On the top of the fort...notice the great blue houses below.
Common site in India: Cow eating something that is neither food nor nourishing. Here a delicious plastic shopping bag.
How to jack a car in India.
Cool blue streets.
On the walk down from the fort...the old city peeks through.
View from the top!
Seriously...who shows up at the airport without confirming their departure time before hand??? Who does that?! As it turns out we are officially retarded. We booked our flight to Jodhpur two months ago and then just waltzed into the airport this morning without a care in the world and also without at any point checking or confirming the flight. How this escaped both of us is beyond explanation. Anyway, our 9:05am flight had been rescheduled to 11:40am weeks ago and we ended up waking up at 6:30am and sitting for 4 hours in the Udaipur airport completely unnecessarily with no one to blame but ourselves! Oh well, lesson learned. The flight itself took 35 minutes and was uneventful. On the bright side, we had a train booked for the 24th for a long 6am-1pm trip heading to Jaisalmer- which we were dreading... India trains, as we have learned, are always late! They always leave on time from the origin station but as the trip progresses they get later and later so if you are getting on later in the trip the more delayed it will be... a few days ago we realized that the train from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer starts in Delhi(a loooong way from Jodhpur) so in reality, by the time it gets to Jodhpur to pick us up the scheduled 6am with turn into 8,9 or 10am and who knows when it will arrive in Jaisalmer. So...anyway the plane we were on to Jodhpur was travelling onward to Jaisalmer after it dropped us off... to our surprise! When we booked the tickets a few months ago the Jaisalmer airport had been shut down for some time due to problems with it being too close to Pakistani air space due to the conflict there. Apparently it has been open for a month now and has a daily flight to Jaisalmer taking 50mins. We got on the computer immediately at the hotel in Jodhpur and booked 2 tickets to Jaisalmer for $100 each and cancelled our train from hell. Yeah!
Common site in India: Cow eating something that is neither food nor nourishing. Here a delicious plastic shopping bag.
How to jack a car in India.
Cool blue streets.
On the walk down from the fort...the old city peeks through.
View from the top!
Seriously...who shows up at the airport without confirming their departure time before hand??? Who does that?! As it turns out we are officially retarded. We booked our flight to Jodhpur two months ago and then just waltzed into the airport this morning without a care in the world and also without at any point checking or confirming the flight. How this escaped both of us is beyond explanation. Anyway, our 9:05am flight had been rescheduled to 11:40am weeks ago and we ended up waking up at 6:30am and sitting for 4 hours in the Udaipur airport completely unnecessarily with no one to blame but ourselves! Oh well, lesson learned. The flight itself took 35 minutes and was uneventful. On the bright side, we had a train booked for the 24th for a long 6am-1pm trip heading to Jaisalmer- which we were dreading... India trains, as we have learned, are always late! They always leave on time from the origin station but as the trip progresses they get later and later so if you are getting on later in the trip the more delayed it will be... a few days ago we realized that the train from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer starts in Delhi(a loooong way from Jodhpur) so in reality, by the time it gets to Jodhpur to pick us up the scheduled 6am with turn into 8,9 or 10am and who knows when it will arrive in Jaisalmer. So...anyway the plane we were on to Jodhpur was travelling onward to Jaisalmer after it dropped us off... to our surprise! When we booked the tickets a few months ago the Jaisalmer airport had been shut down for some time due to problems with it being too close to Pakistani air space due to the conflict there. Apparently it has been open for a month now and has a daily flight to Jaisalmer taking 50mins. We got on the computer immediately at the hotel in Jodhpur and booked 2 tickets to Jaisalmer for $100 each and cancelled our train from hell. Yeah!
We headed into town this afternoon to see the giant Jodhpur fort and the old blue city. Jodhpur is the second largest city in the state of Rajasthan, India. It is also known as the Gateway to Thar (due to its location on the edge of the Thar desert), Sun City (due to the many sunny days), or the blue city (due to the large number of blue houses). Founded in the mid-15th it is protected still by a high, fortified wall that stretches for more than 10kms – accessible by gates in eight different places. It was quite spectacular and in excellent condition...and had stunning views of the blue houses surrounding it below.
I also, on a whim, stopped to have my palm read. This really bizarre man, who would stop the reading occasionally to hork up a chunk of phloem and spit it in his garbage can,(super disgusting but made us laugh at it's grossness/inappropriateness) read my palm for several minutes sprouting out statements regarding my health, personality and disposition followed by a few predictions. Then at the end of the reading he says in this large run on sentence " you are very fertile.. you can have lots of kids even in your 40's and 50's if you want.. I read nothing else in your palm... I am done here. Goodbye" then he basically shut himself off, handed me receipt and ignored us as we walked away. It was strange experience! Also, he fortold that I will live into my 80's and have high blood pressure in my 40's and 50's as well as a list of other life details! I plan on getting a second reading, perhaps in Jaisalmer, to compare and contrast the two. Very amusing and highly entertaining for about $4 canadian!
I also, on a whim, stopped to have my palm read. This really bizarre man, who would stop the reading occasionally to hork up a chunk of phloem and spit it in his garbage can,(super disgusting but made us laugh at it's grossness/inappropriateness) read my palm for several minutes sprouting out statements regarding my health, personality and disposition followed by a few predictions. Then at the end of the reading he says in this large run on sentence " you are very fertile.. you can have lots of kids even in your 40's and 50's if you want.. I read nothing else in your palm... I am done here. Goodbye" then he basically shut himself off, handed me receipt and ignored us as we walked away. It was strange experience! Also, he fortold that I will live into my 80's and have high blood pressure in my 40's and 50's as well as a list of other life details! I plan on getting a second reading, perhaps in Jaisalmer, to compare and contrast the two. Very amusing and highly entertaining for about $4 canadian!
We wondered around the old city for a bit until the chaos and livestock got the best of us as headed back to the hotel where I had a great buffet feast!
Shopping Chaos. India's answer to Safeway at 5:30pm
Tomorrow we have scheduled a 4 hour tour of the surrounding small villages starting at 8am and then we plan on spending a lazy afternoon here at the hotel reading in the courtyard and enjoying the beautiful weather and blue relatively smog-free skies of Jodhpur.
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