the ramparts, we had a partial view of the city below and we saw the reason why it was also known as the blue city. Most houses were painted in dark blue as the high caste brahmins of Jodhpur liked painting their houses blue.
We first visited the fort museum. In one section, there was a display of palanquins that had been used over time. The one that stood out was a more recent one specially made for the King’s mother, for her visit to England. Her palanquin was fashioned as a telephone booth. I can’t imagine how she could have been comfortable travelling in that booth though.
The next section was the royal cradle museum, in the former women’s section of the palace, which had some of the cradles that had been used in the royal family. A more recent contraption was the electric cradle that was gifted, by the Department of Public Health, to the newborn Maharajah in 1948. The cradle was designed such that it would automatically swing, when it was switched on.
It was also from this room that the married women, who still had living husbands, threw rose petals at the Maharajah and his retinue, when he left for or returned successfully from a war. Women whose husbands had passed away were considered inauspicious. Among the exhibits in this room, another interesting exhibit was a display of dumbbells, which the guide mentioned had been provided by the Maharajah to the royal women so that they could exercise and keep fit, despite being confined to their zenana. There was also a painting of the women exercising with the dumbbells.
We visited a couple of apartments open to the public: the Phool Mahal, or the entertainment hall of the Maharajah; the Maharajah’s apartment and the hall of public audience. The artist who had designed Phool Mahal had died midway and the King had left the hall unfinished as it was, in memory of the artist.
From the fort, we saw a smaller monument a slight distance away, which we were told was Jaswant Thada or the crematorium of the royal family. As we left the fort, we saw at the entrance gateway, small hands imprinted into the wall. The guide said that they were the hands of the women who had committed sati and that sati originated in Rajasthan, during the Mughal invasion era. The practice was initiated to prevent the abuse of the women at the hands of invading armies, once their King had been killed. While the suicide practice had been initially a voluntary one, it soon became part of the culture, especially among the nobility, and women who had lost their husbands were expected to commit suicide. The practice was only banned in 1952. It was horrible to think of the women, who had placed their hands on the wall as a last imprint of their existence before burning themselves on the funeral pyre of their dead husbands.
The tour operator had booked Mandore Guesthouse in Jodhpur, which had been one of the places I had specifically requested for during this tour. I was interested in Mandore guesthouse for two reasons: that it offered a traditional Rajasthani hut-style accommodation at a family-run guesthouse and secondly, because the guesthouse owners ran a community volunteer programme in the nearby Bishnoi village.
Mandore, the former Marwar capital, is about half-an-hour away from the city area. Myth has it that it is the birthplace of Princess Mandodri, the wife of King Ravana of Sri Lanka, in the Ramayana. We visited the nearby Mandore gardens, where the cenotaphs of the Maharanis were. In front of the entrance to the garden, there were many stalls set up. It being the day after Eid, the festivities were still continuing in the neighbourhood. The gardens seemed a popular hang-out place for the locals as much as it was for the langurs.
After our short walk in the gardens as we were not too keen to be wandering around the cenotaphs at dusk, we returned to the entrance area. We spotted a boy playing some lovely folk music on a traditional Rajasthani musical instrument. My mother was very much taken by the music and the string instrument so we asked the boy where we could get a similar instrument. The boy replied that the instrument was 500 rupees but he wouldn’t sell it, as it was his living. We weren’t able to make him understand that we were not trying to buy it from him but from the place he had it made or had bought from, so we gave up and returned to the guesthouse.
We were a little early as we had requested dinner at the guesthouse around 7-7.30p.m. so we decided to sit in the garden till it was ready. The proprietor of the guesthouse introduced himself and spoke to us about the village and his days growing up there. As a poor boy growing up in the village, he said he dreamt of speaking English and wearing trendy clothes and had to endure jokes made by his college mates, when he went there on a bicycle. He was proud of all he had achieved since then and especially of his initiative of giving back to his community. The idea for the guesthouse and tourism venture, he said, sprung from his strong feeling that the palaces and forts though a great testament to the past were not where life was and that India, the current, living India was found elsewhere among the rural communities. It was with this opinion that he had founded his tour company, which offered tours to rural villages. He added that he felt that tourism should be a two-way process, not just tourists coming and enjoying sites but contributing meaningfully to the communities they visit. He felt that his venture provided that by combining short volunteer programmes in surrounding villages, which enabled the voluntourist to experience village life first hand and get to know the residents. He said that to make it more attractive for the volunteer, he incorporated special interest themes, like learning puppet-making or henna designs or cooking into the volunteer programme, to enable a cultural learning as well.
