Brahmin Blue

Rajasthan, awash with colour as we have said previously was no different today. We departed Jaisalmer, ‘The Golden City’ and headed towards Jodhpur, ‘The Blue City’.

It was a great drive, approximately 280 klms with flat scrubby desert landscapes morphing into rocky hills along the way. The trees were greener and larger and more frequent. Quite different to what we had experienced so far. We passed through Balesar, and while it was a bit ‘grubby’, the village was a hectic place with swarms of trucks, tractors and men all going about the business of quarrying sandstone. The scale was much smaller than the Kimberley mining but still huge chunks of the hillsides had been mined and large machinery lifted, cut and stacked this valuable resource.

During our travels in Rajasthan we have stood in wonder of the skill of the artisans and the enduring strength of the sandstone and marble that has been employed as the building blocks of this amazing desert state.

Nearly 1000 years of storms, wind, rain and harsh sun has made little impact on the legacy left by the many artisans and stone masons from another time.

As we neared Jodhpur, the mighty Mehrangargh Fort appeared standing again on a rocky outcrop some 120 metres above the old city. We had been here before but still enjoyed the impressive view ahead.

Mehrangargh is another magnificent fort and construction began in 1459.

The Rathore leader Roa Jodha understood the geographical importance of his new fort and the new city Jodhpur. It was on the important trade route between Delhi and Gujurat.  Jodhpur grew on the profits of this trade route as caravans of opium, dates and sandalwood (another connection to the Kimberley ) passed through it’s gates.

The old town is a rabbit warren of winding narrow streets flanked by many buildings painted in the most fantastic shades of blue!
In traditional times this indicated the home of a Brahmin (the priestly class) and it supposedly had the side benefit of being cool and also keeping insects at bay?

Things are a little more relaxed today and non Brahmins can also use the blue colour on their homes, and many do, creating a most beautiful townscape from any point of elevation. The fort is an obvious place to get the best view! We walked up to Mehrangargh Fort for this exact reason. Wandering back down into the ‘Blue City’ itself we enjoyed the balance of the afternoon in and around the bazaar, using the century old clock tower as our reference point.

As the sun went down, and the spotlights lit the spectacular fort above us, we searched out a place for dinner. The winding alleyways of the old town were surprisingly well lit and it was great to see many kids simply being kids and playing games in the street while the families arranged their evening meals often on the front step. A real treat to see just how the locals live.

Something worth noting is that in reality, the majority of the world’s population lives like this.
We are definitely the minority with our abundant creature comforts and excesses.

We passed through one alleyway and a young guy caught our attention as he drummed up some business for his restaurant. He insisted we have a look inside ‘Ravla’, and he promised it was a great place to eat.

Trusting our theory that a restaurant with fairy lights is always good we went with our ‘gut feel’ and walked through the little gate to be greeted by a beautiful little garden, squeezed in between a couple of old buildings.

Old beer bottles were fixed to the walls that had small LED fairy lights inserted. The relaxing glow across the tables added to the atmosphere of the cosy courtyard set below some small trees.

He was very proud to tell us that his restaurant had only been open for a couple of months but already was number 4 on trip advisor.
He had done a brilliant job and the service was attentive and the food tasty and pretty cheap. For a change from the Indian fare we have been eating for nearly a month now we settled on pizza and a Mexican quesadilla along with a tunda Kingfisher beer. Perfect!

We seem to constantly entertain the locals with our request for ‘Tunda’ Kingfisher. Tunda was one of those words we mastered quickly as it means COLD !  On approval of our Tunda beer we say ‘Tikka’ which means GOOD !

We don’t speak a great deal of Hindi, just a few important words that always seem to convince the locals that  we do speak it fluently.

It sometimes gets tricky when they wish to continue the conversations in full Hindi. We always end up with a flowing flap of arms and hand gestures along with just the right amount of head wobbles to order our food. In the end we either do or don’t understand each other but it really doesn’t matter. We haven’t been disappointed yet!