Road trips can be an exciting travel options. But what if things do not happen the way you expect? Welcome to an interesting story-reading session of - 'What not to expect from a road-trip'.
We started from Gurgaon at evening and planned to visit Jodhpur and then take off to other places in Rajasthan. We had pin pointed some destinations but kept room for other ideas as we were heading on our own vehicle. Had dinner on our way and quickly resumed our journey.
We reached Jodhpur by 5:30 am. To add to the thrill, we planned see sunrise from a sunrise point. We tried to locate the location on Google map but landed in a place called 'Kabootaro ka Chowk' . Blame it on the Jodhpur houses, lanes or the Google map, we left the car 650m from the so called location and decided to walk.
Don’t know where it headed us but we could see a fort above but wasn’t sure how to get there. Ended up asking people who gave us some help while some slammed doors on our faces thinking idk what! Finally we found the right path with some stairs and we reached before the sunrise to have the beautiful view of the city. The image in the post is of Umaid Bhawan which we debated on to be all the forts we could think of!
Happy with the first morning of our trip, we thought it was just 7:30am so probably we can have some breakfast and head to our hotel. Sounds great? Not exactly.I quickly took up my task to navigate back to our location and reaching to a completing different one! No sign of our car and the place from where we left. We split to find car thinking it would be near. Let me tell you, Jodhpur can give competition to every Bhul Bhulaiya(maze) you know of. We then decided to search in pairs only to share our live location all along. And all the way, each of the got back to Kabootor ka Chowk. It was now day time and everyone was out of their houses staring at us and thinking what the hell were we doing going inside every small lane.
While I was not able to explain the location with ‘Green chadar’ on the road I could then see it in every galli. This went on for about 2 hours with people asking ‘Kya hua bhaisaab’ to dogs barking at us when we entered there Illaqa. Finally the other team found the car and everyone was relieved. This image is the memory of the the longest morning walk I have taken in my entire life.
After checking into hotel, we quickly got ready and went to have a heavy breakfast. Meanwhile we also decided for itinerary for the day and the first one on the list was Mehrangarh fort. The palace gives the beautiful view of the city, amazing antique and the history.
Moving onto our next stop Jaswant Thada, which was close to the fort, it has one of the best gardens I have ever seen. Maybe it was the weather, or the vibes but it was something very different.
Moving to our last tourist spot for the day, we reached Mandore Garden. Tired, exhausted we had little patience to walk and capture the place.
Hungry by now, we decided to try some Rajasthani cuisine. We stopped by the famous Rawat Mishthan Bhandar to try on some Pyaz Kachori, Mawa Kachori and Mirch pakora. Anyone going to Jodhpur should definitely try this! I am personally in favour of pyaz kachori.
Last stop - Sadar market. It was around 7:30pm. Street shopping, to be honest, is never my forte. But the city has one of the places things that depicts Rajasthani culture. While you can easily find most of the stuff in Sarojini and CP, Delhi ; they were at even cheaper price. Colorful dupattas, choora, potlis, earning - the market is full of such pretty stuff. While walking around we also spotted Ghanta Ghar(with some argument on its existence at that place).
Ending our day, we had the hot milk at the street with lot of malayi of course! My diet had definitely taken a back seat.????
We started with a sunny breakfast at the hotel rooftop and then visit to Umaid Bhawan museum. I agree I was expecting to see the place where Priyanka Chopra got married. But unfortunately none us of us could afford to book a room in the hotel. I had to settle myself with the pictures of the king and the family of the palace. While discussing about 'bagal and sath', we took a tour of the palace.
The most striking thing were the extraordinary clocks. Another thing that gathered attention were the vintage car collection.
As we entered Jaisalmer, we can already see sand all over and military forces. Another great place to get the flavour of Rajasthani food was the local Dhaba. The ambience was nice, we decided on Daal Baati choorma.
Another great thing was that we spotted camels nearby. It seemed they were scared, hence we could not capture them from a close distance Longewala War Museum was another place one can catch up on the route to Jaisalmer. This place is a must visit where you can find stories of battle of Longewala in 1971.
Quickly taking up our route to the Khuri Sand dunes camp, we were battling our path with sunset. By the time we reached our destination, it was already 7pm. After having a discussion with the owner, we were informed that the camp where we have booked is now taken over by another person. To add to the shock, they were not accepting the booking we already had! Well, everything got sorted after discussions with booking website and we ended up in Paradesert camp. The camp was like another tent area, but nothing less than a hotel when you get inside.I agree it was really cold at night but a pleasant experience altogether.
Bonfire was there, the stage was set. So we sat down to enjoy the folk dance and songs of the local artists. To add some embarrassment to ourselves, we danced to songs in our special Bhangra, Garba, Baraati dances as well as tried to copy some steps from the dancer.
