Jodphur and the Elephant Festival

Mandor Guest House


The Temples in Mandor Gardens, Jodphur

A Hanuman Monkey and it's baby, Mandor Gardens

A view over Jodphur - The Blue City - seemingly the blue colour on the buildings keeps them cool and keeps away the Mosquitos.

The water pump at Bishnoi Village

Chilling out at Bishnoi Village

Milking the goats at Bishnoi Village

Some children at their home at Bishnoi Village

The children at Bishnoi village

A Blue Bull - very rare breed that is a mixture of cattle and horse - lovely colour though not sure if you will see it from this!

The cycle rickshaw driver trying to get more money from Anji - or was it her phone number???

The Elephant Festival

A street vender selling the colour powder that is added to the water and thrown at people as part of Holi

Shveta at a burning on the eve of Holi - relates back to an old legend of a wicked king who tried to have his son burnt as he would not worship him, but the son survived and the kings evil sister died instead - so now as part of the celebrations things of importance are burnt to bring good luck to them.

Kriti, Shveta, Kul and Kshity - the family who looked after us very well in Jaipur

Anji got bit on her last day and she is going home looking like the elephant man!!

Spotted this bird at the train station today what amazing colours - the challenge is can someone at home find out what it is???

After the last update Anji and I had our first overnight train journey down to Jodphur (the Blue City). The journey was rather uneventful and I slept most of the way despite the loud snores from my fellow passengers (and no I am not referring to Anji!!). The Mandor Guest House where we stayed in Jodphur was fantastic it was set up like a small village with mud style huts around a lovely peaceful garden (we did of course have electricity and showers!). This was run by a lovely family as well who do a lot of work with the rural villages and travellers staying with them sometimes undertake voluntary work. We were only there for two days so didn't have time for that but will keep it in mind for the future.

We did however go on a half day safari out to the Bishnoi Villages. Bishnoi means 29 and relates to the 29 laws that were put in place in these communities hundreds of years ago. These basically enforce that all life is precious and equal to human life so the local villagers do not kill any animal (including insects which they pick of the veg etc) and they have protected lands. The ccommunity was very welcoming and we got to chat to a lot of the children who were then late for school as they were fascinated by my compass and combination padlock. We spent quite some time with an older gent who was making blankets on his loom - they don't sell anything but trade locally to survive. They are the first recorded tree huggers - with 363 0f them being killed in the 17th century when they were trying to stop some trees being felled!!

We spent hours at the massive Meherangarh Fort which was in excellent condition and had lots of interesting stories around it - won't bore you with them but if you ever come to India this is well worth a visit! Here we had our palms read - as cynical as I am I have to say the guy quite impressed me with the description of my personality traits - yes he could have just been lucky but the first thing out his mouth was 'independent and don't like asking for help' (ring any bells!) and he desccribed my fiery temper and a few other things that were quite apt....he did get a few things wrong like the fact Anji has no kids but it was quite a laugh......have kept a note of the predictions and will see if they come true (though these were much less specific than the personality traits!) but you can all now stop worrying as he said I'm going to live into my 80's so think that means I will survive this trip!! Oh and there was no mention of a rich middle eastern prince like the last time (so definetely much more believable - though that wouldn't have been hard!!)

Only mishaps we had in Jodphur were with the Hanuman monkeys in Mandor Gardens - they were all over the place and I wanted to walk accross a little footbridge to the temples and thought the monkey sitting on it would just move - oh no it bared it's teeth and I had to wait nearly 10 mins until a cow decided it wanted to cross befor the got out of the way!! Wasn't as bad as Anji though as she had one jump on her and pull at her bag......it's not like they are hungry they are very well fed as the locals worship them

We then headed back to Jaipur for the Elephant Festival - it started really well with a parade of painted and jewelled elephants, horses, camels etc and there were loads of dancers in traditional costume. Unfortunately, it was not very well organised and most of the spectators wandered onto the stadium pitch and you couldn't see anything - was very tempted to go down and show the security/police how to control a crowd but I refrained and we just gave up and went home.

The festival was a prelude to the Holi celebrations which are on here this weekend which is a celebration of colour. Most places are closed and everyone wanders around throwing coloured water over each other - as we spend most of the day on the train and managed to avoid getting covered in anything (well so far there is another couple of days still to go!!).

Anji is now sitting at the airport waiting on her flight home and I am back in Delhi for the night before my first solo train journey tomorrow as I start to make my way accross to one of the big National Parks (hopefully to see the Tigers) though have a few stops planned en route. Well to be honest other than my train ticket tomorrow I have no confirmed plans just a rough idea of where I want to stop off. May be less reliable internet access once I'm out the city so thought I better give you another update before then.

Ok I'm away to see if I can find anywhere open to get some food (that is safe to eat) and hit my bed as my train is at 0615 - not so sure about snoozing on this one when on my own as they don't announce the stops on the trains so you really have to check all the time - today we got off at the wrong one but thankfully it was just Old Delhi rather than New Delhi - cost me all of 6p to get the Metro over to the other side of town.......

Who knows where I will be the next time you hear from me.......

Jack :-)