The bhataktiatma : Travelogue of a wandering soul

Jodhpur, the blue city, is named so because of abundance of blue colored houses in the city which stand out in the brown desert plane. The blue houses belong to the Brahmins, even though now they are found everywhere in the city, in old days these houses were found only in the area called Brahmpuri. But I think it’s not the houses that give the name to the city, it’s the charm this city has, the alleys, the marked and the old clock tower at his heart, this city is a spectacular advertisement for the good old times. Jodhpur is the second largest city in Rajasthan and is named after its creator Rao Jodha … and no this is no ways related to the Jodha Bai. Mehrangad Fort Standing tall on the city’s landscape is the Mehrangad fort the first expression on seeing this fort would invariably be “Hugeee”, this fort is one of the biggest forts in Rajasthan. The fort and its palaces are built over 500 years following its foundation in 15 th century. The foundation was laid by Rao Jod...

After Kumbhalgarh our next destination was the desert city of jaisalmer also called as the golden city because of the color of the desert. From kumbhalgarh there are two possible routes to jaisalmer, one via Jodhpur which is the usual route for travelers and the other via Barmer, the one less travelled. We decided to take the second route as it would give us a great opportunity to visit remote locations in Rajasthan and we would be able to complete the full circle that way and not travel the same route again. Jaisalmer is about 435 kms from Kumbhalgarh (495 kms via Jodhpur), the state highway descends from Aravali hills to the dusty planes of Ahore and Marble hills of Jalore. The landscape drastically changes once you cross Ranakpur, the variety of plants reduced to thorny bushes and cactuses, the only rise from the ground level is because of the sandstone and marble hills. The area from Jalore to Barmer is famous for its marble production. The desert is source of the rare...

Plans for year end road trip were in progress, after exploring almost whole of India on map we finally settled for Gujrat or Rajasthan. Impressed by Mr.Modi’s Gujarat marketing we almost finalized gujrat , the plan circled around Kacch Rann utsav , but after checking the rates we thought it’s not worth its price , besides eating pure vegetarian and sugar coated food for 10 days didn’t seal the deal for Gujrat , Rajasthan was better choice. After playing a lot on Google maps trying to figure out the route which will allow us to cover as much Rajasthan as we can in the stipulated 10 days period, we finalized the route starting from Udaipur and covering kumbhalgarh , jaisalmer and jodhpur. It would take us 2 days to reach kumbhalgarh, covering 650kms on day one and reach Ahmedabad and then 360kms the next day. It took us close to 14 hrs from Pune to Ahmedabad, vikram had travelled this route by car last year and convinced us that we should be able to cover the distance easily as...