Transcendental Meditation Travelogue
Transcendental Meditation is such a great thing for travel. You can do it anywhere. In airfield waiting lounges, on planes, all over the place. And you are feeling so fresh and clear afterwards.
For instance, this morning we meditated at the swimming pool of our Ajit Bhavan Palace resort in Jodhpur, one of the 20 places I am pleased I visited before I leave the planet.
I am ranking this place alongside my favorite spots in the world: the Canadian Rockies, Grundlesee in the the Austrian Lake district, Pokhara in the Nepalese Himalayas, Sun City, Bantry Bay, and the Kruger Park, oh, and Heavenly Mountain in Boone, North Carolina.
We are visiting Jodhpur in north-west India. Its in Rajasthan, the province of the rajas.. It is the second biggest town in Rajasthan and has many names including “Gateway to the Thar”, “The Blue City” and incredibly enough if you are a South African like me, “Sun City”. It gets very hot here from April.
Jodhpur Fort Meherangarh
With a population of about 1 million, Jodhpur is dominated by a huge menacing fort, Meherangarh, crouched on a pink ridge just to the west of the town centre. The fort was founded in 1459 and now houses a great museum with a world-class audio-guided tourist facility. We saw a dazzling royal collection of palanquins, howdahs, musical instruments, costumes and arms which gave us a feeling for the enormous depth of this culture. Hats off to the curators who had the vision to use this place to sustain Indian culture.
Jodhpur is an extraordinary city spread along the edge of the Great Thar desert, and yes, you guessed right, it gave its name to the riding trousers familiar to horse lovers.
Jodhpurs on doorman
It is a tangle of winding streets, and is built mostly of pink sandstone in a characteristic Cubist design. It smells of incense, rosewater and sewers, and sells everything from iPods to saffron. The people wear brightly coloured turbans and deep pink saris.
Its also feted for its antiques. It’s not walking country, as the pavements only appear to be maintained for few metres along storefronts. The term blue city comes from the blue paint utilised for buildings, particularly in the Brahmapuri hamlet area to the south of the fort. Blue is the brahmins color, gives a subjective coolness and is held to repel insects.
One of Jodhpur’s most colourful forefathers, Maharaja Umaid Singh built a superb 350 room castle, Umaid Bhavan Palace, in the 1930s. The palace overlooks our place, Ajit Bhavan, also built by him. He had RAF wings, founded Jodhpur airfield in 1924 and had global air traffic in here before Delhi. He was in our grandpas’ cohort, born in 1903. The airfield now homes squadrons of Indian Air Force Mig 29s and Sukhois which might be seen barreling out over the desert after their deafening roaring takeoffs. I even saw one landing with its braking chute from by vantage outside Umaid Palace gate.
Vicki raided a store called Divas today for cotton tops. Young Manchester-educated owner Basant is characteristic of the new blood of India and has opened 4 specialised shops already with an eCommerce website and will send you great handprints by DHL. His dad is into vedic science, and runs a type of ashram.
So what sort of exotic meditation destinations have you encountered?
Where was your best-ever meditation? Mine was on the 7th floor of a building in Sauer Street in Johannesburg in the old days, sitting with some steel merchants doing a meditation course!