Up in the palace and down in the town

If the fort and palace at Jaisalmer has a fairy-tale quality, the Red Fort at Delhi the used look of a faded courtesan and Amber a tribal pride and roughness, then the fort at Jodhpur is an old warrior who has lost nothing of the ferocity that makes him feared.

Yes, I know it's indulgent to over-use metaphors, but what I want to say is that despite its age, despite its uselessness as a military fortification in the age of tanks and bombs, Jodhpur's Meherangarh Fort is still an imposing sight. Up and up and up it goes and you'd have to be mad or desparate to try to lay seige to it. Which Jodhpur's enemies probably were. Despite the determination of Meherangarh's would-be conquerers, the fort was never taken, as the museum's audio guide proudly informs visitors (although it neglects to mention agreements made by Maharjas between the Mughals and the the British that made a seige unnecessary to the would-be invaders).

Unlike the great palace in Delhi, of which huge chunks were destroyed by the British in 1857, the Jodhpur fort is most or less complete. And since the Maharajas of Jodhpur are a dynasty that is still very much alive, the huge rabbit warren (although pigeon or bat warren might be more accurate) has become something of a manument to a dynasty.

Visitors to the fort can choose to get there in comfort on rickshaw or even on elephant in the high season (there were no elephants around when we were there), but far more interesting is taking the chance to wander up to the fort through the old city. You'll possibly run the risk of heat stroke or getting invited to tea by any number of locals (everyone warns you to say no, so we did), but the winding narrow streets and srumble-jumble buildings of Jodhpur's blue city are fascinating to walk through. And the gradually changing view as we reached the top was superb.

Jodhpur got its monkier, the blue city, from the distinctive blue-washed buildings which are still a feature of it. Originally blue meant a high caste Brahman residence and the blue colour was thought to deter India's determined swarms of insects and keep houses cool. Now anyone may paint their house blue and from high up the colour is easily identifyible.

Further out and dramatically silhouetted against the horizon is the Umaid Bhawan Palace, which Maharaja Umaid Sing had built in 1929. But don't think, oh typical royal commissioning a monument to his own glory, the palace was commissioned to give employment to thousands badly affected by famine. While the world's economy crashed that year, three thousand workers in Jodhpur had paid employment on the palace. Today the maharaja's descendents live there while the rest of the palace is a grand hotel (which we did not stay in).

The construction of Umaid Bhawan was bad news for the fort. The Maharaja moved out of the old place and left it to bats and pigeons. When restoration work was begun in the 1970s, the first funds were raised by selling the palace's congealed bat droppings to farmers.

Meherangarh has one of the best museums I've yet seen at an Indian fort. It has a wonderful collection of Howdahs (which are elephant saddles) including one that was a gift from Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, a very fine collection of miniature paintings (many featuring past rulers of Jodhpur, of course) and also, rather more strangely, a room full of the silver plated cradles of small rajas in the making.

Much to my delight a former raja had hung the ceiling of one of his grand audience rooms with European Christmas balls - the British Raj shows its hand.

The outside of the palace is made up of carved panels or jali and it's hard to imagine how many workers it took to construct the palace.

Of course the rulers of Marwar (the kingdom Jodhpur was the chief city of) were extremely rich and powerful and as well as needing somewhere to house many relatives, many wives and all the rest, they needed a symbol of power; both enemies and subjects must have been awed by the spectacle of Meherangarh towering 100 feet above the cliffs.

Down in the town life is different and as you descend, the heat and smells and closeness of the city take over. Shopkeepers sit outside tiny stores, some with huge piles of spices and some with beautiful pyramids of traditional Indian sweets. Around the Sardar Market and clock tower are stalls with clothes, fruit, street food. We noticed as we wandered the old city that different trades still seem to be grouped in different areas and we found a street of sweetmeat sellers, a street of jewellers and groups of cooking utensil and basket stores.

It's possible to wander here for ages and getting lost is mandatory in a visit to Jodhpur.