From Hallie Morrison and Prakul Pottapu, 3rd Year Landscape Architecture Students:
Traveling from Philadelphia our 702 studio regrouped in Rajasthan’s “Blue City”, Jodhpur, where we toured the Mehrangarh Fort, stepwell, reservoir, markets and streets of the indigo-washed old city. We kicked off with a celebratory dinner at KP Haveli (historic home), which has the distinction of a prime location below the fort and is the heritage of Professor Anuradha Mathur’s paternal family.
Over the course of ten days we traveled from Jodhpur to our studio site at Tilwara and out to Barmer near the Indian border. In the outskirts of Jodhpur we toured vast sandstone quarries and skilled stone carvers, visited the Arna Jarna museum of the desert, and toured temples and gardens.
As we drove through the Thar desert we kept a lookout for sites that we had researched and scouted before the trip. Investigating and building narratives around Imprints and Crossings, we searched out protected orans and tankas (traditional methods of holding monsoon water).
With our local guide, Mr. Anil Sharma from Arna Jarna, we experienced local practices including pottery, woodblock printing, fabric dyeing, salt pit harvesting, and dung-and-mud construction. We had two memorable performances by local musicians—including an evening performance by the Langa musicians on a dune under the night sky, transported by camels and treated to a homecooked feast.
At Tilwara we explored the maidan of the seasonal Luni ‘river’, an inscribed ground that carries the imprints of seasonal travelers and behaviors. Here a fair dating back to the 1500s gathers every March bringing with it a lively market and many people, goods, and animals—including thousands of horses.
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