Jodhpur - The sun city

During my long leave in the month of Jan this year I spent few days in Jodhpur (Rajasthan). Jodhpur, being my wife's home town, I visit it at least once in a year. This time around I took some time to visit some places inside and around the city with a hope to capture some good shots.

I arrived at Jodhpur railway station on 2nd Jan, 2010 at around 6.30 AM in the morning. When I got out of the station, I saw that the station was beautifully lit and looked very colourful against the early morning dark blue sky. So got my camera out and took a shot. I love this shot solely because of its colours.



In the next few days I visited few well known tourist places in and around Jodhpur and some of the shots take are my favourites.

Mehrangarh fort

The Mehrangarh Fort lies in the heart of the old city of Jodhpur and is located atop a high hill. We reached at the fort at around 3.30 PM in afternoon. The fort was packed with tourists. I especially liked the elevator facility that they have which makes it easy for old people to get in the fort. A walk to the top of the fort is pretty tiring.



Once we were in the fort we visited several small museums that houses an exquisite collection of palanquins (palkhi), cradles, howdas, musical instruments, costumes, weapons and furniture that were used by the Maharaja.




However for me the best part of the Fort was a breath taking view of the Jodhpur city from the fort. Most of the houses in the old city of Jodhpur are painted in blue which gives a unique view of the city. This is also the reason why Jodhpur is also called Blue city. The fort also has well preserved set of cannons. We then went to Mata's temple in the fort and then headed back home.


Mandore garden
Mandore town is located about 10 kms from the city. The main attraction here was the garden that has collection of temples and memorials. I had high hopes of taking some really good photographs here, but I was really disappointed when I saw this place. I felt that this place was not at all maintained by the authorities concerned. In fact some part of the garden had turned to open public toilets and it was really stinking there. However I still managed to find couple of good locations to take some snaps.


Osian

After spending some time at Mandore we left for Osian. Osian is a town located about 60kms from Jodhpur. I specifically wanted to visit the sand dunes and the temple at Osian. It was already 6 PM and I wanted to be at sand dunes to capture the sunset, so we dashed to the location of sand dunes. There were few tourists around and a group of localities were provided a camel ride over the dunes. We hired a camel for 250 bucks. It was great fun.



As the sun was setting over the horizon I took couple of shots which also happens to be few of my favourite photographs.



We headed to the temple and then after long tiring but an enjoyable day we were back home.

In next few days I roamed around in the city and visited Ghantaghar and National Handloom. When at Ghantaghar I had the very popular Mishrilal ke lassi. Yes!! this lassi is popular in the city and you should not give it a miss when you are in Jodhpur. One place which many people might not know, as it is not popular like other tourist places is Ganesh temple. The temple is located on top of a hill and one can get a good view of the city from there. Its worth spending an evening at the temple.

View of Umaid Bhavan palace from Ganesh temple

Jodhpur city at night

There are few more places that I was not able to visit because of lack of time, no regrets though, after all its my wife's home town and I will always be a once in a year type visitor to Jodhpur.

Signing off for now with few more snaps of the beautiful Sun city.