When he initially started his community tourism concept, he said it had been difficult to sell the idea to major travel operators in Delhi. However, over the years, his venture had built its own name for the volunteering programmes and had even been mentioned in the previous year’s Lonely Planet guide (2005) and he had been invited to attend a conference organized by ILO and UNCDF on responsible tourism in Bangkok. Most of the people who visited the place, he said, were those who had been recommended the place by others who had come earlier.
Dinner was announced and he invited us over to the table that had been set up for us in the garden. His lovely daughter-in-law served us the home-cooked dinner which did not taste like the Rajasthani meals we had on the road or at the hotels, but very much Sri Lankan (rice with dhal, okra curry, potatoes, pappadam). The garden was lovely but full of mosquitoes and we were slightly worried with all the dengue news going about in India.
Finishing our dinner, we went back to our cottage. The accommodation was as described in the webpage, but the only drawback was that in the middle of the night, the a/c stopped working and it became extremely uncomfortable, as there was no window. The walls seemed to have absorbed the heat of the day and were releasing it in the night.
Despite the air conditioning system that stopped working and the uncomfortable, sleepless night, it was a lovely stay due to the wonderful hospitality of the family and their responsible tourism venture, which I enjoyed more than my visit to the fort.
[Linking this post to Weekend Travel Inspiration, City Tripping #66 and Faraway Files #21]
Lovely blog..double thumps up : )
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Thank you. I enjoyed reading about your travels around Himachal Pradesh on your blog, as it is a region I have been long meaning to explore.
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Please visit Kinnaur ..its a hidden paradise : )
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Wow – Jodhpur looks out of this world. Would love to go there.
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Jodhpur is a very special city – I found it more fascinating than Jaipur and Udaipur, the other two cities in Rajasthan that I visited.
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stunning! like being in a 1001 nights story:) #wkendtravelinspiration
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The fort was stunning and it did feel like being in a 1001 nights story, especially in that entertainment hall, ‘Phool Mahal’.
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I always love how you write exactly how you were feeling in that moment. It’s like reading an enticing book and I want to read more of your journeys! It gives me a feeling for exactly what I could expect on such a trip! #Wkendtravelinspiration
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Thank you so much for your lovely comment, Lorelei! I am so glad that you enjoy reading about my travels and I hope you visit Rajasthan. Having enjoyed your series on Bavarian castles and palaces, I think you will enjoy a different take on palaces and the desert state is filled with some of India’s impressive ancient forts and palaces. ,
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Oh I’m definitely ready for something new 🙂
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what a memories!! I was in Jodhpur 7 years ago and I really enjoyed it. #wkendtravelinspiration
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Thank you, Shere! Jodhpur is a special city, indeed.
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Meharangarh fort looks quite impressive and it was interesting to learn about the unfortunate practice of sati. I think the community tourism idea is great, we visited a village that focused on eco-tourism in Cambodia which was really nice. Will keep this in mind for future reference. #wkendtravelinspiration
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I am sure you would enjoy your visit to Jodhpur, when you visit India. I really liked the community tourism idea, especially since they had started it at a time when it was quite a new concept and not yet part of one of UN’s SDGs.
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Some really great photos here, Ahila! The Maharajah’s apartment is so intricately decorated. An interesting tidbits of information too, like how the man volunteered to be buried alive in the fort.
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The story of the man who sacrificed himself did stick with me throughout the visit to the fort, because I couldn’t imagine how it would have been to knowingly accept a live burial. His descendants were looked after by the Maharajah’s successors and according to the guide, to this date, live on an estate near the fort that was awarded to their family.
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We loved our one night in Jodhpur as well. I’d love to go back and spend more time. You hit some great sights.
Thanks for linking up with #wkendtravelinspiration! We’ll see you next week!
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Glad to hear you enjoyed your visit to Jodhpur as well, Corinne!
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We are hoping to make it to India later this year, so am adding Jodhpur to my long long list
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Jodhpur is a city worth visiting, Paula.
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Thanks for a very interesting post and gorgeous pics. I’ve only been to India once (to Delhi and Agra) and loved it. There is still soooo much I’d like to see and Jodhpur is definitely on the list. Hope I’ll make it back to India soon.
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Thank you, Birgit. I sure hope you visit Jodhpur, on your next visit to India.
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Really interesting post.I enjoyed reading it and knowing some interesting details such as ladies with dumbbells…The building pictures are fabulous too
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Thank you, Amila. The dumbbells was something I didn’t expect at the museum so it made an impression on me 🙂
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Such an interesting visit! I like the balance between the majesty of the fort and the authenticity of staying in the guesthouse. While the stories of the fort are quite fascinating, I’m going to have to admit that I’m not too envious of some of the people who lived… and died… there.
