2020 India – Jodphur
9th February 2020
Our next stop was Jodhpur and once again we had to change at New Delhi airport. The Arch Boutique Home Stay was a lovely little hotel near the centre. Our room was tastefully decorated with traditional Indian nick naks and the café where breakfast was served was an antique shop so it was very pleasant looking around while we were waiting to be served.
Unlike most of the Indian cities we had been, to Jodhpur was well laid out. It had a large square in the middle and wide roads surrounding it, so although there was probably the same amount of traffic as usual, it didn’t seem so bad. All around the square it was jammed packed with shops and street food. In the middle of the square was some kind of clock tower that we were able to climb and look out over the city. 
Jodhpur was known as The Blue City, unsurprisingly because a lot of the houses were blue. We booked a tour guide who was OK but apart from explaining that the blue colour came from the copper sulphate lime wash reacting to the sun, what else was there to say about blue houses? “Over there is a blue house and next to it is another blue house. That house on the left belonged to someone famous and the walls are blue.” 
It wouldn’t be an easy subject for the best of guides to elaborate on but ours definitely didn’t belong to that group. The only thing that wasn’t blue was the huge piles of crap piled up everywhere. 
India was soon going to be the first country to land a spacecraft on the dark side of the moon. You would think such an advanced and wealthy country would have cracked the technique of sweeping up a pile of rubbish and disposing of it. Or maybe they were intending to dispose of their rubbish on the moon? If so, it was a very clever plan, as dumping it on the dark side would mean no one would ever see it.
At the end of the tour, our guide instructed us to give him a five-star review on Trip Advisor. I told him I would do a review later that day but he got very pushy and insisted that I use the Wi-Fi in his car. I may not be the greatest linguist but I am able to tell someone to bugger off in any language. He got the message and drove us sulkily back to our hotel. I gave him three stars but only after we had left town, in case he was thinking of sending the boys around.
We also booked a food tour which sounded like fun but the guide didn’t turn up. Reviews of the tour were good but the company must have changed the guide because reviews that appeared after I booked it were terrible. One was from a German couple who said it was a young student who apart from being half an hour late, didn’t know any more about local cuisine than they did. He just took them from stall to stall and ordered whatever was available.
At the entrance to the Mehrangarh Fort two musicians were sitting on a wall, one playing hand drums and the other a trumpet like snake charmers use. It was so good I just had to sit down and jam with them for a few minutes, although my input was more of a conductorial nature. In common with musicians the world over, they ignored the conductor. 
2020 India
