Jodphur- the Blue City

After leaving the Pushkar Camel Festival, we arrived in Jodphur, the famous Blue City. Many of the houses are painted with a brilliant blue color, said to be an effective mosquito repellent. Somehow the mosquitos still found my sweet foreigner blood!



As most Rajasthan cities, this town also had a fort so we snaked up the hillside in the morning to check it out, successfully sidestepping the people who were eagerly inviting us into their houses for expensive henna hand painting or visits to their restaurants.







This fort differed from the others in the region- it actually had an active group concerned with its upkeep and presentation. So they had a very slick audio tour and the place was immaculate- no graffiti, trash, or general disrepair as is common with the other forts.



Here, we learned about the purda system, where women remained out of the sight of the "lustful gazes of men." Therefore, they lived in separate areas of the fort and had specially screened windows that allowed them to look out or listen to political meetings without those men checking them out. The womens' area was guarded by the most trusted eunuch men. Even when one of the Jodphur Queens visited England, the only thing reporters ever got a photo of was a glimpse of her ankle as she stepped out of her carriage (on display at the Fort). Jodphur's royal family was so outraged that they bought up every copy of newspaper so no one could even see that bit of her!



Such effort went into the design and detail. The sandstone screens were intricately carved as were large wooden doors. The entrance to the fort was built with many corners such that elephants could not gain speed to ram down the doors, but if they did, the doors had discouraging spikes at elephant eye level. The proud boast was that this fort was never breached once, and only bears the scars of cannon fire from neighboring invaders after a planned marriage didn't happen.







As we left the fort, we walked through Brampura (pictured below), the area where the Brahmin caste of the city used to live, and where the majority of the houses were also blue. Here we snaked along the alleyways and met some nice kids, saw lots of sleeping dogs and a few playing puppies. At one point a parade for the BJP party came through, as elections were apporaching.







In Jodphur we tasted our first makhania lassis, saffron-flavored lassi that was such a nice sugar rush in the mornings. We also found a place that served real spaghetti noodles- not those fake chow mein "spaghetti" dishes, and enjoyed more yummy sweets.



We left the next day as we had a limited time to see the rest of Rajasthan. It was time for our first long distance bus ride, to be discussed in the Jaisalmer post!