Lohit

Traveler/ Business consultant/ Chef

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Day 2: Jaisalmer

As we were availing the room using Marriott Bonvoy points that we had accumulated over the year’s stay in the same, In India, they don’t give complementary breakfast. Although, they gave the same to us complementary while we wee booking.

We already have had an experience with breakfast at Marriott several times and this was no less admiring. We started with Dal Papad – Rajasthani specialty and something we were missing almost the whole trip. The rest of them was usually Indian (north Indian). We were not interested in having English breakfast even after coming here, so we avoided all such stuff. This is an Indian breakfast you do not want to miss.

Once we were done, we came out and took an auto to go to Patwon ki haweli. Its more or less like an old complex of buildings. After seeing so much of sculptures and art work in Rajasthan, this seemed to be fairly normal to us. We clicked a few pictures and started walking towards Jaisalmer fort. We had already planned this walk as we knew that one of the famous Ganpati sweets will be on the way. After our breakfast, we were not much hungry so we had Jalebi on the way up, because we knew we would come back on the way down.

Once we were in the fort, we realized that it’s a residential fort and mostly commercialized. So there were a few view points. We went through the streets which were full of shops and bazaars to a point where there was no one. We sat in quiet in this place for 30 minutes and then descended back to have our rest of the food at Ganpathi sweets. Here we had Samosas and Kachoris while we made our plan to go to our final destination – “Café the Kaku”. Because we were so full, we preferred walking the 3 km stretch. Again, based on research, this Café gave a beautiful view of the whole fort. You were allowed to sit, provided you have ordered something. We brushed through the menu and there was nothing much interesting or more Rajasthani cuisine. And since we were full from our share of sweets, we decided to order anything and enjoy our view from the café. We clicked few pictures with the fort background and started our way back to hotel. Little did we know that we had a surprise awaiting us at hotel. Well, they made a room available with the fort view, but now there was no special interest since we had already been to this café and had our share of clicks in here. Still, it was nice to see that they cared.

We were in our room around 04:30 pm and they called us for a special function at 06:30 in the common grounds. This gave us an opportunity to walk through the hotel as well, which we were planning to do the next morning anyway. We got ready to reach the venue and before that we went on a round to this hotel so as to see where all to click pictures the next day. 😊. Finally, when we reached the venue, we were served hot beverage and snacks. While we enjoyed the puppet show and music and dance show, we ate a lot of snacks. While returning to the room, we covered a lot of indoor areas. We were so full that we skipped dinner and went off to our room, packed and slept. The next morning, we covered what was left of the hotel and finally struck with a surprise that the direct route to airport is closed and we have to follow the indirect route which is 20 kms longer. So we called an Auto, the most convenient mode of transport in and around Jaisalmer and travelled the whole way within 30 minutes to reach the airport just on time and catch our flight to Surat, where there was a break of 4 hours, following which we reached Hyderabad, where our home is. In all, the trip was worth remembering and we enjoyed every bit of it.

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Day 1: Jaisalmer (Golden city)

Rajasthan trip is my first blogpost because of 2 reasons :

1.       It was my last trip before COVID-19. I have not travelled anywhere since. The maximum distance I have gone away from my home is 10 km.

2.       Jaisalmer: I have had done 2 trips to Rajasthan earlier, but I never went to Jaisalmer. Therefore, there was a separate kind of excitement to see the Thar desert.

In the morning, we took off from Jodhpur – Railway station was lit in Blue. We had a 1st AC with cabin booked for this trip and we intended to enjoy our trip through the deserts. We clicked some pictures on the way while the journey ended pretty soon. We were in Jaisalmer in 5 hours, which seemed like 2-3 hours to us. We were excited to stay in the hotel that we had selected ad it was a heritage hotel by Marriott, “Jaisalmer Marriott Resort and Spa” and we chose to spend our loyalty points here and boy was it the best decision of the trip.

We had a super warm welcome in Marriott with hot tea and pakoris. We were given a wrong room at first as we had specially requested for the Fort view room, which we got changed later. Nevertheless, this room was also not too bad since we were hardly going to be there on the first day in the room. The reason for this was the safari that was planned and prepaid ahead of us. I will post a picture of room, just to let the readers relate. We had selected this hotel, owing to its proximity to airport, or at least that’s what we thought (Another surprise awaiting on the last day of the trip).

