India Day 11. On to Jodphur.

Leaving Udaipur, the City of Lakes, we headed off to Jodhpur, the Blue City. It was a 6 hr drive with a great deal of it on a really twisty road, similar to the Road to the Sun, for those of you who have been to Glacier National Park. Hairpin turns with loooong drops down to the bottom. Monkeys causally hang out near the summit, hoping, I suppose, for buses to go over the edge so they can scamper down and help themselves to our stuff. (Look at the length of his tail!)

The reason for taking this road was for a stop at a Jain temple near Ranakpur. Some of the group was annoyed (cough...cranky sisters....cough) because the road was really time consuming and they didn't think that The Itinerary explained the stop properly, it just said "en-route visit Ranakpur temple", not fully explaining that it was a horrible road that wound its way through the Aravalli mountain range. It was a beautiful drive, with a few hairy moments as we met oncoming vehicles.

The temple was just spectacular. It sort of appeared in the middle of nowhere. ( this is a stock photo, my camera couldn't really get the whole thing in....it was massive!) The full name of it is the Chaturmukha Temple, and it was started in the 1400's, fell into disarray for many years and eventually it was restored into the glorious place it is now. 

It covers an area of 48,000 sq ft and has 1444 exquisitely carved marble pillars, no two alike. Every direction you look you see pillars of all sizes and shapes. 

The tree was in the middle of the temple.

The ceiling looked like it was made of lace.

Hard to tell, but this is 108 snakes all intertwined with no beginning and no end.

The carvings were just so intricate, it was hard to believe they are 600 yrs old and all made by hand.

The Jains are strict vegetarians and revere all forms of life. They preach non-violence, and their goal is to achieve liberation of the soul, they believe this is achieved by reincarnation, so that's why all forms of life are to respected.

• Traditionally Jains have been prohibited from drinking unfiltered water. In the past, when wells or baolis were used for the water source, the cloth used for filtering used to be reversed and some filtered water was poured over it to return the organisms to the original body of water. This practice termed as ‘jivani’ or ‘bilchhavani’, is no longer possible because of the use of pipes for water supply.
• Jains today may also filter faucet water in the traditional fashion, and a few Jains continue to follow the filtering process even with commercial mineral or bottled drinking water.
• Jains make considerable efforts not to injure plants in everyday life as far as possible. but they only accept such violence inasmuch as it is indispensable for human survival, and there are special instructions for preventing unnecessary violence against plants.[10] Jains don’t eat root vegetables such as potatoes, onions, roots and tubers, because tiny life forms are injured when the plant is pulled up and because the bulb is seen as a living being, as it is able to sprout. Also, consumption of most root vegetables involves uprooting & killing the entire plant. Whereas consumption of most terrestrial vegetables doesn’t kill the plant (it lives on after plucking the vegetables or it was seasonally supposed to wither away anyway).
• Honey is forbidden, as its collection would amount to violence against the bees.

I guess that's why the beehive I saw outside was dripping with uncollected honey.

No leather is allowed into the temples at all,  shoes must be removed, purses left behind, belts and watch straps taken off.  Cameras are allowed for a fee (100 rupees, which is less than $2 CDN). Pictures are allowed of the structure itself, the pillars, carvings etc but not of the idols. That was mentioned again and again, "not of the idols". There we many holy men inside who made sure no one did take photos of the idols and I was getting concerned because a lot of the pillars had human shaped carvings and faces, and I didn't know what was an idol and what wasn't. Eventually I turned a corner and saw small alcoves with a shrine in them containing what was obviously an idol, some behind glass, and with candles and flowers laid in front. There was an occasional person trying to discreetly take a picture (honestly, what the hell is wrong with some people?  But, the holy men were on the ball technologically and made them delete the pictures. Thumbs up, holy men. 

(It was the same in the Taj Mahal, the area where the tomb actually was was a no-photo area, with signs everywhere. Also everywhere were people taking pictures and selfies, not even trying to be discreet. Bad karma) 

This Jain temple was the one with this sign out front, which I posted earlier.  #11 still makes me smile. 

We checked into out hotel and next morning headed out to visit the Mehrangarh Fort and Jaswant Thada. This fort was begun in 1459 and became "one of the mightiest forts of all time", or so the books all say. I think it might be true, it was pretty incredible to see it from a distance, looking like it was part of the rocky hill. Once you get up there and climb to the top, the views of the old city are magnificent, and seeing the jumble of blue houses tucked below the fort shows why Jodphur is The Blue City. 

In some of the Forts we went to, our guide walked and explained the history of that particular place to us, and some had the audio tours. This one was an audio tour one, but I chose to just wander on my own. 

The beginning was through the huge gates, and if one looked up....what the hell? BATS! By the thousands I think. Luckily I'm not afraid of bats because there were about 4 huge arches like this, each one with a colony. 

Once through the arches, there was a pretty substantial climb to get to the inner part of the fort. Thank goodness there was entertainment around every corner, it gave one an excuse to stop and try to catch your breath.

Climbed and climbed. The walls were high and close in areas, and it almost seemed dark.

Then you'd come to an open and brilliant area.

Up some more. I loved these stairs, beautiful photo op other than the sign warning a person to not fall off!

The fort is partly a museum as well, so there were some magnificent rooms to wander through as you climbed.

It took me the longest time to figure out how to get up to where this fellow was. There isn't a lot of signage in the fort.

Ha! Finally got there!

Up a few more stairs and finally at the top!

Before we went into it the fort, we had a quick stop at Jaswant Thada, which is a few hundred metres  away, a marble memorial to the maharaja Jaswant Singh II. It's basically a cenotaph and a place where the royal family is still cremated.

The fort as seen from Jaswant Thada.

And that's that for today.