My train from Jaipur to Jodhpur was due to depart at 12.20 p.m. The staff if the hostel told me that “it will be late”. They told me to download an App that would give me the status of the train. This turned out to be great advice.

The App told me that the train was delayed by 59 mins and had 152 klms to go before it would arrive in Jaipur. On the basis of that I decided to have the lunch that the hostel staff offered to cook for me.

When I checked the App again, the train was delayed by 2 hours 10 minutes and still had 152 klms to go. I ordered a beer.

Next check had the train with 1 hour and 30 minutes to go and only 105 klms to travel. I drank my beer quickly.

Next check the train was delayed by 2 hours and 5 minutes. I ordered another beer.
Finally the train seemed to be on a roll and I was advised to order a Tuk Tuk to the station. Any more delays and would have been a bit tipsy to say the least.

I ordered a Tuk Tuk. The driver took a completely different route to the one that I had taken two day before. Anyway we arrive at the station and I paid over the agree price.

Finally boarding the Train

There was a bit more waiting before I was finally on the train. My carriage turned out to be a sleeper. I am not sure where it had come from, but it was long way and there had been plenty of opportunities for it to be delayed. It had clearly taken those opportunities.

Chat with Locals

I got into conversation with a couple of locals. One was an ex-policeman who is now teaching. He told me that he was in Sydney with the Indian Olympic team in 2000. He was interested in my views on Indian and the changes that I had seen since 1985.

The other bloke (Mr Singh) told me that he was an executive with Reliance, which is a large Indian conglomerate that is into all sorts of industries. He told that they are just about to roll out a 4G mobile network. Clearly mobile phone and the internet are having a big impact in India.
A very good example is the Apps for taxis. There is Uber and a local company call Ola. The bloke told that these are disrupting the Tuk Tuk industry. He is of the view that this is a very good thing.

Mr Singh told me that he had meet a number of Australian cricketers that are playing in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Reliance owns the Mumbai Indians. He told that he was surprised that players like Shane Warne and Glen Maxwell smoked.

As we approached Jodhpur, he pointed out the village where he was born and lived until his father got a job will the government and the family moved to Jodhpur. He told me that most of the villages in India were dying and people were moving to the larger towns and cities.
Mr Singh told that one his biggest frustrations about India was the rubbish and that fact that nothing seems to be done about it. I must admit, it is one thing that appears to have little, if at all, since 1985. There is rubbish all over the place.

As well as talking about India, Mr Singh asked me a lot of questions about Australia and the places that I have visited.

We arrived at the station Mr Singh’s driver met him and they kindly give me a lift to my hostel.
Planning and getting a SIM

I spent the first morning doing ‘admin’, writing a blog post and banking etc. I also booked a flight from Udaipur to Mumbai and accommodation in both cities. The cost of accommodation in Mumbai is ridiculously expensive.

I decided to get an Indian SIM so I can use Google maps on my phone and possibly use Uber or Ola to order a taxis. There is a Vodafone shop near to the hostel. It is a bit of a performance getting SIM card in India. You have to provide your passport, a copy of your visa, a passport photo graph and the details of the place where you are staying. All this is recorded on a manual form. It also takes up to 24 hours before the SIM is activated.

The activation process involves calling a number and the confirming the details on the form. I decided to return to the shop to complete this process. When I call the number, I had no idea what the bloke on the end of the line was saying. I asked him to “speak English”. I still could not understand what he was saying. I passed the phone to a bloke in the shop. He told me that bloke on the end of the line “was speaking English”. After a few minutes and me reading out what was on form about five time, the bloke on the line said “ OK, Ok, Ok” which I took to mean I was all set to go.

There was still a bit of mucking around to get the data to work on the phone, but finally I had access to the internet via my phone.

Checking Out the Town

After sorting out the phone, I caught a Tuk Tuk to the Clock Tower which is in the centre of the main market area in the town. It is a very chaotic place.

I walked around a bit. This place is very different to Connaught Place in Delhi. I suspect if has changed little in the past 30 years.

I stopped at the Police tourist booth. There were 5 blokes in the booth. Only one of them seemed to be able to speak English. I am not sure which tourist market they were designed to serve. I asked them for the name and location of a good restaurant. After a lot of discussion among each other, they came up with a place. It was about 400 metre down the road, just before a traffic police stand.

The restaurant was busy and the food was very good.

The Mehrangarh Fort

Next day I headed off to the Mehrangarh Fort. This is the major attraction of Jodhpur and is built on hill the overlooks the city.