After we had our snacks, we were able to do a hour early check in. This was much needed as we were exhausted of the journey and had to be ready for upcoming safari. We ate and rested for around 3 hours before we started to get ready. After a small mix-up in terms of the taxi that was suppose to pick us up, we finally left our hotel at 03:20 pm and we reached Kanoi in about 1.5 hours, sams dunes area to begin our safari and entertainment for the rest of the evening.  On the way, we saw a lot of windmills. In india, this is one of those few places where there is a flurry of windmills.

We had booked our Safari with the “Rajputana Desert camp” and it was well organized and they quickly cleared the communication among them and we were on our way to desert ride on Camels. We spent around 50 minutes on Camel riding and 1 hour clicking pictures of the sunset in desert before we moved back (again on camel) to the destination of Rajputana Desert camp. By the time we were at the camp, it was already dark and the entertainment ground ahead awaited us. Here we sat on ground mats while ahead of us, were several performances of music and Dance, in pure Rajasthani style. Once the performances were almost over, our driver came and asked us to use the opportunity to have dinner before rush comes in and so we obliged and were on our way back to hotel. We were at our hotel around 09:30 pm (40 minutes while traveling back). We had a night tea and crashed within an hour. This day was fully exhaustive and eventful. We had a very few places to visit the next day and so the plan was pretty smooth. After a train, Taxi , Jeep and Camel journey, we were on our dream journey 😊

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Train journey to Jaisalmer

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Day 2: Jodhpur - Fort day

This day encapsulated in few words – Food, fort, fun surprise, concert and laal maas.

In our vegetarian trip there were few pulses of Non vegetarian enjoyment and they were the best. Although we decided to go out at 09:30 the next day, we ended up leaving our hotel at 10:30. We headed straight to mehrangarh fort and museum. We donned the Rajasthani Avtar once again for this day. As we entered this huge fort, we went upslope and downslope to see multiple exquisite locations which we liked and clicked a lot of pictures. The palace in itself is already good, then comes the city top view, cannon roundup, terrace garden, some musicians playing 90’s Bollywood songs. We spent around 2.5 hours in the palace to enjoy all there is when we also decided to see the last segment of the palace where the last rituals of the kings are done – “Jaswant Thada”. As we reached the place, we had some sandwiches from a pantry inside sitting by the lake. We clicked few pictures in the palace and rest of them with the far end umaid bhawan view and city view. After pending an hour here, we traveled to another popular place deep inside the city – “Toorji Ka Jalra Bavdi”. This is anciently known as staircase well and bath place for queens.

There were some fantastic pictures we got to click here before we went to clock tower and did some window shopping. By around 05:30 in the evening, we were back at our hotel. We had satisfactorily covered all there is to cover in Jodhpur. Although, our further travel was still a question as we were on waiting list for our further journey to Jaisalmer where almost everything was pre-booked and prepaid.

We got in touch with a number of travel agencies to get us there via Car and almost finalized on a vendor when around 07:00, the WL moved and our tickets got confirmed in 1st AC and we cancelled our WL tickets for 3rd AC. Now This WL was even after booking the train tickets 45 days in advance of the trip. Now that we were relieved of our travel the next morning, we packed our bags, put the electronics on charging and went down to the hotel restaurant – “Nuovo Taashi” to have our dinner.

We were pleasantly surprised with a concert night, laal mass and fire pits in the area with dim lighting. We ordered “Laal maas with Tandoori roti”, which came at first as semi cooked and we had to send it back, but when it finally came, it was as delicious as was the one from “Spice Garden” in Jaipur. We tucked ourselves to compensate for morning travel as well and went by the firepit in front of this amazing band playing all kinds of sufi songs and spent around 2 hours listening to them and enjoying.

Once we were tired, we went back to our room and crashed. We had a 05:30 morning train to catch in morning.

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Jodhpur: Blue city @Nuovotaashi

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Day 1: Jodhpur - Blue city

With the satisfied trip in Jaipur “Pink city” as was the railway station illuminated at night, when we reached the station at night – in pink light. We had a 2AC booked on side birth which helped us keep our privacy.

We enjoyed our travel while eating Gajak and other eatables, we kept by our side to reach Jodhpur after traveling for approx. 6 hours. On Arrival, we progressed to our booked resort, Karni Bhawan. There was a lot of demand during the time for hotels and resorts and luckily we got a clean and tidy place to spend our next 2 days. Major means of transport in and around Jodhpur was open Auto rikshaws and so we took an auto rikshaw to reach our destination. Rooms were pretty ordinary in the resort. The outdoor café and reception made the place worthwhile. We chose among the two available options of rooms to stay in. We preferred the one away from the pool. There were a couple of reasons for this.

