The Blue houses, Jodhpur
Since the day our Jodhpur trip was planned, I was very excited to see blue houses.
Why Blue — As per guides, in early days houses of brahmins were painted blue to differentiate them from others. However later on everyone started painting blue to protect against harsh sun and heat during summers. However our auto guy had a different version all together — People here hoards money and spend as lees as possible. So in order to save money they use cheap indigo color which is also used to color fabric (called neel in hindi)to paint their houses instead of using actual paint. Let’s get painted blue with this view of the town -
How to reach — Since cabs don’t go till end, you need to take auto to reach the place called navchokiya from where you can start walking through the blue house area. Since it is old town it has narrow lanes and is a bit congested.
That’s how we did it — To avoid crowd we reached there by 7:45 AM in our full touristy spirit. We walked through the confined lanes experiencing some morning scenes — silent roads, people heading towards temple, ladies dusting their houses, milkmen and so on. Since these are houses with people living in them, be a bit careful in clicking photos. Or rather be careful of dogs as there are many. If you are visiting in morning, you will find workers sweeping roads so its good to carry a scarf to avoid dust.
On reaching there you will realize that not all the houses are blue, where many renovated houses are painted differently some are still following the trend. Nevertheless, it was fun posing in contrasting background.
You can stroll along the roads towards Mehrangarh fort back side entry. There are indications or you can ask anybody. We reached there and entered Fort at 9 AM (Fort’s entry time). Since we entered from the opposite gate no one was there except one or two security guys. We were glad to see people free pathways and were able to appreciate the beauty of the place even better.
This was our second tour to the Fort. We covered the fort museum and interiors a day before so this time we were roaming outside.
We climbed to one of the pillars near back entrance and captured blue houses view. This is the best place to get view of the old town. Post this we exited from the main entrance.
