A TRIP TO DELHI, RAJASTHAN AND AGRA part 3

We arrived in Jodhpur in the morning and went first to a crematorium site for past Maharajas. This was a very pretty site not far from the fort. It has become a sort of shrine. We went inside to hear about the building on the site where people hoping for good luck or some other wish to be fulfilled would come and leave a knotted string or some such thing. The building is very pretty and made of marble that is translucent in some pieces so that you can see the sunlight illuminates it inside. Our Railway board member on the trip joined us this day and had several guards following him around and there were several photographers taking his picture. We next went to the fort and road an elevator up instead of walking. We toured the inside and found it interesting, but we especially liked looking out over the town. The town is called the "blue city" because many people paint walls outside their house in blue and it is rather pretty to see from a distance. We learned more about architecture and also visited several displays in the fort museum. We were told that the painting style of the region is called "mewar" (though we also heard about marwar style later and wonder if they are the same.) In any case, there are very fine examples produced by local artists who sell them in the museum shop. The prices are high and they are not allowed to bargin, but they did give a second piece when paying for one.
We went to Bhawan Palace for lunch. This is a newer palace built in the 1930's partly to give work to local people. It is now mostly a very nice hotel. The inside is very large- surprisingly so considering when it was built. The lunch was very good. We left to head east.
Early in the morning of March 5 we arrived near Ranthambpore Park. This is a fairly well know place that has a very old fort on the hill top and ruins of a number of other structures in the valley. It was a hunting reserve for a Maharaja, but has been a national park for awhile. Visitors try to enter early in the morning- we went in right at 6:30AM as the sun was beginning to rise. It was very chilly. Our little group was in a large open vehicle intended to hold about 20 people, but there were 5 passengers from the train, one crew from the train, a driver and a guide. They limit the number of vehicles allowed. The main point of coming here is to see the tigers. The books say there are about 45 tigers, but the guide said he thought it is in the 30's. We drove in and the guide listened for sounds of tigers and we heard some roars. (We wondered if it might be made by speakers placed in the woods or people out there- especially when we later saw one of the part personell walk out of the woods with no obvious defense.) We drove some and stopped some. They said that the tigers move around soon after sunrise and look for cooler places as it gets hotter. They tried to convince us that a tiger was close by in the woods near the road, but the growth was so thick that we did not see anything clearly. The pictures do show some orange or yellow colors, but they may be leaves. We went further into the park and saw lots of deer and peacocks and one crocodile as well as many other birds. Then we started to head out of the park again when we heard the tigers roar again. The guide had us wait then some other people came to the same spot and we told them we saw a tiger. Then we drove to another spot that the guide knew and pulled close to a low stone wall where 2 other cars were sitting. Because our truck was tall we were able to see over the wall very well. After a little while a large tiger walked right past our group on the other side of the wall. We managed to catch it on video and one still photo. It was quite exciting to see it roaming free! We left the park and went back to the train feeling that it was worth getting up so early! We had breakfast and rested while the train rolled west again toward Chittogarh.
The countryside was quite pretty in many places and we saw several hills with old forts on them. At Chittogarh our bus met us and took us to the fort. This fort seemed huge from a distance and the guide said the walls around it are about 13km long. We road up what he said is the back entrance which goes through 7 old gates before being at the top. The fort is now only occupied on one end by about 5000 people while the middle third is historic preservation and the last 3rd is a nature preserve. There were not many people at this place and we liked this! We visited several places- including "Padmini's palace" and the "Victory tower". There are long stories attached to these places. Padmini was supposed to be exceptionally beautiful and a war was fought over her which was lost and she and hundreds of other women killed themselves by jumping into a fire. The fort was conquered 3 times, so the leaders eventually moved to Udaipur. Somewhere along the line, there was a victory and this caused the Victory Tower to be be built. It is a very attractive stone tower that is wider at the top than in the middle. There is also a very nice temple close by. There are also lots of monkeys around.
The evening ended with a sound and light show at the ruins of the main palace. This was fairly well done and fairly interesting though we had heard much of the story earlier. The bus took us back to our train for dinner and we moved to Udaipur overnight.