Grace & Pills 'extended holiday' What we be mostly doin - innum

jodhpur through the eyes of  pill
 
yeah like the funny trousers (which technically are not those horsey ones ones that posh girls wear... news to me too).
 
firstly though i need to address our journey... as there are no trains from udaipur to jodhpur we decided to get the bus, when i say bus what i mean is "super deluxe coach" this of course differs from the standard "deluxe coach" by the shaving off of 3 hours from the journey making it a easily manageable 5 hours. the way that this time is saved is by skipping the inconvenience of constant stops to pick up those pesky locals. still 5 hours for about 1 pound 20 each on a super deluxe cant be bad. 
 
So bags packed and up and out of the hotel at 7 in the morning destined for the bus stop the other side of town, bleary eyed and a bit grouchy we arrived, to find the place awash with other "backpackers" and lots of street kids constantly tugging on your arm and trying to either beg for some money or sell you some randomly picked flowers. needless to say my grouchy early morning heart was not melting. anyhoo once the kids realised that i was not in a generous mood (i know i know i am a git) and had decided to swarm around some other schmo, our chariot arrived.
 
You know that when a posh bus company has had enough use out of a bus and sells it to another less posh company, and when they have had their fill it goes down the chain again and again to somewhere like magic bus where it used until deemed no longer road worthy and is eventually sent to the scrap yard? well the scrap yard it seems is india and the busses are saved and re branded as "super deluxe coaches".
 
so bags on and we were shown to our seats. i must admit that it was very comfortable and i had plenty of room, i had a bottle of water my ipod and i had just started reading 'twilight' (both grace and i had exhausted our books and were now reading each others). After about 10 mins driving a spark of doubt about the 'super' nature of our deluxe coach began to appear when we stopped to let on a family or too from the other side of town (strictly cash in hand to the conductor you understand), 10 minutes later that spark had ignited the pile of dry twigs in teh corner of my mind when we stopped again to let a few off and a few on. this basically continued untill we were out of udaipur and on the open road where the frequency of the stops decreased to once every half an hour. Still ipod on, 40 degree breeze blowing in my face through the open windows, water now a tepid temp and 100 pages of some dreary girl vampire worshipping, my mood remained good. i turned to ask grace how she was bearing up in the rapidly rising heat (for we were sat single file) only to see her with a stony fierce expression on her face. apparently she needed the toilet quite badly... that's all i will say on the matter lets just leave that there shall we, we were due for a stop mid journey and all would be well. 2 hours later we pulled into the sumptios rest stop area. i turned to see a grace shaped blur heading for the door... i eventually found her outside of the recently crowned 'worst toilet in india' looking happier and less frantic, poor thing. still its all part of the fun right? mmmm
 
anyway i am getting far too carried away with the buss journey, i will summarise the rest of the journey thus: very very bumpy, scary at times, extremely hot, and by the time we arrived in jodphur we ad a roof full of locals. it took just over 7 and a half hours.
 
so jodhpur... after the relative tranquillity of udaipur things were looking frantic at the rickshaw stand when 3 of their number decided to have a fight over our custom, eventually we had a winner, picked our hotel from the excellent rough guide book and set off for the pre arranged price of 150 rupees. jodhpur is literally like a maze with a million backstreets and rat runs through the old town (the blue city its known as due to the fact that all the buildings are erm... blue) so i was impressed when our man picked his way to the heart of the place to our hotel. i was less impressed when he decided to double the price as it was 150 per person all along. of course in a moment of bravery i told him he could eff right off, it was 150 and he could take that and try to get the rest out of me if he liked (i think the vampire book was giving me ideas). miraculously he smiled shook my hand and eventually went on his way... i think this must be some sort of test, i assume i passed.
 
luckily the hotel we picked was not full and after some stiff negotiations on price (by grace this time) we got a lovely room for the princely sum of a fiver a night, bonus. so we unpacked, settled in and went to the delightful rooftop restaurant for a bite to eat and a look at the miraculous mehringer fort which dominates the jodhpur skyline. an eventful  day was followed by a relaxing evening and a peaceful night.
 
next morning we decided to get up fairly early and buy our train tickets out of town (is always better to do this in advance of travel as it sells out), so after a lovely breakfast at the hotel we headed for the train station and the weird bureaucracy of indian rail travel. while we were at th station we met a lovely couple of people who were also negotiating some seats south. they were in need of a guidebook and we had a guidebook. after a brief chat we decided to go off for a coffee to swap stories and get (and give) valuable travel tips. the bloke was a fascinating chap from macedonia originally although had lived in germany all his life (hamburg) and had travelled extensively, he was a dj of all things and spoke 6 languages - mental. his wife was from thailand and had previously worked for airlines and tour operators in thailand, needless to say her and grace had the notebooks and maps out and were each writing down their new wealth of info. ionly wish i could remember their names... they were ace people but we only had a hour or too with them as we had a busy day at the fort planned and they still had to find a hotel.
 
So refreshed we got a rickshaw off to the fort, well about half way as the road was shut so we had to walk the last 2k, once inside we met 3 boys who we had previously ran into at mumbai train station (again buying tickets), steve from boro,  jack diamond (no really) and sam both from kingston (london not jamaica). we had a bit of a catch up chat outside and then decided to go to the fort with them. It was an amazing place, really fascinating with an immense history which is only outdone by the shear size and scale of the place. There is such alot to say about the fort and i have neither the time or the capacity to do it justice here, all i will say is look it up or something, its ace! 
 
Anyway after the fort we decided to walk back into town with the lads we had met for a beer and a bit of food, coincidentally we passed right by their hotel so we headed for their rooftop restaurant, there we met a couple of girls called mary and liz from brighton, who were art graduate types and all very nice. anyway the beers flowed, the food came and went and jack decided that he wanted to watch the man city game (cockney city fan surely not?) and knew a bar where it was on. so me and grace and jack and sam headed out to jodhpurs premier nightspot called 'on the rocks' in what can only be described as 'the most terrifying rickshaw ride in the history of the universe' , shaken we arrived only to discover (after drinking the vilest neat rum) that the game was not on... doh! The place was quite amusing though, it was full of teh hoy-poloi of jodhpur and quite a few squaddies from the indian army. So More rickshaws and we found ourselves in a late night restaurant that sold beer (disguised as 'special coffee')... no game but the conversation flowed and a good night was had by all.
 
stupidly we hadn't anticipated a long time in jodhpur and so we were headed out the next morning to pushkar (via ajmer) on the train. it was rather a bonus that neither grace or me had a hangover so we made it to the train station with time to spare and more good memories to add to the pot. what a great place jodhpur had been both in terms of who we met and places we had seen. i wish we could have spent a bit more time there.