On from Jaipur, we took about a 5 hour train ride to Jodhpur, also known as The Blue City.
We were pleasantly surprised that The Blue City is actually blue. Since visiting Jaipur, which was supposed to be pink, but really wasn’t, it was cool to look out over the city and see a whole lot of blue.
Jodhpur boasts an amazing asset, its incredible Mehrangarh Fort, which is set up on a hill, visible throughout the city. What’s more, the tour of the fort itself, is fantastic. A thorough tour of Mehrangarh will take several hours. What’s unique about this fort is that it’s not just old city walls, it’s an actual museum throughout the tour. You can visit the rooms where former Indian kings met with foreign dignitaries, see the actual palanquins (lifted chairs carried by servants) that the royal families used to ride on, battle tested armor and swords, and other really amazing artifacts. The fort is actually one of the best stocked museums in India.
Jodhpur also has a pretty cool building, which we didn’t take the time to visit, called Umaid Bhawan Palace. The palace is actually split up into three parts, a museum, a hotel and the primary residence of the Erstwhile royal family. If you do get the time, please go visit it.
Another cool thing we did see was the Jaswant Thada, a really cool white marble mausoleum which has walls thin enough that the sunlight shines through the marble and creates a cool glowing effect. It’s a small place, but well worth the visit.
We knocked out everything we wanted to see in Jodhpur fairly quickly, so we headed on to our last stop, Jaisalmer.
Travel Tips:
Our visit in Jodhpur included some work time, which worked nicely for us because although Jodhpur is a great city to visit and I highly recommend you stop there, the tour time you need there isn’t that much. I recommend only 1 1/2 -2 days.
Hotel: We stayed at a place called Shivam Paying Guesthouse. The cost, per night was about $8 per night for the two of us. This included a free breakfast and free wifi. The food was good and the beds comfortable. We did have a couple of problems. Our first night was spent with an “air conditioner” that was actually an extremely loud fan which just circulated hot air. We had to open the windows for fresh air, which invited mosquitos. We finally upgraded to a room with an actual a/c. We then had some trouble with the free breakfast, which they wanted to charge for. We had a discussion with the manager guy and eventually got what was advertised.
Transportation: We took an AC 2 Tier class train to from Jaipur to Jodhpur, which cost about $11 per person. Remember, if you want to book a train in India you need to do that as far in advance as possible. For help in booking train tickets, you can always e-mail us, or check out seat61.com and click on India on the left hand side.
For Jodhpur, we actually didn’t hire a driver and just talked with the autorickshaw guys for the one-two times we wanted to ride instead of walk. This is mostly a walking city, so no need to secure a tour guide or driver. Your one-way trip in an auto-rickshaw should cost you no more than $1-2.
Daily Budget: Our daily was $41.78 for 3 days including train travel, accommodation, food and all attraction entrances.