I shared the taxis to the fort with a German bloke that I first met in Jaipur and turned up in my hostel. He was an interesting bloke. He told that he has worked in Japan and is fluent in Japanese. He told also said that he is about to start working with a German start-up company in Munich that is going to establish a long distance bus company. Hitherto bus companies have been restrict to short haul routes. The deregulation of the buses will provide competition for rail.

The Fort and Palace are very impressive. The state rooms are very luxurious. There are also exhibits of the armour used by the army that occupied the Fort.

It is amazingly that the British were able to take over the whole country. I understand that the British did not have any military superiority over the various Indian states. They managed to convince each of the Maharajas that they would benefit by co-operating with the British.

Walking through the Old Town

After leaving the Fort we headed down to the old town. The building are painted blue, hence the description of Jodhpur as being the ‘Blue City’. The streets are very narrow and crowded. We were heading towards the Clock Tower. Even though it is quite high, it is not possibel to see it as you are walking along the narrow streets. The German bloke had an off line map app on his phone. That proved useful as we made our way through maze streets.

Finally we made it to the restaurant, near the Clock Tower that I had been to before.

The Umaid Bhawan Palace

After a quick lunch we headed out to the Umaid Bhawan Palace. This place was built in the 1920 for the Maharaja of Rajasthan. The architect was a notable Georgian architect based in London. We were surprised that the entrance fee was only IRP 100.

The reason for the low entrance fee turned out to be due to the fact that you don’t get to see much of this huge building.

The Maharaja still lives there. Who knows what use is made of the 170 plus, bedrooms.

Little Bus Full of Girls

The German bloke has a particular dislike of the being ripped off by Tuk Tuk drivers. He asked one for the price to go the “Polo Ground” (opposite our hostel), knowing that it was less than 4 klms away. The price offered was IRP 100 which is at least 3 times what it should have been. The Tuk Tuk driver drove off to where other drivers were parked. We heard him say something about “Polo Ground”. We assumed he was saying “don’t take those tourists to the Polo Ground for anything less that IRP 100”.

We started walking down the hill from the palace with the intention of getting a taxis or Tuk Tuk on the main road.

As we were walking along, a small bus full of girls stopped. They offered us a lift. We climbed on board. They insisted on having their photos taken and took photos of us with their mobile phones.

Kids in the Street

The bus dropped us off about a kilometre from the hostel. As we walk along we, came across some locals dancing in the street following a truck. It seemed to be something to do with the festivals that are going on at the moment.

As we approached we were ‘mildly accosted’ by some young boys probably less than 10. They were real pains – hitting us and asking for money. Fortunately, some older guys come to our rescue and told the young kids to go way.

Festival and Meal

When we got back to the hostel, the staff were organising a excursion to the local cricket ground to watch an event related to the festival.

They ordered taxis use the on-line App Ola. We ended up with 5 taxis in all. It seems to be a great system as the App tells you the fare. The taxis end up to be cheaper than Tuk Tuks.

We couldn’t actually get into the cricket ground and had to watch the proceedings over the wall surrounding the ground. There were few large figures made of paper and wood of what we were told, were ‘evil characters’. The idea was that they would be burnt and the evil would go away.
There was a lot on noise and carry on and the figures were burnt. There was then a short fireworks display.

After this was finished, we walked to a restaurant for what turned out to be a really good meal. It also turned out to be a good opportunity to chat to some of the other quests from the hostel. Is was an eclectic group with people from England, Australia, Iceland, Italy, Chile, Germany and Spain.

Folk Festival

I had a bit of a quiet morning reading and buying my bus ticker to Udaipur. This was followed by a good lunch at restaurant not far from the hostel.

The Rajasthan International Folk Fest is held at his time of the year. It is a big event. Apparently Mick Jagger has played at it in the past. The main venue is in the Fort.

We were told that “opening ceremony would be taking place in the Clock Tower Square at 5.30 p.m”. and there would be performance to watch. The German bloke and I,and a bloke from Iceland ordered a taxis and headed into town.

As it turned out, proceeding were not going to start until 7.00 p.m. We headed to a Roof Top restaurant for a meal and a couple of beers. The Icelandic bloke told us that he was sick of living in Iceland because it is so small and so depressing in winter. He said he was likely to head for Denmark “because it doesn’t get so dark in winter”. I guess everything is relative.

At around 8.00 p.m. the show finally started. We watched 3 acts – a women singing accompanied by a sitar player and a drummer, some elderly blokes doing a dance, and some flute players. It was interesting but we had had enough. I am sure main acts in the Fort later in the Festival will be more interesting.

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Garmin

To come when the Garmin site works