April 1, 2015 (Jodhpur, India)

I woke up having a better night sleep then the last night. But this morning I wasn't feeling very well. I though up twice but afterwards I felt better. We had a late breakfast at around 11 at the second out of 2 restaurants. We weren't departing from the train until 1:30, so during that time we did our blogs and I took a shower. At 1:30 we met our guide “GOLDY”. I could tell Goldy was a Sing because we had two earnings each on one ear. Sing means warrior and lion, and it is also a type of religion. Our last guide was one too.

The first stop we made on our tour around Jodhpur was the maharajas palace. The palace was made out of sandstone and was pretty! Now the royal family only uses part of it, and the rest of it is a hotel. At the palace grounds we saw the Maharaja’s vintage car collection. He had under 10 cars but had Rolls Royce, Cadillac and other car brands. They had a museum which we walked into. It was a pretty small museum that had information and photos about the Maharajas.  Walking through the museum Goldy talked his way into getting into the hotel, because it is only for hotel guests. This hotel was run by the same company, The Taj Group, where we stayed in Varanasi but it was much nicer. Mom bought some clothes inside the hotel and then we drove towards the Maharajas’ crematorium. 

When they cremate people they always have their heads facing north towards the Himalayas because that is a sacred place, because that is where Moksha is, heaven. The last 5 maharajas were cremated there. The last cremation was in 1952. Where the Maharajas were cremated they had white marble memorial and individual memorials for each Maharaja. 

Above and near the crematorium was the Mehrangarh Fort. This Fort was unlike the others we had visited. It was originally built on a hill top with steep cliffs around. There was a good view from there of Jodhpur. Our guide told us about the blue houses that we could see down below. The houses were originally blue so that “Untouchables”, the lowest caste,  would know which homes were the Brahmne cast. One of my favorite parts of the fort was looking at the Maharajas carriages that people would carry and would also sit on top of elephants. We also saw a man tying his turban which was made out of a long piece of fabric which was twist, wrap and turn. We also saw a wild Alexandria Parakeet. 

One of our last activities of the day was taking a tuk tuk ride around the marketplace and then to dinner. The first part of the tuk tuk ride because we had our guide and us in the back. For the second part to dinner it was just mom and I. Dinner was off the main road on a dirt road near the palace we went to earlier. We were there an hour plus earlier than the big group. During that time we walked round the royal home that had a view of the palace. I played with a cat, talked with other people and played cards with mom while I iced my knee. Currently my knee is doing better than before. 

Before dinner there was a puppet show. It only lasted about 20 minutes, but it was funny and some of the puppets were made out of mango wood and all of the puppets were colorful. We ate dinner inside the royal building with some new people we met from Slovakia and from France. The couple spoke English pretty well. We each told stories about our travels.