We did a 6-day mini-tour of Rajashtan last week. It was more "mini" than it was a "tour", actually, as we flew to Jodhpur via and only spent time there and Jaisalmer. Rajashtan would've offered a lot more in Jaipur, Udaipur and so on but this way we didn't have to spend the entire time sitting in the car driving miles and miles under the scorching sun. Two words about the weather: quite hot. It was sunny all the time with not a lot of humidity. The place is inhospitably hot in the summertime but this was pretty close to optimum.
We flew uneventfully (lucky!) with Air India via Delhi and had our driver from Car Rental Rajashtan meet us at the airport. We had booked a car with English-speaking driver for 6 days and everything went as planned. Well, almost at least. To say the driver was fluent in English would've been quite an overstatement, but we understood each other enough. We also booked a guide through the same company for our first and only full day in Jodhpur and Mr. Asfrah Khan who took us around for a day was a real find. If you want no-nonsense info about Rajashtan and Jodhpur do give the good man a call, his number is +919829022090. In true Indian style he did get his pay hiked with commission by taking us to Maharani Art Exporters. They told us an unbelivable story, the same show they put on everyone else, and while we didn't really believe in the pitch we did buy some fabrics for the home. Always makes you wonder if the whole business model is based on lying - in the age of easily accessible information their days must be numbered.
The main part of our tour was to see the Merangarh Fort and it's definitely worth the visit. Not only are the views to Jodhpur fantastic, especially to the old city with it's blue buildings, but the inside of the fort is a real sight to behold as well. The grandeur always makes me cringe a little as everyone knows the coffers of the successive maharajas were filled by taxing the poor to near starvation. We also visited the Umaid Bhawan Palace built by a recent maharaja, which was nowhere near as a nice - while the palace is very nice from the outside the museun only covers a minuscule portion with the rest begin occupied by the last maharaja's living quarters and a Taj-run hotel. We stayed in a Taj hotel as well, but a more traditional setting in the city than the pompous palace.
From Jodhpur we drove to Jaisalmer. We had an idea of staying a night in the desert in a tent camp, but booked into the wrong resort. We stopped for a coffee in Manvar but had pre-booked to spend the night in Mirvana resort. My first impression when arriving to Mirvana was to turn back to Manvar and in retrospect that's we should've done, pre-booked or not. Don't make the same mistake if your trip to Rajashtan is still on the to-do list...
We survived the night however and completed the trip to Jaisalmer the next day with a short stop in Pokaran to see yet another fort. Forgettable. We made our way from there to Jaisalmer fort, which is definitely is not. The setting is great like in Jodhpur, but instead of a museum the fort is an integral part of the city with houses, shops, temples and restaurants. Tourism hasn't been kind to the original way of life here with more and more buildings turned to serve the influx of visitors selling handicrafts, serving Italian food and providing comfortable accommodation. We decided not to stay in the old fortress but lived in a modern replica instead; Suryagarh is a five star luxury sandstone hotel some 10km from the city centre. Despite being almost brand new you can easily forget that with so much detail resemblance visible everywhere to the great palaces we had just been around in. We also toured the Jaisalmer fort museum, which is a far cry from the carefully arranged display we saw in Jodhpur: it's a cramped setting made worse by the hordes of visitors pushing and yelling their way around it and the artifacts on display are not on the same level of wonder either. So after two nights in Jodhpur, one night in-between and two nights in Jaisalmer it was time to come back. Doing it back to back to back meant a 13-hour journey with car and plane - uneventful again but tiring at least for my back. Saw this nice sunset though:
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