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A Maharini’s secret garden

Juliet Nicolson

Wednesday, 15th October 2008

Juliet Nicholson on Jodphur

After flying to Rajasthan with a woman’s big toe wedged halfway up my nose, I was delighted to find some relief from the claustrophobic intimacy of the night flight. Our heritage hotel, the Balsamand Lake Palace, once the Maharajah’s summer residence, was a peaceful mile away from the entrancing but hectic beauty of Jodhpur’s city centre.

From the red sandstone tea pavilion that overlooks the private lake, I watched a long-nosed heron’s slow dive towards the murky water. Kneeling on the rickety swimming platform and deep in concentration, a small boy was cleaning his teeth. The Maharajah had moved out many years earlier, leaving behind him heads of noble beasts pinioned to the walls jostling for space with portraits of the families that had shot them. Silent but smiley, joke-twirley, moustachioed and turbanned staff hovered about, anxious to do anything to please, from seeking out a springier mattress for the bed to chasing away a noisy peacock whose screech was disturbing the peace of our strawberry lassi breakfast.

As our taxi nudged its way into Jodhpur, through streets packed with elephants decorated in neon-painted flowers, and around the supermodel legs of the straw-laden camels, we passed the gates to the local army garrison, a reminder of the threatening proximity of Pakistan.

The colossal pinkish-grey fort of Meherangarh sits high on the hill above the city. Enemy elephants had once thundered towards the seven wooden gates each as thick as a wrestler’s thigh, only to be thwarted by the sudden hairpin turn that could bring thousands of tons of animal power crashing to a halt. With the desert stretching into the distance, the gleaming wedding-cake crematorium was visible from one side of the fort, while on the other side a pool of brilliant Venetian-blue buildings lapped at the foot of the hill.

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