Laura Tanna Leaving Jaipur, we depart for the Blue City of Jodhpur known for the Brahmin homes painted in this sacred colour. The 206-mile, seven-hour drive has little to recommend it, passing brick works and marble mines. The same marble which built the Taj Mahal lies here. There are huge blocks, dust everywhere, the only colour that of yellow and orange sari-clad women working the brown terrain and, of course, scores of colourfully decorated trucks, loaded sky-high, always with the words 'Horn Please' painted on their backs so drivers will honk behind them.
Highlight of the drive
A Rajasthani musician plies his craft.
Basically a truck route, Jaipur/ Jodhpur highway runs along the edge of the Thar Desert. Highlight of the drive comes midday when our driver, Rajender Singh, pauses to eat. My husband, of Indian ancestry, and I nibble on a bag of spicy mint potato chips. In walks a trucker who takes one look at us does a double-take, then stares at me, at which point I realise I'm a white woman alone in a desolate truck stop with a bunch of Indian men. On the second look he decides I'm not for sale and orders his lunch. Being in India reminds me that I'm white.
The bleaker the desert landscape, the more camel carts. Camels can live a month without food and carry within them enoughwater to last a week so they are well cared for and as colourfully decorated as men's turbans and women's clothes. Fuchsia, purple, turquoise, red, gold, green, orange yards of cotton brilliance brighten the landscape the closer we get to Jodhpur, my favourite city.
Originally a watering hole on the silk route which brought caravans of goods from China to ports on the Arabian Sea and south India, Jodhpur was founded in 1459 by Rao Jodha, the Rathore ruler of the kingdom of Marwar. He gave his name to what is now Rajasthan's second largest city, with a population of one and a half million, of whom 92 per cent are Hindu and eight per cent Moslem. Jodhpur flourished through taxing itinerant traders and now is famous for its merchants and their entrepreneurial skills. One hundred and twenty containers of fabrics, intricately carved furniture, all manner of goods, are exported DAILY from this city. There is no unemployment and though Marwar originally meant Land of Death, today Marwari merchants run many of India's largest business houses. Even the Maharaja helps promote internationally the city's textiles and crafts through the Integrated Rural Development Products.
A sheer cliff
Majestically Mehrangarh Fort rises 410 feet on a sheer cliff above Jodhpur. Fortunately, we have Narpat Singh, formerly assistant curator of the Fort Museum, as our guide for the day. For those less fortunate, an audio guide is now available, as is an elevator to the top. Rao Jodha built the fort in 1459, and successive rulers in the mid-17th to 19th century added to the red sandstone structure, creating lavish rooms, with distinctive names: Moti Mahal/Hall of Private Audience decorated with gold leaf, mirrors, crushed seashells in the lustrous plaster; Takhat Mahal, with an elaborately painted wooden ceiling; Phool Mahal in rich red and gilt for royal celebrations. On and on the rooms continue.
This palace museum is being brilliantly restored. With the introduction "stone speaks in his hand", we even meet Bowani Singh, the talented sculptor carving the intricate marble Zenana Deodi/Palace of the Queen sponsored by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Getty Foundation. Mehrangarh Museum won an Award of Excellence from UNESCO and the Hadrian Award from the World Monument Fund in New York in 2006. Despite the finery within, two images that linger are sweeping views from the ramparts of blue houses below with the city's walls rising along the Aravalli Mountain Range, and the palm prints at the fortress gate of women who committed sati, or ritual death by fire, when their husbands died in war.
Just down the cliff is a monument to love, the elegant Jaswant Thada, a cenotaph of white marble built in 1899 in memory of Maharaja Jaswant Singh II whose widow, inspired by the Taj Mahal, used her finest diamond necklace to finance its construction. His innovative irrigation scheme brought water to the parched area, something locals also credit Indira Gandhi with doing during her years in power.
Enlightened rule
Maharaja Umaid Singh provided an unusual example of enlightened rule by commissioning a palace to create work for his subjects during a time of terrible drought and famine. Starting in 1929, 3,000 men laboured for 15 years using a design by English architect H.V. Lanchester, a melange of European Art Deco, Jain and Rajput styles which fuse marvelously. Today Maharaja Gaj Singh II lives in a portion of his grandfather's creation while the rest is open to the public as the Umaid Bhavan Palace Hotel. Well worth a visit even if one isn't staying there. The Trophy Bar has been toned down owing to a greater awareness of animal rights, but photographs show the days English and Rajput royalty hunted big game together. A stuffed leopard crouches ominously by the lobby grand staircase. The opulence of crystal chandeliers, huge bouquets of flowers and ornate gilt furniture under a marble dome impresses even the most jaded.
We stay at the Taj Hari Mahal Hotel in less grand but pleasant surroundings, marred onlyby lackadaisical service. I wonder what ritual is responsible for the man standing atop the roof waving a large white flag only to be told he keeps pigeons from drinking the pool water as guests are afraid of catching avian flu! Who has time to stay indoors when Jodhpur is so pleasantly clean, with no pollution and little traffic within its six miles of walls and eight gates.
Walk through Sardar Bazaar in the heart of the Old City by the 1912 Clock Tower. People are so pleasant as vendors sell everything from fruits, flowers, spices, pan, tobacco, jewellery, saris, anything you wish. And don't be fooled by exterior appearances. Directed to Maharani Art Exporter on a narrow street we discover a four-floor store selling antique textiles gathered from traders throughout the area but also overrun from its mills which produce fine scarves for European designers.
A Sunday Telegraph article by Tim Jepson published October 22, 2006 describes actor Richard Gere purchasing 108 grand foulards, large cashmere shawls, for 188 each which in Paris with the Hermes label sell for 3,500 equivalent each! Sure enough, the owner produces a photograph of himself with Gere and proceeds to teach me the latest style for tying scarves in Milan.
Such sophistication goes back a long way in Jodhpur. Remember, the very word for jodhpur pants comes from the polo playing Rajputs of the 19th century. Yet step outside Mukesh Jain's "shop" and you can still bump into a cow ambling by. Speaking of which, we fly back to Delhi rather than drive and find both the airport in Jodhpur and economy class on Jet Air to be excellent for the two-hour flight.
Side view of the Umaid Palace Hotel.
