Semi-Deluxe

Veggi Guest House, Jodhpur

And so to the land of trouser. Actually this is misleading since women are more visible here than anywhere else so far. We arrived in Jodhpur yesterday on a "semi-deluxe" bus from Pushkar, although I would struggle to imagine a less luxurious experience, six hours of knees rammed into the metal backpiece of the chair in front, people hemmed into the aisle like sardines and everyone on board staring intently at the white people with their sunglasses and ipods (a waste of time, since you couldn't hear anything above the rattling of the various bits of bus anatomy).

We eventually arrived, and found the Blue City (as an aside, I would say that Jodhpur is bluer than Jaipur, the Pink City, was pink) a place slightly less dependent on tourism that elsewhere. There seems a greater sense here of a town going about its business on a Wednesday afternoon, although that may just be the area we're in, slightly outside the epicentre. This morning we looked round the Meherangarh Fort, which I would recommend as the possessor of the finest audio guide I have encountered (narrated by what sounds like a subcontinental Olivier impersonator), and also as an interesting old fort.

Before coming here we spent two more nights in Pushkar which were spent mainly in holiday mode. Found a nice cafe showing the cricket and was having a good natter to the owner about Sehwag's technique off his hip, but he worked his way out of my good books by turning the subject to the quality of the charas he was smoking and we left promptly. Later, after several hundred attempts and once every available source of intelligence in the family had been called upon, the hotel did finally get the tv in our room working, but were not subscribed to the channel showing the test match. I didn't quite have the heart to tell them it had all been a waste of time.

Went to a rooftop restaurant last night that didn't have any tables and chairs, just cushions on the floor. I wonder if it should take away the cushions and reposition itself as a semi-deluxe restaurant.

Over