Rajasthan 2015 - Feb 8th - Day 5: Onwards to Jodhpur via Ajmer

To read the previous post, click HERE.

We left Jaipur behind us on the morning of 8th February. Although our official itinerary did mention that we would pass through Pushkar, our driver informed us that the latter place was only known for its industrious locals and India's only temple dedicated to Lord Brahma. We decided to give this place a slip, and bypassing the city, we directly proceeded to Ajmer.

What can I say about this place? It is an unique place for prayers. We reached it around eleven o'clock. Normally, cars are not permitted to traverse inside if the city, so our driver left us at a drop-off point. From there, we walked toward the burial and prayer site of the Khwaja past a hustling bustling market, made colourful by the shop-keepers selling colourful stationery, colourful clothes and scarves and caps and much more.

The entrance to the "dargah" of the Khwaja is a double gate affair. Once you are through both the gates (having left your shoes with some guys who will take care of them for a fee), you push through the crowds. There is no atmosphere of piety or quiet inside. There are hordes of pilgrims, workers, touts (who are willing to take you ahead of the queue for a quick dekho of the grave of the celebrated fakir) and many who will guide you to the different places within so that they can get a "fee" as well as take you to one of the many "charity organisations" that collect the money you blindly give in the name of the saint with the avowed intention of using it for preparing the food that is served free to the thousands who throng here and for other charitable purposes. Beware of these touts who look and talk like the genuine thing, but have no badges or IDs.

After the Ajmer visit, we proceeded onward to Jodhpur, which is a good distance away. Nothing much occurred to write about. The hotel we were lodged in at Jodhpur was outside the main city at a place called Marugarh. It was, in fact, a resort. Very unique and outstanding in design and architecture, they have spoiled it all be lending out the resort and the grounds for wedding functions. On the evening of our arrival, nearly 100 local guests dressed in finery were roaming the grounds, and many of them, we observed, were wearing heavy jewellery and being very ostentatious. We were assigned adjoining rooms on the first floor of one of the 2-storey residential comp. Rooms were nice. There was nothing for us to do as we had already fixed up our Jodhpur sight-seeing for when we returned to Jodhpur again after visiting Jaisalmer. We had dinner in the resort's uniquely designed restaurant in the company of many white guests from either Europe, Americas or Australia. They were clearly enjoying themselves, gorging on authentic Rajasthani food.

Here are a few memories of the Marugarh Resort:

Interesting, isn't it? That's all for now. Keep returning for more entries ... we still have to go to Jaisalmer, see the sights in Jodhpur, go to Ranakpur, Udaipur, Mt. Abu, etc.

Click HERE to read the next post. 

News from India

Life is hectic once again, now that I am in Mumbai! After a half-day's rest, recuperating from the difficult journey from KSA to India, I was back on my toes from Monday morning. There is so much to do, and such little time to do it in! I was busy organising my files and receipts on the first morning, then checking all the books and documents that were sent to me by various peoples and organisations by snail mail. I was also busy inviting guests to join me in a small get-together in the coming week. The invitee list kept growing until we had touched 200! The so-called small get-together was no longer as small as I would have liked it to be, and we seemed to be forgetting so many people. By the time I finished inviting everyone by phone, it was past noon.

A visit to my mom was an important part of my agenda and it filled nearly 3 hours. I also had some official things to do, and it was nearly sundown when I reached the end of my to-do list (it was all in my mind). I made a few discoveries that were pleasant and a few that weren't. In the first list would be the fact that both my daughters are now quite independent. When my elder one arrived home, she brought with her several "thingies" for her new iPad Mini. She was so excited with the new pad that I have gifted her on her 24th birthday that she bought a new tempered glass cover, a new plastic cover, and some shiny, blingy stickers to put over her new possession. 

Hannah is busy with preparing for her board exams. She will, on passing this final exam, get her graduation in Bachelor of Management Studies (B. Com.). She is also looking to get recruited by companies, but hasn't found an employment as yet. 

In Mumbai, life is as usual. The last visit I made in February, I was able to travel down the Metro as well as the Eastern Freeway. One of the things I have not done so far is travelling on the other new transport system - the Monorail. 

Mumbai Monorail

Also pending is a visit to the Bandra Worli sea-link. Let me see if that occurs soon during this visit.

Bandra-Worli sea-link by day

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Reached India ...

The last week has been a bit hectic; there have been a few incidents that I would like to share, a few items of news and some other information. As I told you all in my previous entries, I started my leave within Al Muwayh last week itself; a few days later, I started organising my leave and its later repercussions. I finally completed all such tasks by Monday. On that day, I filled up an online application for a UK visa in preparation for my forthcoming visit to that country to attend a conference on Patient Safety and Quality in London from the 21st to the 24th of April 2015. I took an application appointment for their Jeddah office for the 19th of March. Accordingly, I packed my bags and left for Taif on the 18th. This time, the Ahle Saif Hotel had no rooms, so I took up a room in the hotel right opposite their hotel. It is called the Judur e Masief hotel. The Egyptian manager gave me a nice ground floor room for SR 70 per night. Initially, I did not know whether I would continue to stay in Taif or return to Al Muwayh for a night before going back to Jeddah for my flight to India on Saturday night.

In the event, I never did return to Al Muwayh. The Jeddah trip was a complete waste of time, money and effort. This was simply a center to accept a visa application, not to process or adjudicate on it. Hence, and also because they told me they would need my original passport to send it with my application to Riyadh where the UK embassy was located, I returned empty-handed. And wasted nearly 350 Riyals in the process. Afterwards, I called up the UK Immigration and Visa office (a premium call where you have to subscribe by credit card ... they charge you GBP 1.37 per minute!). They told me that there was no need to complete a business visit visa from the country of one's residence, and one could apply from anywhere else in the world. After this, I went ahead and applied once again, this time choosing Mumbai, India as my base station. And took an appointment for the coming Tuesday. Let us see how this goes ...

This time, I had booked my journey online through www.jetairways.com. They run flights from Jeddah to Mumbai ... however, the planes are not the big-sized ones but the usual Airbuses. Even so, I booked my journey with them. I reached Jeddah airport a bit early at around half past five in the evening for a journey that was still 7 hours away. I spent the next 3 hours going through my luggage and dumping a few old things like unwanted papers, old towels and such to bring the weight of my luggage down to less than 50 kg, of which the allowed luggage in the check-in category was 40 kg, while the cabin luggage allowance was 10 kg including the laptop bag. I exceeded both categories by up to 5 kg or so. The going rate for excess luggage was SR 76 per kg of excess. I pleaded with the check-in staff to forgo any penalties. And I succeeded.

Tragedy struck when information received by the onsite Jet Airways personnel confirmed that our flight would get delayed due to some technical problems.Initially, he led us to believe that the fault may get rectified and the flight might either be delayed by a few minutes to a maximum of 1 hour; an hour later, he had mellowed down and informed us that while the engineers were busy trying to rectify the malfunctioning part (he wouldn't tell us exactly what was the problem or which part had malfunctioned), they might have to wait for a suitable replacement part to arrive from their stock-facility in Doha by their next incoming flight, which was still 4 hours away. 

We resigned to various seats in the waiting areas. We tried to ask them to take us to a hotel, but they said that would be logistically impossible as our delay would not be for more than 5 hours at the most. 
We were waiting patiently for them to serve us dinner which they said they had requested to be sent for all the guests. What did arrive was adequate for the unforeseen emergency that had occurred. Our food packet had a large bread roll, rice, 3 chicken cutlets and a ladle-full of white beans. Adequate for the occasion. They finally boarded us a little before 4:00 a.m. as their local team managed to rectify the problem without awaiting the arrival of the new part from Abu Dhabi. They ran safety checks for quite some time, and once they were satisfied that everything was good, we took off at 5:00 a.m.

They served us breakfast on the flight. The facilities were quite mediocre, but the flight was event-free, barring some small instances of turbulence from the outside air. We touched down at Mumbai airport a few minutes before noon. 

They first sent zamzam water bottles and small bags on the luggage carousel. The big bags started arriving at 1:00 p.m., and I reached home at half past two in the afternoon. Thus, I arrived home nearly 21 hours after I first started my journey at the King Abdul Aziz International Airport at Jeddah on the previous evening.