Stage 6 · Pushkar – Jodhpur
The blue city
I set off early, the road is still good, and I ride fast, toward the desert. Chasing a warmth that, despite the blinding sun, is slow to arrive. The landscape changes abruptly, everything turns brilliant, but if I lift the visor, cold air rushes in. The desert. Where even the tarmac is yellow. There’s little traffic, and I allow myself the luxury of relaxing. My gaze drifts far into the distance.
Two short stops, in the sun, to warm up and drink some water. Eyes forward, looking for my destination. Jodhpur, like Jaisalmer, is a visible city — an imposing fort announces its presence from far off, like clouds over an island when travelling by sea. I can imagine the expectations of travellers of old, straining their eyes toward the horizon, searching for a sign of the city.
The arrival is chaotic. My hotel is in the old city, streets so narrow two motorbikes can barely pass each other — especially with a cow in the way. This time the GPS doesn’t help. I circle round and round. Several times. I ask around. Eventually I find my guest house. Blue. Like the whole city. Jodhpur, the blue city.
I go up onto the roof, which is dominated by the fort. I drink scalding tea under a blazing sun. But the air is cold — I’ve had my thermal shirt on and my jacket zipped up tight for the whole trip. Yet in the sun, standing still, the cold vanishes. I go out, wander the bazaar, and start putting together my New Year’s Eve feast. I buy dried fruit, little steel bowls (sold by weight!), a pineapple.
Now only one problem remains: how do I properly chill my Veuve Clicquot, which already smells of midnight? In a nonexistent mini-bar? I use a strategy that suits me well: I’ll think about it tomorrow. I have dinner on scalding fried things bought on the street. Indecently good. I feel the energy flowing into my patches of cholesterol.
I sleep like a log and am woken at six by an improvised muezzin twenty metres from my room. Then he falls quiet and I doze off again. I devote the morning of the 31st of December to visiting the fort. The sheer mass of the structure, built on a 200-metre rock base, its beauty, and the view over the city from up high, take my breath away. I wander for hours without tiring. I have lunch on more fried things — by now I’m friends with the vendor, who recognizes me and finds it very amusing that I join the queue of customers as if I lived there, and eat with relish what he makes, wrapped in a scrap of newspaper.
I go back to the hotel, top up the bike’s oil, check that everything’s in order — tomorrow I have 275 kilometres to cover. I pack my bags, then set about organizing my New Year’s Eve feast. A moment of hesitation: what time to celebrate (not what, but when)? The decision is made harder by India’s odd time zone: +4.5 hours. Then I check my watch, do the math, and decide I’ll celebrate New Year on Taipei time. Why Taipei? Some strange connection to that exotic place? The sound of the name? No. Simply because it’s midnight there RIGHT NOW, and I’m hungry and sleepy, and tomorrow I plan to leave early for Jaisalmer.
The champagne is perfect: the tap water in the desert is freezing, and I’d had the bottle soaking for hours. A binge of peanuts, one solitary first toast, then more with a few friends who’d guessed at a remote toast of their own. Maybe not on Taipei time, but I doubt it makes much difference. Friends are friends. Toast after toast, the bottle empties. Then to bed, dazed, lulled by the bubbles: tomorrow it’s off into the deep desert… I fall asleep thinking: ‘But why blue?’
Happy New Year, everyone.
Tomorrow, off into the deep desert…
Photographs
