Day 578 - Back on the bus

Today we parted ways with Pushkar and jumped on a bus to Jodhpur, a much larger city even further West in Rajasthan. All over the place there are travel agents offering deluxe tourist buses to any of the main tourist destinations, and as we made the pleasant 5 minute stroll through a slowly awakening town to the local bus stop, we wondered why people are put off by travelling by local bus. We arrived at the bus, jumped on and left almost immediately, and only paid the small price of 7 rupees to be dropped at Ajmer bus station. Here we talked to the friendly enquiry people who soon had us pointed in the direction of the right bus - again cheap and leaving straight away.

During one of our many stops to pick up more passengers we watched as men flattened sesame seed dough into discs and thought 'maybe we'll have to try that one day' - something we say a lot here!! Before we knew it (well, 5 hours later) we were pulling into Jodhpur and off to find somewhere to stay. With that achieved we went in search of lunch, which left us asking: "where the hell do people eat here?"!! The only places we could see were guesthouse restaurants slightly out of our adlibing budget! We searched for an hour in the end, and found a small dirty eatery, where the food was even below our low standards - but we did get all-you-can eat chapati!! For the first time in India one of our dishes came with a piece of meat in it - we never ask any more to make sure things are vege, because they always are (but now we'll have to start making sure again!).

Making our way through the bustling bazaar we declined offers to purchase a multitude of things: bangles, spices, fruit, bangles, veges, clothes, shoes, bangles ... and eventually made it home without any excess luggage!
As we walked to our hotel in the afternoon we came across a procession of hundreds of excited boys banging huge drums that were threatening to swallow them whole, and spinning silver batons and swords around the place! The energy was intense and to some degree it felt like the atmosphere just before a fight breaks out.

After a rest in our room we have a belated dinner on the rooftop of our hotel, peering out at the speckling of lights that failed to illuminate the City of Jodhpur that rests below us.

Adlibing in the hope of food.