Jaisalmer: The Golden City

Health warning: grumpy and fat-cheeked.

I haven't written a blogpost for a couple of weeks.

It is mainly because I have been really grumpy.

The reason for my grumpiness is my face. Let us hark back to an entire month ago when I had my wisdom tooth removed. Now even though they removed my wisdom tooth, they left my wisdom very much in tact. So, I bestow upon you some very wise words, and they are these:

DO NOT GET YOUR WISDOM TOOTH REMOVED. EVER.

And here is for why.

For ease and stylistic purposes, I shall bullet point my reasons.

• I had to eat lukewarm soup and milkshakes for weeks. (It does not help that I like neither soup nor milkshakes.)
• I have now been back to the hospital five times. Each time they have agreed the huge gaping hole at the back of my mouth is 'not healing', poked and prodded it whilst I winced like a wince farm and sent me on my merry way to give it a few more weeks. Furthermore the hospital is in a shoddy location which involves using too much brainpower to work out the best route and sitting on lots of buses.
• I have a scar running up the inside of my mouth. Although I realise that nobody is truly bothered about the aesthetics of the inside my mouth, the fact is that if you touch anywhere along said atrocity, it hurts likes hellfire. Also, when all is said and done, it is gross.
• As Ness in Gavin and Stacey would say 'My breath is rank'. No seriously. I have a constant taste of metal in my mouth. I genuinely hope it isn't, but if people can smell what I can taste then my advice is to run for the hills.
• I can no longer open my mouth widely. The surgeon informed me I had a tiny mouth (rude). Perhaps he should take note that for the future that if he pokes me like that, I am likely to bite down on his finger.
• I have to syringe the gaping hole twice a day. It is not, what I call, fun.
• My face is like that of a lopsided hamster.

The moral is this, having a wisdom tooth extracted makes you gaunt, have a numb bum, feel bus sick several times a month, have an unruly scar, smell and last but not least, look like a fat rodent. At least I am now adept in DIY dental surgery.

As someone pointed out to me once (and on many occasions after that), I have fat cheeks. So having a swollen and tender jowl on one side on top of the fat-cheekedness makes me look, quite frankly, ridiculous. To top it all off, I have started to get two little frown lines between my eyebrows. I am, in short, a fat frowning mess.

I was looking over my facebook profile the other day, and I came across my 'likes' and 'dislikes'. Facebook was just becoming popular as I started university and I obviously felt the need to fill in everything they asked for. Anyway, they made me laugh (in as much as a grumpy, fat-cheeked rodent with a small unopening mouth can laugh) so I will share my 18 year-old profile. (Mainly because I am still grumpy and sore and sulking about my jaw and it is midnight and this takes minimal effort.)

I really don't like the pith on satsumas. (This is still true. My family despairs as I take about twenty minutes to eat a small satsuma because I pick it all off.)


I am small, I have blue eyes and my hair is either dirty blonde or rich mouse. (nothing's changed there then) I have a small gap between my front teeth (brace-induced). (I blame Birgit Jensen - the splay-legged Scandinavian orthodontist I have mentioned before)


I do not look like Linda Barker. (This is still absolutely the case. I have never and will never look like her.)


Likes:


I like peanut butter a lot. Smooth or crunchy. I also like marmite. I like trying new foods and travelling. I like escaping into books. I like Mr Darcy. I like cuddles, kisses, snuggling under a warm duvet, the smell of old books, being in a mobile home in a thunderstorm and you can hear the rain slamming onto the roof, sitting by an open fire with a glass of wine, the smell of garlic cooking, mussels, my friends, my family, musicals, goats cheese, pine nuts, speaking*, a crisp french accent, listening to classical music as i work, dancing crazily with my family, dancing like nobody's in the room, black labradors, a cold beer on a hot day, books and films about love and the war, frothy, milky coffee, walking bare foot on a windy beach, yummy prawns with the tails on, frosty days when the sun is shining and the sky is icy blue, holding hands, in BBC P&P when Elizabeth and Darcy stare at each other over the piano, raw carrots, tennis, roast dinners,the sound of a clarinet's lowest register, not being stressed.


