PixelatedImage Blog

Jodhpur is a town in Rajasthan, India, that I would go back to time and time again if I could. Steve McCurry calls it “almost too good to be true.” I spent a week there in January last year and truly felt at home.

The walls in most of the old city of Jodhpur are washed blue and give the place a surreal calm feeling. If you were dropped in to Jodhpur without knowing where you were you’d swear you were in a now-defunct Indian theme-park or movie set. There is something visually enticing around every corner of the old city – alleyways that wind around and back and encourage the wanderer, the flaneur, to get lost in mazes of impossibly-infinite shades of blue.

Looming over it all is the Mehranghar Fort high on the escarpment. Jodhpur is a desert city, so the weather, to my mind is perfect. Warm and dry in the day, cool at night. Of course, I was there for a week in January, so it’s likely to be warmer around now.

I stayed in an old heritage hotel – the Pal Haveli – I think we paid about $40/night for a double, and while we could have done it much cheaper, or for much more, this place was incredible. It was comfortable and the service was truly good. Check out the website – truly a cool place to spend a week.

We ate dinner nightly, after sun-down on the roof-top terrace, mezmerized by the lights of the looming fort. We ate breakfast daily at the omlette shop that appeared out of the dust each morning in front of the clocktower – for a dollar we had a couple omlette sandwiches and a cup of chai, sometimes we ate lunch there as well. I still have cravings.

Truth be told, I’m a lousy tourist. Seeing the sights ranks last on my list, I spend my days wandering for the most part. I generally feel that if you try to see it all you wind up experiencing very little. So I confined myself in Jodhpur to the old city and the blue walls, the endless temples and shrines, the market We walked up to the old fort but found it to be a typical dusty monument (impressive, but lifeless) that hasn’t seen life or culture for generations, so we wandered back down to lose ourselves in the labrynth of back alleys and streets, once to be accosted by a gang of children who forced me to play cricket with them. So with the exception of the fort, I saw nothing but the sunrise to sundown life in the neighborhoods, which to my mind beats hanging with the tourists.

Among many memories, one that sticks with me most clearly is my time with the woman pictured above, engaged quietly in morning devotions. I rounded a corner, and mesmerized by her colour and her quiet grace, I just sat there, watching, and quietly photographing (with her permission). She finished, invited us in for tea. I shook my head, made a lame excuse and walked off. That’s one of those moments I wish I could re-live, have a do-over, go back and accept her gracious hospitality.

There’s so much of India to see, so many places that boggle the mind, and the eye. But Jodhpur is one I am longing to return to. We flew in on Jet Airways, from Delhi, a driver from the hotel met us at the small desert airport in an old army jeep and a week later took us to the train station for the night train to Agra.