Rest of the night was spent having the Rajasthani cuisine (daal baati choorma, ker saangri,bajre ki sbzi etc). Now it was time to finally sit down and have some serious discussions!!!. It was freezing and nobody was interested to leave the bonfire. All is well when it makes a good memory.(Btw having green tea at night is one kind of experience)
Waking up to cold feet, I quickly took a tour of the camp for one last time as we had to leave for the day. Great hospitality received from the Paradesert owner and his family. This will also we one of my recommendations from the trip. When you come to such places away from the hustle of cities, it feels so refreshing when you meet people who are so down to earth and helping.
They even served us food and were constantly asking for feedback on food and stay. It should be surely a must try thing in Jaisalmer.
Hot sun over my head and burning my skin. Did I say I woke up to cold feet in the morning?
Rajasthan has weather swings I guess!! Kuldhara being labelled as haunted village, here one can find remains of the old village that was abandoned years ago. While some buildings were renovated, some were left as is to get all the horror feels.
Surely it looked scary if we decided to come in evening.
Longewala war memorial
With few hours in hand, we planned to cover Jaisalmer city quickly and leave for Pokhran. Here is the beauty we found on the way…
Definitely pigeons have some special love for Rajasthan. Apologies to aunty who gave a look when I said pigeons are believed to be tasty :D
When you think that everything is going just fine, life has ways to put you into a new adventure!. On our way to Pokhran, we meet with an accident (nobody was hurt) but we were left in a village Chandhan with no signs of proper stay and food. It was 9pm, scary and no words are enough to explain what we were feeling at that time. As luck would have it, we got accomodation where we had never expected. A friends long distance family lived nearby and we spent the night there. We could have not asked for anything better than this. That incident was
surely something all of us will remember all our lives and as we already said, tell it to generations to come ???? Authentic Rajasthani home filled with so much affection and innocence. I was unable to understand what the old lady said, but I could feel the love in whatever she spoke. We crashed at their house so late, gave them all the trouble even though they did not know any one us! That’s is what India and Indians are all about. In this generation where we feel everyone is so mean and selfish, we also find such loving families who just make you realise how being rooted gives you so much satisfaction. They may not have the best facilities that we have here in cities but they are so much in peace.
And just in case anyone is curious why this petrol pump? Well, we kept our car here for the night.
(Please note: few more posts to go for these long captioned Rajasthan trip pics????!!!) So here is goes-
By morning we submitted the car and as crazy as it may sound, we decided on continuing our trip. We headed towards Pokhran and then to Bikaner all by bus. Another great experience I had was the sleeper buses that was more like a mini train coach. By this time, all four of us were back to normal and the guys were back in form to tell their school time stories.(Oh that never ending Gyan!)It was by evening that we reached Bikaner. Everyone was damn hungry.
It was New year’s eve and so we needed a place to celebrate. After touring every nearby restaurant and hotel, we settled for a quite new restaurant. The folk music , some Rajasthani food and bonfire, there was nothing else we could have asked for at that moment. It was calming and one of the best nights I had in the year. Last day of the year was spent in peace ????
This is the authentic Rajasthani food we were served. Maybe I was damn hungry, but it all tasted liked the yummiest thing I have ever had in the last few days. Daal baati choorma, Rajasthani kadhi, Garlic chutney, Khichda, Laal maas(finally had non veg on the trip!), Gajar ka halwa. Dumping my diet, I ate till I had no space to eat more. One of the most delicious foods and a must try on in Bikaner.
We celebrated the new year at the same place and wished everyone with smiles. For the first time in my life I was celebrating new year’s on a trip???? And at that moment I was really happy about it. I am really thankful to everyone who was with me on the trip as well as those whom I met during this journey. This picture is dedicated to all such good memories. With this #Padharo2019
Travelling in Bikaner on a auto was also one kind of experience! Our first spot to cover was the Junagarh fort. The fort not only has the various kinds of war equipments which we saw in almost all forts we visited, there was an entire plane placed in the museum! The garden was one of the best places of the fort and this picture clearly does no justice to the actual view.
Her name is Basanti and she was clearly not happy to have us. Eating on every bushes and trees around, she prefered to be lazy. Vandana who was older and faster, we struggled to match up to Vandana's speed.
With this, I checked one of the wishlisted item of my todos.
On the way back, we visited Devi Kund Sagar, a place having Rajputana style of architecture.
Had this late lunch early dinner kind of meal at this amazing rooftop restaurant. Loved the ambience, staff as well as the deliciously cooked food. This wrapped up our last hours on this trip (minus the travel back) with a very happy and fulfilling note.
And finally the last pic of the trip is here!!???? After the dinner at this amazing restaurant, we left to find our bus. This time we managed everything just on time and started off our way back to Delhi. Sharing our experiences of this whole trip, I realized that exploring places not only helps us to relax a bit from our boring lives but also helps us to know one another better. From walking like idiots on the road of Jodhpur to just sitting on the roads of Jaisalmer!! And what fun it is to enjoy a stay at a luxury tent of Khuri to the most comfortable sleep in Chandhan! From making your companions panik over your silly fights to finding weird ways to resolve them! From travelling in a ???? to a ???? to a ????The pictures are here as a part of memory for all small things we enjoyed over the period of 3 days. A part of me still stays in all this pictures and says 'Take me back'.