India Day 7: Jodhpur

The Blue City of Jodhpur doesn't get as many tourists as the other colour named city and is relatively quiet. It's narrow roads are more walk paths than roads, with the occasional van or car more often than not stuck in pedestrian traffic or tight corners. It's more a village than a city; the city of Jodhpur proper is outside the walls of the blue city. Google Maps says there's a university and golf club out there. The people do seem nicer, as widely written, but we have seen our fair share of decent people in India as well as the pushy and fishy trader. Looming over the city is the Mehrangarh Fort, perched precipitously on a hill, casting a cooling shadow over the city. A smidgen of disappointment: most of the houses here are not blue, there is a fair amount of white washed walls as well as redstone facades. Photo ops in my purposefully chosen blue t-shirt wasted! An aerial view of the city reveals that it's dotted with blue, not washed blue as I had hoped. Conversations with the guesthouse owner's son reveal that many house owners have taken to just recently painting their homes blue to increase the tourist trade here. Never underestimate the power of aesthetics and branding.

A hike up a trail took us to the Mehrangarh Fort through its rear. All the sighseeing left me with no time to go to its front entrance and appreciate it from that perspective. Also, disappointingly, I miss another spot used in the film The Dark Knight Rises. Bruce Wayne escapes from a prison shot in the stepwell near Jaipur and emerges out with the
Mehrangarh Fort in the back. Oh well!

It's been converted into a museum, which I appreciate. An empty building would have been a little less interesting. On display were tapestry, gorgeously handpainted swords from Persia, howdahs and palanquins. Lions on howdahs were a recurrent theme, wondering how this could be, lions are not native to India. 7300kms away! The rooms were an Indian take on Rococo, gilded, frescoed, gold and silver leaf on every surface but less impressive than the other places we've been to of late, less light flooding in making it appear a bit dingy. Especially the Sheesha Mahal.

A gallery of paintings were on display, religious art focused on Devi, the Goddess. I'm not a religious art kind of guy, not crazy about visual art either, but I stood transfixed before each painting. The micro details on each element were astounding: figures as big as my thumb (small hands) with each eyelash, fingernail, strain of hair perfectly distinct, sarees embroidered with meticulous care and each pearl on necklaces clearly painted on. The artists must have spent months on each painting, taking time to cover every tree, flower animal, all the rakhshasas and Devi with the finest detail. I was so transported in that room, that Bob had seen the rest of the museum and come back to the gallery where I still had 2 paintings to go. For all the trouble and inconvenience this trip may have caused, it was worth it for this one moment. I'd carry the magic I felt from those paintings in my heart forever. And I did, on the way out I spent a bomb on a student painting in the same style to bring back! Not a religious scene.

The paintings in Rajasthan feature the goddess because she is the primary deity here. Yet, for all this piety, the practice of sati is the first thing one sees as they make their way into the palace courtyard. To the left of the innermost gate, Loha Pol (Iron Gate) are the handprints left by the wives of the Maharaja Man Singh before they immolated themselves on his funeral pyre, pictured here. I can't reconcile the two. How is it that man can be so arrogant that he claims ownership over all, even the lives of those he professes to love?

Bob and I walked about the Blue City later at night discovering a posh area with fashion boutiques, expensive knick-knack shops and a hotel we obviously didn't have the spending power for. We settled for buying bottles of water and biscuits at a small sundry shop. Found a stepwell, not the one in the movie, but it'll do.