Still in Jodhpur, the Blue City

I had a delightful day, which is more than I can say for the previous days on this trip. Of course this is only one of three days on this itinerary on which I'm not in transit, which makes it more peaceful. Tomorrow I'm flying to Udaipur, which has a lake.

We got off to a late start but spent four hours or more at the Mehrangarh Fort(pic pic pic) , which was more interesting than the Bikaner and Jaisalmer forts and had better views too. I'm glad I saw those two forts before I saw this one. (Not that I'm recommending skipping B and J if you're ever in Rajasthan. In fact, you could visit Pokaran too and have a P,B and J.)

After the descent we also saw the clock tower; the pic that I link to shows the full glory of the market around the tower. And we had some desserts at a small sweet shop that The Lonely Planet recommended.

In the evening we had dinner at the Mehran fort restaurant--somewhat expensive yet paling in comparison to the Umaid Taj place only a few miles away, where you have to pay about USD 70 per person just to get into the restaurant. We were the only ones at Mehran, so it was very peaceful and the food was commendable.

Incidentally, there's a tight rickshaw mafia in Jodhpur so rickshaw drivers get into extended discussions though not necessarily heated ones with other rickshaw drivers about who "owns" you as a customer. All of this is sort of comical because many rickshaws are awfully slow around here and you'd think they'd focus their energy on the slowness problem. I swear I could outrun pretty much any rickshaw in this city; I miss the rickshaws in Pune.

Tomorrow I'm flying to Udaipur, the Octopussy city. I'm looking forward to looking at a lake instead of a desert.