Jodphur – no funny trousers for sale anywhere. There was however … a fort! The Mehrangarh Fort and no, it’s not the best fort on the planet, that comes a little later. Here’s Mehrangarh taken from the old market square:

We were hugely impressed by the main gate, there is a sharp ninety degree turn immediately before it which means elephants aren’t able to get a run at it to barge it down. Then to dissuade them further the gate itself has huge sharp spikes at elephant height!

Inside the fort is interesting with some beautiful rooms:

In the museum they had entire displays of elephant howdahs, palanquins, turbans (mercifully closed) but most interesting of all (to me at least) were these carpet weights:

 I want some.

There is a temple in the fort complex, the Chamunda Devi temple:

This temple is hundreds of years old but tragically is most famous for an event which occurred in September, 2008. Thousands of devotees were visiting the temple on the first day of Navrati, a major Hindu festival, when something spooked the crowd and caused a stampede. 249 people were killed and a further 400 injured. Very sad.

After the fort we strolled around the Old Town which was full of old things (including us!):

 an old building

 an old man

 an old lady – selling street food

 Colourful India

and then went to the Umaid Bhawan Palace which is still the home of the current Maharajah, Gaj Singh II, but also houses a hotel and a museum:

The Maharajah who commissioned the palace was Maharajah Umaid Singh, this is him taking tea:

One of the exhibits was about him, it read (in part), “There was in him an astonishing simplicity, a grace he was born with and carried with him always, whether playing polo at Hurlingham or big game hunting in Africa, salmon fishing in Scotland or fox hunting at his sumptuous estate “Arranmore” in Ootacamund (south India)”. Mmmm!

The next morning we were up early and on the road to Udaipur. Great sights along the way as ever, the first of which was the Om Bana temple:

The story goes that Om Bana died here when he crashed his motorbike into a tree. The police took the bike away but twice it came back, apparently on it’s own! That was reason enough to name it “Bullet Baba” (the bike was a Royal Enfield Bullet) and to make it the diety of a new temple. Here is Om Baba:

and here, enshrined, is Bullet Baba:

After that surreal experience we continued on our way watching carefully for riderless motorcycles, all we saw were riderless donkeys:

and the occasional monkey:

The monkey that bit Leishia was a Rhesus macaque, these were the altogether more pleasant Gray langur, a very beautiful monkey.

We stopped for a while at the small town of Narlai. This little town is famous for two things, firstly the twelve Jain temples it boasts, secondly the local hotel, the Rawla Narlai, which is owned by a famous Indian fashion designer Raghuvendra Singh Rathore and has been visited by, amongst others, Mick Jagger! Anyway I rather doubt he took the eight hundred steps to the top of the hill to see the elephant – I did!

There was a lovely old lady in Narlai, covered in tattoos:

and still very flexible!

After Narlai we drove to see Kumbhalgarh fort. And what a fort. This is the best fort on the planet. A real grown up fort with a real grown up wall. A wall 36km long and broad enough to take eight horses ridden abreast. The wall is the longest continuous wall in India and the longest in the world after the Great Wall of China. It is the first line of protection for the fort but with or without it the fort itself looks impregnable.

 The fort from the wall

 The wall

 The snaking wall

 Temples and the wall in the far distance.

After all the forts we’ve seen in India if Ganesh were to offer me a fort of my own this is the one I would have! Kumbhalgarh is a fort on a grand scale, when you sit atop the battlements and look out you can see the enemy two days march away. You can enjoy your roasted wild boar and your goblet of wine safe in the knowledge that he’s not going to spoil your fun anytime soon. And then, when he tries, you just pour boiling oil over him and go back inside for dessert. Brilliant, my kind of fort.

So after a great day of sights we’ve arrived in Udaipur where we plan to stay for a few days before moving on to Gujarat.