Day 19: Jodhpur

“It has religious sentiment for me and if somebody goes on harassing me on this pretext I'll have no option but to commit suicide.”
-Lakshman Mishra (Government official – Bihar state)

Locations: Jodhpur (Rajasthan)

Photos:
Jodhpur: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050627&l=3403d&id=1101094

Temperature: 98

Morale: 6

Spinning: Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, The Wrens - The Meadowlands, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Hearts of Oak

Reading: Lonely Planet

Talking: To the same Austrian girl until midday, at which point I decided we must part ways.

What's next (I think): Night train to Jaisalmer (Rajasthan).

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I didn't have any fitting quotations for my subject line from the music I listened to today, so I'm using this insane sentence from a BBC news story that I just read: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6984065.stm. I’m reading along about a guy who thinks he should be able to wear his tilak (the red dot many Hindus wear on their foreheads) in the government workplace (Bihar state), and everything is normal, and then the dude says that if he keeps being harassed like this, his only alternative will be suicide. What? A little drastic, dude? How about maybe quitting your job and trying to work in, say, the private sector? Possibly a better option than suicide. Very strange.

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I left you asleep in Jodhpur, but before I proceed I’ll jump back to something that happened the previous night. Before bed, while I was waiting for my room to cool down, I drank a couple of Fantas on the roof terrace and jotted some stuff down in my journal. While I was sitting there, an Israeli girl who was also staying at the haveli approached me and asked to borrow my “Lonely” (all Israelis call “The Book” a Lonely, instead of Lonely Planet). She had been oh-so-smart and had only photocopied the pages (she thought) she needed, but now had realized that she had forgotten a couple sections, including the one on Jodhpur. But that's cool—I've been carrying this heavy book around the whole trip because I didn't know where exactly I might go, so of course I don't mind you leeching off of me in order to keep your pack light.

So I let her borrow my “Lonely,” but instead of shutting up and taking notes, she started talking about her recent trip to Tibet. I must admit, I encouraged her at first, just to see what the time commitment was like and figure out if I could possibly make it to Lhasa on the next leg of my trip. But then she started going into excruciating detail about every town of 5,000 people that she had visited from South China all the way to Tibet. The story took over half an hour. And the best part was, she said every single place was “most beautiful.” I don't know about you folks, but I was always taught that the whole idea of a superlative was that it was unique. But apparently I “must visit” every single town in South China because every one of them is ”most beautiful” and, I mustn't forget, “unmissable.” Hmmm. It’s important to learn to make distinctions in life.

Anyway, because she talked my ear off she wasn't done with the book by the time I wanted to go to bed. So she agreed to leave it outside my door, and I would get it in the morning.

The next morning when I woke up and opened the door, the “Lonely” was nowhere to be found. I asked the haveli owner if the Israeli girl was still here, but he said she had left for the fort half an hour ago. Had she left my book with the owner, perhaps? Nope. So I was without a guidebook for my whole day of sightseeing in Jodhpur. Brilliant.

Even worse, now I was fully dependent on Astrid, because she had the German “Lonely” which she could translate to English for me. But Astrid had started to get a little annoying the night before, so I was hoping to ditch her this morning. Now, that would be much harder to do.

But still I was determined to try to strike out on my own, and so I told Astrid that I was going to the train station to buy a ticket for Jaisalmer for tonight and that I would meet her at the fort “later.” But she said that we would probably have trouble finding each other at the fort (really, you think?), so she would just wait for me at the haveli while I bought my ticket. No really, she insisted. Thanks!

I went and bought my 3-tier AC (3 bunks in a row going up the wall, in an air-conditioned car) ticket to Jaisalmer, which cost Rs 611 but was well worth it (Astrid, sounding tough, said she always traveled in “Sleeper,” which has no AC and is quite a bit more crowded. Good for you, Astrid—and who do you think got more sleep?).

Begrudgingly, I met Astrid back at the haveli and we walked up to the Meherangarh (Majestic Fort), which overlooks Jodhpur from the hilltop. Jodhpur is known as the Blue City because, like Bundi, many houses are painted blue. Also like Bundi, it's unclear whether these blue houses owe more to the many Brahmin caste residents of Jodhpur, or to the fact that the blue paint keeps mosquitoes away. Either way, all the blue looks beautiful from up in the fort.

Admission to the Meherangarh was a steamy Rs 250, but that included camera privileges and a surprisingly informative audio tour. I'm usually not a fan of audio tours, but I would have paid for this one again. I learned quite a bit about the fort and the history of Jodhpur and Rajasthan, but I'm not going to write it here. If you're interested, I'm sure there's a very good Wikipedia article.

After exiting the fort, Astrid and I headed for Jaswant Thada, a white marble cenotaph (which, by the way, is a memorial to a dead person that differs from a mausoleum in that the body is buried elsewhere) that was across the ridge from the fort. The place was beautiful, although, of course, it's supposed to be nothing compared to a certain other white marble memorial that I would visit in a few days.

The strangest occurrence of the day happened at the entrance to Jaswant Thada when Astrid refused to pay for camera privileges by maintaining that she wouldn't use her camera inside the cenotaph complex. This was a five minute argument over a Rs 20 fee, and then, once inside, she used the camera anyway. Come on, this is India—you can't cheat on admission to sights. I guess she thought of it as payback for all the times she was ripped off by the touts, but still I was unimpressed.

We climbed down the hill from the cenotaph to the Clock Tower (center of the Old City) and had another lassi at the Nazi-esque place. I wish I had started drinking these things earlier in the trip, because they're quite good and, more importantly, cold.

At this point the heat of the day was upon us, and Astrid suggested we get out of the sun by hitting an internet café. This was my chance! I told her that I was going to go back to the haveli first to see if I could get my guidebook back, but that maybe I would see her at the internet café later. I of course went to a different internet café and never saw my beloved Austrian again.

Back at the haveli, the owner told me that the Israeli girl was in her room, so I moved in for the kill. I knocked, and she answered with a blank stare, so I said, “Yeah, my book?” “Oh, right, it's right in here. Did you visit the fort today? Amazing!” Probably more amazing if you had your guidebook with you, I thought.

She found the book, but hesitated before giving it back and said, “Wait, let me just make sure I've gotten all the information I need out of the Lonely....” What? No, no, I don't care if you're done or not—making off with someone's guidebook is the cardinal sin of backpacking, and you're going to give it to me now, whether you're done or not.

Happily reunited with my “Lonely,” I walked to the non-Astrid internet café, sent a few emails, and then got dinner at a Hindi-only restaurant next door. My ordering process at the restaurant consisted of me closing my eyes and pointing to the menu, but in the end everything worked out quite well. Indian food of all varieties continues to impress. Comfortably full, I walked the 1km or so to the Jodhpur train station to commence my overnight journey through the Great Thar Desert to Jaisalmer.

The train station was in rare form. Outside the station, inside the station, all over the overpass, all over every platform, and basically everywhere else you could imagine were loads of Indians sprawled out on the ground, presumably waiting for their trains to arrive. There were literally a couple thousand of them, and that left so little room on the floor that I had to tip-toe over them. Thankfully I didn’t step on anyone.

Surprisingly enough, my train was on time, and I was in a compartment with two French girls who minded their own business rather well. I went to sleep immediately, and had to be shaken awake in Jaisalmer. Score: night trains, one; night buses, negative two. But it's fortunate I didn't take sleeper class, as Astrid had suggested, because it was so full that it couldn't have been much more comfortable, or cool, than my second class train from Bundi to Chittor. And we all know how that trip went.