Jodhpur 1/6

Today we stayed in a good hotel, worth mentioning as the other ones have been average. There is a bit of a courtyard and garden setting, a rooftop restaurant (with good food) and a great view of the Meherangarh Fort. We set off at 9am to the fort to make a start before it got too hot. Our guide book recommends the audio tour specifically so we decided to give it a go. Well worth it, both in the history of the fort and historical events as well as being very well narrated with some music and effects thrown in too. We spent about three hours walking around, the fort is very well preserved and apparently didn’t require huge amounts of restoration. The audio guide mentioned that initial restorers had to remove a large volume of bat guano from sections of the fort, but its sale to local farmers helped to kick start the restoration funds. It’s now a major tourist draw card and deservedly so. Jodhpur is known as the Blue City and it becomes more apparent when viewed from a higher vantage point. On ground level it’s difficult to tell but when we viewed the city from various points around the fort, you can see why it has this name. Whole pockets of the city are painted in similar hues of blue and it’s quite pretty. After we finished at the fort, we were back in the car for the drive to Udaipur where we are staying for two nights so it will be a chance to relax a little as the pace has been brisk. On the way, after a few hours we stopped at the Jain Temple complex Ranakpur, where the main temple Chaumukha Mandir (four faced temple) is the oldest Jain Temple in India. There were also two smaller temples to look at while we were there. We got into Udaipur just before 7pm and we had dinner in the rooftop restaurant with a nice view out over the normally flooded lake area and Udaipur’s Lake Palace. It was used as a set piece in Octopussy but due to Roger Moore being a crap Bond I've not seen it recently enough to remember. I watched For Your Eyes Only somewhere on the road recently and it was rubbish!