Today we set of on a long travel day from Udaipur, the beautiful calm lake city to Jodhpur, a loud, crazy, blue town. No trains run along this route so we opted for private car over local bus (hard core travelling) and set out on our 7.5 hour drive.
Our driver had been recommended to us by our last tuktuk driver so we were a little nervous!
Luckily upon meeting him he seemed ok and we set off. We spent the first 20 minutes stuck in traffic, which was ok. Once through the traffic we hit the country roads...and realised we had hired the Indian equivalent of a rally driver. 80mph on country roads and around blind bends, beeping at cows and motorbike drivers as we went.
Thankfully Chris had decided to break the day up with a visit to a fort and a Jain temple so 2 hours in we arrived at our first stop - Kumbalgarh fort, a serene and isolated fort, seemingly in the middle of know where. The views from the top were incredible and if anyone ever gets the chance to do this horrible day trip, this is the one highlight!
From there we were back in the car for some more rally driving. For the next 30 minutes we went up valleys, down valleys, round more and more windy corners, all the while breaking sharply for goats, cows and people we found sunbathing in the middle of the road. Potholes were rife and the driver explained to me that buses don't use these roads as it is 'too dangerous'. Good to know.
However different people deal with things very differently. Chris fell asleep. I struggled. The car pulled over three times as the driver thought I would be sick and then just as we pulled up to our next stop, I was. He slowed down after that.
The Jain temples were great, intricately carved in marble, which stays cool in the hot weather. Pictures below.
Then onto Jodhpur (via the 'wholesale' shops and the spice shops of various relatives of our taxi driver). We arrived at around 7.30pm and I certainly was very pleased that that part of our trip was over.
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment