A Palace, a Fort and a Whole Lot of Blue

One thing that I think that all guide books for India should tell you is what mode of transportation is used in each city. For example, in Amritsar a bicycle rickshaw is all you need for sightseeing; in Udaipur you can walk everywhere; in Mumbai it is taxis only, barely an auto rickshaw to be seen. Well in Jodhpur it was auto rickshaws because it is a hilly hilly place. So we arrived and hopped in an auto and went to our very lovely hotel. We splurged a bit on the hotel as for both my friend and I this was our last weekend trip while in India (she returns to Canada in 2 weeks); and as an extra bonus our room was upgraded when we arrived. The hotel was great…but I’ll talk more about my love of heritage hotels another day…
Before sightseeing…a little background on Jodhpur and Rajasthan. Rajasthan historically had several princely states with royal families which were headed by a Maharaja. Jodhpur is one of the few that actually still has an official Maharaja or ‘king’. Not exactly as important as the British royal family (actually the king was on our night train back to Delhi in the next cabin; we think we recognized the prince as well from the pictures…my brush with royalty) but still royalty in their own right. In the early 20th century the father (or grandfather) of the current king decided to build a palace in Jodhpur which was the first place we visited; the Umaid Bhawan (see top photo below).
Apparently the building of the palace greatly helped with famine relief in the region; thousands of people worked for 15 years building it. The royal family still lives there; part of it is a (very nice) hotel and part of it is a museum. So we rickshawed up there and took a little tour around. It is quite pretty but I must admit that it felt a bit odd to be touring somewhere so new in India as usually I’m visiting places at least a few hundred years old.
After visiting the Umaid Bhawan it was time to go to the main sight in Jodphur. The Mehrangarh Fort (or, as I called it “the fort”) and the blue city. I was convinced that I was going to be disappointed by the blue city because I had built it up in my mind. I had seen one photo that looked really spectacular but the rest looked kind of blah. As we drove up there I became even more skeptical because we took a route that was rather not beautiful. I was also a bit confused because I hadn’t seen this huge fort which is supposed to tower over the city. Then we turned a corner and perfectly in unison my friend and I said “oooooh”. There it was - this HUGE fort perched over a city all in blue. Our rickshaw driver laughed to himself and pulled over so we could take some photos. Clearly he has had quite a few tourists in his auto have the exact same reaction.
The blue city is the old part of town; a cluster of houses all painted in a bright indigo blue and it is just the prettiest sight; not quite sure that a photo does it justice, but you can get an idea. The photo is taken from the fort and if you click on it you get a better idea. As you can see below, all of the houses are square or rectangular so it almost looks like a cubist painting. And the fort is HUGE (the 3rd picture is the fort taken from waaaay below). I’m not going to bore you with a play-by-play of everything we saw in the fort; suffice it to say that it was really beautiful (and had the best audio guide I’ve ever had) and we spent a good 3 hours exploring and taking far too many pictures of the blue city.
Enjoy the pictures: