India Day 8: Jodhpur

The blue city has a certain charm about it. Small and self contained, like a blue bubble, its people going about their business.

Colours are more saturated here. Life, a dizzying balance between survival and joy. At the entrance of the blue city is the Ghantaghar Clock Tower, surrounded by a market. Here, a woman sells her sarees while her child plays innocently. She lays her sarees on a big blanket on the ground. At night she rolls them away and bundles herself and the little girl to sleep on that blanket on the ground.

As we leave, dragging my mom's luggage over the cobblestones, we pass her. She greets us and we tell her we're going back. She waves goodbye, her full broad smile showing the gaps in her missing teeth. In the five times we walked past her, once she was asleep, the rest a beacon of joy. I don't know her story, her pain, sorrow or struggle. I never saw despair or bitterness in her eyes, only joy. Always smiling with a trill in her voice calling out to us as Bob and I approached. I dared not take a picture of her. I was too shy. Something twisted in me seeing her there. To be a voyeur of her sitting on the ground seemed offensive, but I regret now not having captured her spirit.

The train back to New Delhi will be our longest one yet, so we settled ourselves in as comfy as we could. Bob reading the Harry Potter play, me Rowling's non-Potter novel. Somewhere along the way we got a cabinmate, fluent in English, lived and worked in Vietnam and Myanmar sourcing furniture, from Rishikesh, the reason Bob and I bought tickets to India in the first place! He's advised us to visit the botanical gardens in New Delhi, picture perfect, says he.

On another note, the lunch we ordered didn't arrive. When ordering lunch off of the railway website, be advised to choose to pay upon delivery and not by credit card on the website. Fortunately, someone from on the train came taking orders. We took our chances and have not got any stomach cramps yet.