Jodhpur

Known as the "blue city', as, well, many of the buildings are blue, Jodhpur is a lovely city, and the colour is not only visually appealing, but also more striking that Jaipur (the pink city from earlier), as the blue contrasts rather well with the desert.

I finally visited the inside of a fort! I thought it was about time, and had heard very good things about this one. Every city seeminly has a fort/palace complex, and at 250rs a go, i would be bankcrupt and bored if I visited every one of them! Jodhpurs entrance fee was 300rs! but that included a free audio tour, narrated by an Oxbridge educated Indian, and was interesting if a bit wordy. I, however, managed to get the student price (50rs off, which paid for my lunch) by pretending my Japanese ID card was a student one. The advantage of having a card written in Japanese! And, as I WILL be a student again, its not even dishonest, so I can still sleep at night as well.

Something i had wanted to do was get out to visit some of the Bishnoi villages in the area, but no one at the guesthouse, and seemingly its neighbouring ones was interested, and i wasn't prepaired to hire a taxi for myself. Oh well, it gave me an extra day to explore the city, and I spent a long time up on the old outer defences, completly alone, reading and watching the sunset. Yet another one!

I also decided to splurge a bit on food. Junkfood. I am not sure why, but bought a jar of peanut butter for 100rs (first ive seen in India), and make banana peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast. Then i tried a local snack - a chilli, wrapped in mashed potato and then deep fried. The potato masks a lot of the hotness, and it wasn't bad at all! An

d then, just because i had a craving for chips (and wanted to see the menue) i went into a McDonalds. Haven't been into one for years, and it felt rather odd. McAloo (potato) burger, McPaneer (cheese) spicy wrap... a fish/lamb/chicken/veg menue that was really rather interesting, and in relation to the UK, both more appealing, and cheaper. I opted for the McAloo value meal, which was a mashed potato burger, small chips and small coke. For 75rs. The burger was actually rather bland, but not bad, but thinking about it, I could have gotten a much nicer Indian meal for cheaper in town. Oh well, another experience t

icked off the list.

Dinner was a 70rs all-you-can-eat meal at a workers cafe near the station, which was much better i am sure than the 150rs options offered at the two tourist focused options to it. And had a 'fruits cake' for dinner, which turned out to be a bright yellow sponge more like a brick and a cake, and faintly tasting of lemon. Lesson learnt i guess!