The room by the pool was too secluded and there was a high chance of getting unwanted mosquito bites there. Finally, we settled down in our room and took a good rest after having breakfast to refresh ourselves. Since we wanted to keep our day light and the nearest place to our stay was Umaid bhawan, we decided on taking a 10-minute drive to umaid bhawan palace, also known for Taj Umaid bhawan, the host of multiple Bollywood films and royal parties. We spent around an hour looking at the grandeur of the place before we were hungry again to go to market to have some popular snacks of Jodhpur.

Here on, we took another drive for 15 minutes to reach Janta sweets, where we had a couple of pyaaz kachori’s and the best jalebi in our lives so far. The Jalebi was so thin and crispy that we ended up ordering twice and ate it all until we were full and wandered the markets for some time. We saw some really unique stuff like the rocket auto (pictures below), women with traditional Rajasthani attire, etc. In all, we realized that there is not much of a market to spend time in since most of it we had already seen in Jaipur.

Now was the point when we wanted to go for another researched place for jodhpur Thali, popular for its Thalis – “ Jodhpur sweets”. The place is so popular that all the tables get filled up in a matter of 15 minutes as it opens at 06:30 pm in the evening. We were as punctual as we entered the place at 06:28 pm and took our preferred place of seating as we saw people pouring in and taking the empty seats. So much so the whole restaurant was like a beehive within 5 minutes.

The dishes started poring in, 5 types of sides, 4 types of halwas, some gujarati snacks, daal baati churma, daal papad (our first since we arrived in rajasthan), and 3 types of rice among other popular Rajasthani sweets. Despite us being full from our afternoon snack at Janta sweets, we spent 90 minutes eating and enjoying the whole experience. By the time we finished, it was really hard to get up and walk, so we rested for 5 minutes before we had our final paan and took an auto back to our place of stay “ Karni Bhawan”.

We were back as early as 08:15 pm with nothing to do, saw TV for some time, planned for next day and slept like a log.

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Day 1: Jodhpur

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Day 5: Museum and food

Fifth and last day in Jaipur, and it was about shopping and museum 😊

Since we had an early dinner and we left late after packing because we had a night train to Jodhpur, we were hungry and we went to the popular place, “Gulab ji Chai wale”, to have bun maska and pyaaz kachori with of course Chai.

We had decided to see the Albert Hall Museum and we liked some portions of the museum like ancient mummy which we saw only in New York before this. More then the time we spent inside, we spent outside it playing with huge number of pigeons, sitting by. (Pictures below)

After spending around 75 minutes, we completed a small stretch of walk to enter the markets and as soon as we did, we had a refreshing kulhar of Lassi from “Lassi waala” – Literally. (Pictures below)

We spent the remaining day shopping around all the popular Jaipur stuff like indigo clothing, women’s jewellery, mens kurta, Jaipuri jutti, et cetera. Finally, we travelled back to hotel to rest before taking the morning train and we purchased Gajak on our way back, enough to munch during the travel to Jodhpur.

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@Srimoturamprasadam

After a hectic day and completely drained of energy, we stumbled upon a not-so-up-to-the-mark franchise. Since, this was our first time to Sri moturam prasadam, our hopes of having good food shrunk. More or less, we consoled ourselves and booked another UBER to reach the flagship restaurant. It took 20 extremely long minutes to reach there. By around 07:30 pm – still daylight, fully exhausted, we entered the restaurant. It finished as soon as it started, there were around 8-9 tables around each with a 4-seater capacity. This was the point from where everything went our way.

· We were welcomed with tilak and pooja – truly atithi devobhava / Padharo maro desh

· Served with hot and refreshing tea in kullhars

· 2 Thalis of Dal baati churma “Authentic and every Vegetarian Rajasthani flavor there is”

· Fantastic hospitality by host – detailed chat session while he gave us special attention

We were really happy at the end of it. It was a delicious plate of food with a satisfaction to have beaten the challenge from the owner. Challenge was that no one can completely finish 1 thali, there is always some left. We were so full that we decided to walk a partial way. Once we were tired, we took an uber and reached our hotel, and relaxed for the day. We were also happy that we have covered most of it and now, all that is left is shopping, which was left out because of lockdown on Day 3. So, the plan for Day 5 was already made and we had selected our breakfast point already. With that, we relaxed at our hotel and prepared for the next day. This day we again met Chetan Bhagat in the lift lobby, while coming back.

