From Mandu we took a bus to Jodhpur, the Blue City in Rajastan. The light blue color of the buildings (intended to repel mosquitos), narrow and windy streets in the old city(packed with motorbikes, tuk tuks, and people), cows and their dung everywhere really added to the charater of the place. 

The city is surrounded by a 10km long wall separating the old from the new parts of the city. The major attraction of the city is one of the largest forts in India, Mehrangarh Fort.  The fort is situated 400 feet above the city, and is filled with intricately decorated palaces and sprawling courtyards.  One beautiful courtyard, surrounded by viewing balconies for ladies, is still used to christen new Raj kings.  

We decided to have a romantic dinner at sunset on the roof of the fort. We were sad to hear from our tuk tuk driver, on our way up to dinner, that a local person had commited suicide that afternoon by jumping off one of the higher parts of the fort. We did not find out the reason why it happened; though India does have a problem with many heavily indebted farmers committing suicide so it's possible it was related.  Luckily we were not in the fort in the afternoon to witness such a tragic event. 

After a couple of days wandering around Jodhpur, we bused to a much smaller town called Jaisalmer. Jaisalmer is known as the Golden City, because of local sandstone used for the construction of its fort and most of the city's buildings. The fort looks like a giant sandcastle.  We visited the fort area, which hovers above the town, and spent time shopping and exploring. The detail in the fort buildings was again very impressive and it was nice to get to a smaller town to get away a little bit from India's big city dirtiness.

The next day Levi and I, plus our guide and three camels, treked to the edge of the nearby Thar Desert. Levi and I ended up walking most of the time, as riding camels without stirrups is quite painful (your legs just dangle). Camels do not seem to have the greatest reputation for being the friendliest of animals, but we really grew to appreciate them in the short time we were with them. They're very docile and relaxed, but have a few strange mannerisms. One being the way they project their tongue and tonsils out of their mouths like a huge bubble when looking for a female to mate. You have to see the video footage of it, if we can get it posted on youtube, it's unbelievable!

Anyways, we spent a beautiful mystical night sleeping out in the open on sand dunes under the bright moon sky. It was pretty spectacular. Wow does it ever get cold in the desert early in the morning! The temperature went from mid to high 30's to about 10 degrees celcius. It felt very refreshing though since we've been missing the cooler temperatures.

After our desert adventure we took an overnight train to the capital city of Rajastan (Jaipur) to make it in time for some festivals that were taking place over the weekend - Holi and the elephant festival.

*Side Note:  We do have two videos up on youtube.com.  One is of Rosanna hangliding in Rio and another is of a gorilla walking towards us.  Just search Rosanna Hanglides and that video plus my channel name should come up.  We will try to get a couple more up in the next week or so.