Jodhpur

We have been in Jodhpur three days and it has caused my heart to be still enough for me to be a little bit in love with it. Our hostel has views looking up at the fort and balconies with a view of the entire blue cubed town. The Brahmin or 'priest caste' paint their houses blue to identify their religion, apparently with the bonus feature of deterring insects. I sat down one night and found it hard to get up. the view was like nothing else I've seen, and I even had evening prayers at the local mosque as my soundtrack.

I loved the fort here. The forts and palaces were starting to become same same for me and Claudi. Same when seeing all of the churches in Europe, seen one seen 'em all mentality. But this fort was spectacular. The Maharaja, whose status was reduced to an ordinary citizen, has taken on reshaping his role to be a sort of ambassador of his past. He transformed the Fort into a very well presented and beautiful presentation of Jodhpur's past. Complete with a variety of litters used to bear royalty, ancient paintings etc. But again the view captured my heart and I fell in love a little bit more.

The streets are the usual crazy. We saw a great wedding procession. I love these people. The street is only two meters wide, but still two cars and plenty of foot traffic can squeeze through to make their daily rounds. But in comes a wedding procession and traffic be damned. They had a brass band, dancing reletives in front, and stunningly dressed bride and groom being pulled in a horse drawn carriage. Everyone here says hello and calls out to us when we walk down the street, but I felt especially delighted when the groom gave a hefty wave and thumbs up to us in the crowd.

And so concludes Claudia and Simone's north Indian trip. We are hot, bothered and generally tuckered out from the heat that is starting to build here. All I could do today was sit and drink saffron and cardommin lassi...(mmmmmm, lassi). Tomorrow we streak down to Goa to set up camp on the beach. Should we swim, sunbake, eat? Or eat, swim, sunbake? Or eat, swim, eat, sunbake, eat, drink, eat.......

xoxo
Sim