Jodhpur

Monday 12/31

We arrived last night in Jodhpur, the blue city, and settled into our eclectic digs.  After figuring out, by much trial and error which of the 42 electric switches controlled the 2 lights in the room, we unpacked and the girls readied themselves for the nightly shower ritual. They had skipped the previous nights aqua treatment because the shower temperature was nearly impossible to dial in.  It took about 10 minutes of careful micro adjusting to get it almost right.

This bathroom was not much to look at, none of them really are, but with every new room is a new opportunity to strike shower gold, or maybe nickel.  Tara was first to take the standing plunge tonight. In most places we stay we have to indicate our intention to shower so they can fire up the water heater, this was no exception.  What was the exception was the 8 water related knobs.  Recall the 42 electrical switches, there was also an over-abundance of choices in the water works department.  After 10 freezing minutes trying to get hot water out of the shower head and another 20 with the owner making two trips to adjust the water knobs, he finally said the shower is only cold, hot comes from the pipe and only touch this one knob.  His instructions were to get the hot water from the pipe and dump it with the bucket on ourselves.  After following the procedure last evening and freezing all last night the girls decided to skip tonights water hazard.

Even though I have been feeling rough the entire trip it was Riley who blew first before last night was very old.  After her first pass at the toilet I prayed that God would grant her relief by morning and He was willing.  She bounced back well, Tara has a good cold going and I am still a GI distressor.  Patti, who usually is the one suffering from some food related allergy issue feels great, praise God.

This morning we visited the 15th-17th century Mehrangarh Fort.  It is said to be the only one in India that has never been taken in war.  It is a beast of a fort and it is hard to imagine the man hours required to create such a structure.  The word fort brings some sort of armored enclave to mind for me, which this certainly is, but it is also like a fortified palace with its opulant interior spaces.  You saw a cool shot of this fort that evokes Lord of the Rings emotions in me in the Phrase Association 2 post.

We found the fort relatively quiet as have been the other sites that we have visited.  The quietness lasts until close to the time that we are ready to leave.  I think this is due to two factors, the Indian people are pretty laid back and do not have to arrive first thing and we are the complete opposite and would like to get going as early as possible.  We do have to sometimes bargain with our driver to get him going a little earlier but this has been worth it.

Next we visited Jaswant Thada, a mausoleum for a king built of intricately carved thin sheets of marble designed to glow as some of the sunlight passes through.

From there we went to the Mandore Gardens, an abandoned worship site, to help Tara work through her Monkey PTSD.  If you recall, Tara was accosted by monkeys when we were in Vietnam.  They stole her sunglasses, scratched her face and only relented when mama bear (Patti) had to give one a swift kick.  We did not tell Tara that this place was overrun with monkeys and she had a bit of a freak out when she realized it.  These monkeys were not aggressive and actually a little timid around us.  This was good therapy, even she admitted it.

Hello and goodbye were the only words exchanged, albeit dozens of times, between us and these kiddos.  It is amazing how such little communication went so far.  They seemed to get all serious for the picture though.

Before dinner we visted the old city, the blue city.  We wandered in pretty far in and somehow found sunset point which made for some great views of the city and another angle on the fort.

We ended the night and 2018 like we usually wrap up the year - celebrating it in some other time zone ;-).  I did wake up at midnight not due to an alarm but because it is hard to sleep in a war zone.  The owner told us the next morning that a neighbor was shooting off so many fireworks from his roof that he managed to set his building on fire.  They were able to get it put out before too much damage occured.


See Images in 2018 Jodhpur

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