Dislikes:


Lying, people holding their knife like a pen, bitchy girls, butter, coriander, snide remarks, french grammar, people preaching to me, cats, the way its hard to understand people's tone through email and text, conflict, people who always want to blame someone, the smell of petrol, the way you lose your tummy as you go over a hill quickly, being in the car when I'm not driving, orange peel and the pith on satsumas, Big Brother, dirty kitchens, washing up being left so that the stuff sticks to it, people who say 'like' every other word....

*speaking?? 

Oh right, shall I carry on with India then? JODPHUR - THE BLUE CITY.

At origin, this was essentially a travel blog - a retrospective travelog if you will.

It has over time metamorphosed into a travelog melged/intertwingled* with general observations and musings.

Today, let us move back to the intended purpose and inspiration - INDIA.

So, some details will be hazy but as my good friends Kayleigh and Katie always say, I have a ridiculously good memory so hopefully I will have remembered enough for this to be interesting. (Also, Faye, who actually kept a diary whilst we were there, has filled in the blanks.)

As our fantastic tour guide was such a legend (thanks Tucan Travel), he had a friend who had a friend who could take us to Jodphur in a privately air conditioned car. So? some might say. But let us hark back to the hellish journey we had to get to Pushkar. We had squidged into a dirty bus, heads back, catching flies, zipping down the highway. We had been left stranded on a dusty road, sun pelting down on our transluscent skin** - Karrimors on our poor spindly backs, baby Karrimors on our fronts, one dollar ray bans on our eyes and sweaty derrieres - hot as bitches. We had had to trust in a stranger to motorbike us one by one to our destination.

Now we had a private air-conditioned car with a driver. We were in the lap of luxury.

We said teary farewells to our group. Again. They were off to Udaipur - the Lake City. We were jealous. But when you only have two weeks off work, you have to move fast. And we had Jodphur, Jaisalmer and a 19 hour train journey to fit in before our flights.

The four hour car journey flew by like a dream. Mainly because I slept.

We arrived in Jodphur, were led to a back-street hotel, had a quick banana lassi and then got into our private TukTuk ready for our very quick tour of the city. We had an overnight train booked for that evening so it was to be a jam-packed. 

Jodphur is known as the Blue City. Here are some photos to show you why. Furthermore, I decided to wear a blue dress so that the sky, the dress and houses would bring out the colour of my eyes... (and take the attention off my dry skin chin***). It was stunning.****

  

Our top port of call was the Mehrangarh Fort which we tootled up to in our TukTuk. On the way we stopped at another beautiful temple. Now in the past, I said I was forted-out. This fort was different. It had an audio-guide. And the person who read the audio-guide was someone who sounded suspiciously like Prince Philip doing an Indian accent.

The views were breathtaking. Quite honestly, I don't think this post needs many words as the pictures are really enough.

Inside the fort were incredible artefacts. Here are some of the howdahs (seats you put on an elephant's back):

There are seven gates that guard Mehrangarh Fort. One gate had massive spikes to prevent elephants storming the fort. The pictures below are of the last gate and show the handprints of the ranis (Hindu Queens) who self-immolated on their husband, Maharaja Man Singh's funeral pyre in 1843. This custom is known as Sati and was a funeral practice which has ancient origins in the Hindu faith. As an act of devotion, the wives joined their husbands in death. Quite unbelievably, it wasn't until 1987 that the Indian Government passed the law to prevent Sati. In Jodphur, the last known case was 1953.

One bizarre room had Christmas baubles.

I had Henna and felt very cultural.

* ©


**Huge exaggeration. We were of course very tanned by this point and very much Bobby Ds.

*** Which now obviously you are going to look out for because I told you not to.

**** The city. Not my eyes.

And obviously not my chin.