Rajasthan India

Rajasthan is the region in India a lot of people think of when they think of India. Rajasthan is a desert state, on the edge of the Thar Desert, and has an interesting history of conflicts, wars, and accords between the local Rajputs and their neighbors, the Muslim Moghuls. The eventual meshing of these cultures led to a mystical desert land full of amazing architectural forts, camels, and colorful costume. Before going to Rajasthan, Rusty was a bit burnt out on sight seeing, so we compromised by picking three cities and arranging a fast schedule which didn't leave room for showering nor laundry for a week - AGAIN!. It turned out that we'd arrive in a city on an overnight sleeper train, spend the day touring, then depart that evening on another sleeper train. The three cities we visited in Rajasthan were: Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer.

The desert cities all had their unique beauty and interesting aspects. One of Kelsi's favorite things throughout Rajasthan was the local Saris everywhere (picture up top). Saris are BEAUTIFUL Indian dresses made from a single, long piece of brightly colored and ornately decorated cloth wrapped around as a skirt, blouse, and shawl. The costumes of Rajasthan made Kelsi think of her cousin Louise all the time here - reminiscing about their enjoyment of the fashions of NYC they loved seeing together on their trip there right after high school graduation. The sari's in the photo above are surprisingly mellow, but the overall photo composition was so nice that we felt like posting this picture as a sample of Rajasthan.

Jaisalmer was the most remote town in Rajasthan that we visited, had the smallest population, with part of the city existing inside an old fort, and is the launching place for camel safaris to visit villages in the Thar desert. Although we had ridden camels in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, why pass up another camel safari offer? Here's our Indian camel riding safari pic:


This safari was a bit more fun than in the Gobi, as we all had the reins of our own camel. Not only were we allowed to direct the animals on our own - the guides kept hollering for us to whack our camels harder, kick our heels, make them run! It was fun! That was the first time we'd run on camels. Their gate may be the most comfortable in a trot somewhere between walking and running, since the trot gives the smoothest ride (unlike a horse where walking or running are the smoothest, not trotting). Bumpy as it may have been, running through the desert on a camel is definitely thrilling!

The highlight of our camel safari was the evening, when we set up evening camp under the desert skies in the sand dunes. Our Muslim guides, unlike their Hindi brethren, have no qualms with killing animals, and decided to butcher a small goat for our supper. Rusty thought the little goat was so cute that he was saddened to see it killed, and neither of us ate it. All the same, we enjoyed the campfire and the tasty chapati (flat bread) the guides cooked for us on the rocks surrounding the fire. We thought that the goat experience might have turned us into avowed vegetarians until we found bacon in a restaurant a few days later. If God doesn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat (per Homer Simpson).

Another of our destinations in Rajasthan, Jodhpur, is known for its blue buildings and the Mehranag Fort. They paint everything blue because it's supposed to signify a high caste (societal ranking), and there's supposedly a side benefit of keeping bugs out . . . In any case, it was BEAUTIFUL and one of the reasons Kelsi really wanted to visit. Who wouldn't want to visit an indigo town?


The fort in Jodhpur sits perched atop a cliff-edged mountain, and is currently set up as a museum with one of the best audio tours we've ever encountered. It was really interesting. We loved hearing about the fort's defense systems, and found it fascinating how the main entrance into the fort had a sharp turn right leading to a spike-studded gate in order to not allow room for an elephant to get up speed to batter down the fort door. Due to the surrounding cliffs and inaccessible main gate, the Jodhpur fort was never overtaken. One of the most striking parts of the fort tour was the handprints of 22 wives that imprinted their hands into the wall on their way to throw themselves onto their Maharaja husband's funeral pyre to be burned alive with his dead body. Not something Kelsi is willing to do for Rusty.

Jaipur was the third city we toured in Rajasthan and was know for its pink buildings - another great reason Kelsi couldn't resist visiting. How could you not visit a flamingo pink city?! After touring around town, we stopped off to try out an ayurvedic massage. Aaaah. Ayurveda is India's specialty massage, and uses lots of herbal oils. Other than that, it seems fairly similar to a typical sweedish massage (unlike Thai massage where they beat you up you by twisting and stretching while doing deep compressions, etc.). Kelsi's favorite part is the end of the ayurvedic massage, where they drip LOTS of oil into your belly button for no apparent reason.

Perhaps our favorite attraction in Jaipur is its famous movie theater that is described as being decorated as something between Disneyland and a Hindu temple in the lobby. The theater itself has only one gigantic screen covered by a fancy curtain and a ceiling that looks like a lemon meringue pie. It was beautiful! The only show playing was a popular Bollywood movie (Hollywood is to USA what Bollywood is to India). The title of the movie was: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, and we still have no idea what that means. The film was played in the Hindi language with no English subtitles. However, Hindi uses a surprising amount of English, so we understood about 70+ percent of the film since it was also an easily predictable comedy plot. It was quite a well made (albeit shallow) movie, and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The audience was particularly entertaining, but we'll have to tell more about Bollywood in a separate blog post at a later time . . .