Jodhpur - November 26th

The main sight in Jodhpur is hard to miss; it is the massive Mehrangarh fort on a hill which dominates all views, especially the one from our hotel, which is right underneath it.  So much so that when we leave the hotel after breakfast to go up to the fort, we find ourselves in it about 3 minutes later.  Our hotel is very conveniently located for sightseeing.

The fort itself is spectacular, more for its physical setting than its interiors, which although good, are not that different from those we have seen before in Jaipur and Udaipur.  However the forts location is amazing.  Just as it can be seen from all over town, so it gives views across the town.  What is most impressive is the way the walls rise out of sheer cliffs to make an impenetrable fortress.  The stone used in the walls was chopped away from the slopes below to make the cliffs.  The tour around the fort is quite good, as the audio tour is included in the price so you get a lot of historical background and hear from the Maharaja himself. 

The tour goes through most of the main parts of the structure, some of which also double as a museum.  The museum shop at the end of the tour is surprisingly well stocked, most of the time they haven’t been that great.  After the tour you can still walk on a portion of the ramparts and look down on the city, although the views from some of the windows in the buildings were actually better.  As well as the fort there is a temple (where unfortunately 241 people were killed in a stampede at a festival in 2008) and a cenotaph where a number of previous Maharajas are buried, o it take a large part of the day to explore it all.

As evening falls we descend the other side of the fort into the main part of the town, the market around the clock tower.  This is the usual chaos we have come to expect from markets, and in fact is so bad that we retreat into a coffee house for a drink, and then we decide to forgo eating out and watching sunset from a rooftop restaurant on this side of town, for the same experience in our own restaurant which is in a relatively calm spot.