07 June 2011

Blue City: Jodhpur

After exploring Jaipur(Pink City) and Jaisalmer(Golden City) we were into Jodhpur which has a similar sobriquet called Blue City. The city is which is essentially at center of the state provides a few sightseeing locations to tourists. Generally people prefer to have a day stopover at this place when traveling one end of the state to another. We arrived in the city by a overnight train from Jaisalmer, very early in morning. We checked-in at a hotel recommended by an auto driver. While completing the formalities, the driver offered us a city tour ride on his auto. Considering the time constraint we decided to take a plunge.



First we visited Umaid Bhawan Palace the place where Royal Family of Jodhpur resides. One has to mandatorily show his/her ID proof at a checkpoint before entering the premises. Not all section of the palace are accesible to general public one side of palace is given on a lease to Taj Group of Hotels and the rest of section is for the royals. One can visit a museum inside the premises where some antique collections of the royal family are exhibited. One of the caretaker of the museum took us through the collections and narrated the story which was depicted in the Bollywood movie Zubeida. He also showed us a hall which was the venue for the high profile wedding between Arun Nair and Liz Hurley.



After the palace visit we were off to other side the city for Mehrangarh fort which is atop a hill. There are many salient features in this fort. Like halls which had special semi-closed seating for ladies who used to participate in administrative discussions. As we were extremely saturated after seeing forts at Jaipur and Jaisalmer, the enthusiasm and curiosity was at minimum level.


Coming downhill from Mehrangarh fort we visited a marble structure called Jaswant ta Thada which houses samadhis of members of royal family.


Since there was nothing else to explore in the city and got back to our hotel getting off the auto which had a royal legroom. Well, there was a hiccup while paying up the fare. Since we had not fixed the amount beforehand, the driver demanded exhoribant amount. Our effort to popularized a person similar Raju in Jodhpur failed miserably and it was choice of the person as he was keen on short term benefits.


Later part of the evening we roamed around clock tower area for timepass. We went to a cyber cafe to book our train tickets from Jodhpur to Jaipur. In the process, Ande had a casual chat with the cyber cafe guy, quenched his curiosity about a shop right in front of the cyber cafe where many foreigners were seated and munching snacks. The guy in response showed us a documentary made by a french tourist in one of the PCs. The name of the shop was "Omlette Shop", a lonely planet recommendation as depicted on board of the shop. We opted for cheese omlette from the comprehensive menu of omlettes. The taste of omlette was average and must confess that the shop owner should feel lucky to be recommended in guide books because there are so many better low-brow eat outs in India which are not recommended in guide books !

After the night walk we came back to hotel, next day we got up early and took the 5.50 am intercity express to Jaipur. From there I took a back to Mumbai and Ande took a flight to Bangalore doing Ctrl+Alt+Del to the great Rajasthan trip.

More pictures from Jodhpur:

4 comments:

  1. why is it called Blue city?

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  2. because of calico paintings on walls of some houses around the fort .. but the color is not evident as in the case of Jaipur or Jaisalmer.

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  3. It is sad that you felt the omelette shop wasn't too good. The 'masala' cheese omelette is the special one. I guess you missed it. It is the masala that creates the magic between cheese and omelette :)

    The novelty of the shop is about getting good tasty snack for such reasonable rates.
    Even so, I did find the french toast very good, the masala cheese omelette of course and some other item whose name I do not remember now. Not to forget the humble omelette man himself :)

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    Replies
    1. Rosh: thanks for dropping here and also for the recommendations. I will definitely try out "masala cheese omlette" during my future visits to Jodhpur !

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