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Jodhpur sure made a huge impression on me. Behind every majestic fort, there is sure to be many gruesome tales so it was good to know what it cost the people of that time to have the Mehrangarh fort built.
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Enjoyed reading this wonderful post Ahila
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Thank you, Arv! Like the theme of your blog and look forward to seeing Jaipur, through your lens.
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I’m happy you liked theme on my blog, Ahila. ooking forward to hear your comments and suggestions. 🙂
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Like your post! Greetings from Romania! 😀
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Thank you for stopping by.
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How the guesthouse owner tries to give back to society through his tourism venture is inspiring! I can imagine how fulfilling it must be to participate in his volunteer programme. #CityTripping
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The community tourism initiative sounded interesting, especially as it was a relatively new concept in this sub-region. I didn’t have time though to participate in one of the guesthouse programmes though.
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That’s a pity!
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Jodhpur, as all India, is so beautiful!! I’d like to go back there one day!
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I have always found India fascinating, as each sub-region is so diverse and beautiful. Hope you revisit soon!
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Wow! What a stunning place.Would love to go there.
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Hope you do get to visit Jodhpur then!
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I really enjoyed reading this post. The stories are fascinating. Jodhpur is one of the places I really want to visit.
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Thank you, Upeksha. Jodhpur is a lovely place and Rajasthan as a whole, is quite intriguing.
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Jodhpur is the place I’d like to visit most in India #fatawayfiles
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A great choice! It is a beautiful and fascinating city.
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Jodhpur looks beautiful, and I loved the story about the dumbbells! #FarawayFiles
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Yes, the story about the dumbbells was fascinating, especially as it was illustrated by a painting on the wall of the women using them 🙂
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Your Jodhpur post is bringing back memories of my trip in Dec 2011 and at that time, it was cold. My room in the guesthouse was so cold, unfortunately there was no heater, as such I piled on 2 woollen blankets over me! I really enjoyed Mehrangarh Fort, did you make a trip to Sardar Market in the town centre? It was at the market where I bought Khuswant Singh books from a secondhand book shop 🙂 #farawayfiles
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How lovely to hear that you had visited Jodhpur as well and that you enjoyed your visit to Mehrangarh fort. I didn’t visit Sardar market as my mother was quite exhausted after our fort visit and we decided to have a relaxing evening at the guesthouse and its nearby gardens.
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Jodhpur sounds so unique and interesting. I love the pink hue of the stone and that incredible Phool Mahal. Thanks for sharing on #FarawayFiles
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I liked it that the Maharajah decided to leave the Phool Mahal unfinished, after his treasured artist died midway during its design.
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I loved Jodhpur when I visited. I went a long time ago and stayed in the local cheap hostel where the ceiling fans almost always died in the middle of the night. I remember being very moved by the sati hands and loved the blue roofs of the brahmin’s houses. Love the story of the sustainable tourism shown here. Thanks for sharing on #farawayfiles
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Yes, I did enjoy visiting Jodhpur as well. The city is quite fascinating. And, the hand imprints and man buried alive did make the most impression on me, in relation to the fort.
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Your photos are truly spectacular, I want to visit, now! #farawayflies
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Thank you and I am hope you do visit Jodhpur some day.
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A really interesting post. I’m still struggling to comprehend the widows who committed suicide and that it was banned only relatively recently. Pope women. The fort is very striking. Thanks for the insight into this city #citytripping
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Thank you, Elizabeth. I am glad that the practice of sati has been finally banned, even though it took centuries to do so.
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What an incredible fort, so beautiful but such a dark history. The sati hands must have been so moving to think of. I’d heard how beautiful the city was, especially the blues, I’d love to visit one day . Thanks for linking up with #citytripping
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I hope you visit Jodhpur one day, Cathy. It is a fascinating city. The hand imprints did trouble me, especially to think that was the final moments of those women’s lives.
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I always learn so many interesting things when reading your posts, Ahila. This time I’m so curious about the Sati practice and the poor chap who offered to die in the fort as the last stone was put in position.
A hot, uncomfortable night for you and your mother but a day full of inspiring sights and tales.
#farawayfiles
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I can’t imagine what the person, who volunteered to be buried alive, must have gone through. His descendants still live on an estate off the fort premises, that was gifted to his family, in recognition of his sacrifice to the Maharajah.
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You write so well, if I’ve been to the place you always capture the spirit of it and if like Jodphur I haven’t, I inevitably end up wanting to visit. #CityTripping
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Thank you so much for your lovely comment, Catherine. I appreciate it very much!
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