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Day 4: Forts worth it

Fourth day, the busiest day, hungry day, efficient day, tiring day. Our cab was booked at 09:30 am and we left our hotel right on time. In Jaipur, Ola-taxi provides you flexibility to select a day trip which includes traveling to the forts and back within a day. It is one of the most comfortable and economic modes of traveling in and around Jaipur, even better than the taxi stands or travel agents.

We reached our 1st destination – “Amber fort” after travel for nearly an hour. Purchased the required tickets and entered a grand verandah paving way to enter the main palace. There was an option of traveling on elephants from 3 kms before the entry gate which we left to save time and reached just in front of gate on taxi itself. This palace is the most beautiful and ancient out of the three in line. We spent a lot of time here and enjoyed all picturesque views. After spending around 2 hours and getting compliments on our attire from a couple of Hungarian people, we descended to the parking area to hop on the cab to go to next destination – “Jaigarh fort”.

While coming out of amber fort, there was a side way to travel by foot to Jaigarh fort and it would have been upslope walk on an unmaintained trek. It was one of the best decisions to not go there by foot and take the taxi we already had. This gave us time to rest, protect ourselves from exhausting and most of all, after putting all that effort to see the worst of all three palaces. Even though strategically, this fort holds its importance on the war front, it was not picturesque at all. It was like a plateau with India’s biggest cannon at the top. We spent a whole lot of 20 minutes in this fort before we started our journey to “Nahargarh fort”, which is also known as “Rang de Basanti fort” – named after a famous Bollywood film.

On the way to Nahargarh fort, we stopped by a bridge to enjoy the view of Jal mahal Palace from up the hill and click some pictures. We continued to Nahargarh fort to find ourselves 2 school groups ahead of us in the ticket line. They were courteous enough to let us take the tickets and move inside that saved a lot of time for us. This was the first place where we enjoyed puppet show in Rajasthan since the start of trip. Soon after we went to the well which was famous because of the before-mentioned reason of Bollywood film. We took a long stroll of the boundary of this fort to find ourselves the edge of cliff and clicked few good pictures there and walked back to board our taxi following the complete boundary view of this fort. By this time, we were famished. We headed to hotel to take a small break, freshen ourselves and get ready to eat.

Per our research before traveling, Sri Moturam Prasadam was one of a kind, vegetarian restaurant which serves good stomach-full food. But our hunger was far from quenched. As we reached and seated at Jawahar circle restaurant, we realized, it was just a franchise and did not serve the same food as was served by the flagship restaurant. By this time, we had also left our Ola Taxi. We were in no mood to compromise on one meal we were having this day and so, we boarded another taxi and took our way to flagship restaurant and it was all worth it. Incidentally, the flagship restaurant was much nearer to our hotel.

I will write another special post for Sri moturam prasadam after this one as this post will not do justice to the whole day.

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Day 3: Surprise Lockdown

The Third day came with surprises, but this was the day which turned out to be most fruitful. The day started with the news of lockdown due to political protest in Jaipur (being state-capital). Incidentally, Ola- Auto was the only transport option available for us to go to market for a day planned for shopping (Altered plan, since Ola-taxi was not operational to go to see forts in Jaipur – more details on Ola Taxi in Day 4).

The affected parties were not only transport, but the routes were blocked too. What should have taken us 20 minutes to reach destination, took more than an hour. What would have taken around 100 bucks to travel took 200, driver asked for more as he had to take a really long route after we got stuck in the usual one. In the end, he left us at a place in Bazaar and to our surprise, even the market was closed. We had nowhere to go. We did not want to go back to hotel without any purpose for the day. We decided on trying our luck with a popular eating place – “Spice Garden” which was popular around “Laal Maas” – Red mutton. Our luck favored us and we got to eat it. It was an open garden place with a good feel and royal look. We enjoyed our brunch and headed back to hotel.

In Hotel, having nothing to do, we decided on exploring the same and ended up by the pool for an afternoon nap and a photo session of pigeons by the pool. In the evening, we finalized our plan for the next day with Ola Taxi to see all the three famous forts of Jaipur. We packed our bags for the next day, picked the necessary items, charged electronics and ourselves.

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