Blue City

[15.5.16 – I know, I know, I know. I promised myself I wouldn’t open with any more excuses but I couldn’t let this go unnoticed. This trip happened in Feb. Yep, two months ago. I may be working through a bit of a backlog…bear with me! x]

[5.6.16 – ahhh….yesss… may’ve forgotten about this one…but taadaa! Yay! xx]

We crashed into Jodhpur slightly ahead of schedule. I think any city may look terrifyingly dodgy at 3:30am and Jodhpur was the definite start of this hypothesis. After finding a rickshaw (I don’t think we were his usual early morning clientele) we gave the driver the only address we knew. We found ourselves even more lost. He offered to take us to a guest house (yes, mother…) and, despite ALL the guide books and novels I’d read, ALL the documentaries I’d seen, and ALL the advice I’d received…we said yes, yes please.

After a minute of awkwardly knocking on the door of a random house a woman in a nightgown appeared and ushered us in. After walking up 500 flights of steps (aprox.) we were shown a room, and with no questions, we fell into bed.

We met our lovely hostess in the morning. She was very sweet and very concerned for our welfare. We had pancakes and chai before heading into the city.

Finding the incredible Jodhpur fort directly behind us, we hiked up to start exploring. The view over the city was beautiful albeit not quite blue enough for Marie’s liking. With some excellent rhetoric we were able to convince the most places to give us Indian rates (due to our student residency papers) – the usually ₹400 difference was only coupled with a few skeptical looks. We were blinded by the brilliant whiteness of the Jaswant Thada Mausoleum and participated in one of the strangest free meditation sessions I had ever know (all due respect, of course, to Dr. Naeem Sayeed, apparently the guidance instructor for Malaysia’s royal family!).

One of the highlights, for me, was visiting one of the oldest spice shops in Jodhpur. MV Spices is owned by the daughters of the original owner. They have faced enormous discrimination from jealous family members and spice-selling competitors, usually male, yet have remained one of the spice merchants in Jodhpur. Their story was filmed as The Spice Girls of India (yes, really) and was screened at the London Feminist Film Festival. The woman serving us was so kind and helpful, showing us how to see the difference between fake and real saffron.

I bid a sad farewell to my amazing travel companions and jumped on flight to Bangalore. There I met with one of my (sort of) teachers, Cary. We both participated in a one day intensive Theatre of the Oppressed workshop led by the amazing Ravi Ramaswamy. You can read more about the Centre for Community Dialogue and Change here. It was fantastic for the development of aspects of my Project Based Diploma and I hope to return there in June [spoiler: I am].

becoming the loner of the group

And as quickly as it began (though quicker than it was able to be written up) my designated time to Experience India was over and the “regular” (ha) MUWCI life began again.

all my love,

anna

xx

*most of these photos belong to Jesse

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