Jodhpur – and the Road to Udaipur

Flying from Jaisalmer to Jodhpur is not an option so we spent Sunday 10 March 2019 travelling by camel, jeep, car, bus and rickshaw before we got to our guesthouse in the middle of Jodhpur.

We booked the guesthouse on Airbnb the day before we got there. You can see what it was like by clicking here. At US$38 per night it was slightly more expensive than most places we stayed, but I reckon it was pretty good value for the location and the quality of the room.

Our one full day in Jodhpur consisted of walking up to the magnificent Mehrangarh Fort, getting a rickshaw to the elegant Jaswant Thada Mausoleum, walking around the nearby “Rock Park”, going back to the fort for a very impressive zipline tour, and wandering down to have a look at the stepwell. All in all a fun-packed if slightly hectic day.

Indian cities have a tendency to be really crowded and Jodhpur is certainly no exception but the place had a certain charm that won me over by the time we left.

From Jodhpur we arranged a trip to the Bishnoi village located just south of Jodhpur. The guide picked us up from the clock tower (it’s a Jodhpur landmark) and we did the “village safari” and tour. A lot of people seem to love this tour (if TripAdvisor is a good indicator) and they delivered what they said they would. But it is an organised, albeit intimate, tour and subsiquently I really did feel like a tourist. Nevertheless it was a quiet departure from the big cities that dominated the rest of our trip. You can see the accommodation we stayed in here.

After a night in the Bishnoi village we got a car and driver to take us to Udaipur, stopping at Ranakpur on the way. The temple at Ranakpur is something to behold.

The landscape here is far from spectacular but was punctuated by colourful village scenes as well as the occasional roadside camel or monkey. The whole trip from Jodhpur to Udaipur took about five hours so it was good to break up the journey. Here’s a map showing the route: