The night had been extremely windy and we could hear sand thrashing against the tent walls. We woke up to half of our tent buried under the sand in the wee hours of the morning. The landscape looked a bit different from the previous evening, like as if the dunes had moved around a bit (there was a smallish dune behind our tent too, with some of it burying it!) It then dawned on us that what the camel herder was talking about the previous evening was not some banter, but fact: that in the desert, the dunes move because of the wind, and they usually tend to cover anything in the landscape that is static; The trees and shrubs would disappear and so would the roads and paths. Lesson learnt: Trust local knowledge!
We were in for another surprise. Clouds! we missed the sunrise, but the clouds made the patterns on the Great Thar a visual treat. Since it was windy, packing our sleeping bags were quite fun. What we loved the most was running on the dunes, it feels like heaven to the tired feet. Natural reflexology I guess!
The camels that were not tied down had disappeared, probably gone grazing. The camel herder took the younger ones to trace the others and came back with the whole herd including our rides Mr. India and Michael Jackson. We climbed on our camels, to head back to the road where the jeep would pick us up and drop us back to the hotel. Mr.India was still in the grazing mood and decided to get a juicy flower from a Cacti shrub which was on the downhill incline of a dune.
The camel herder had instructed me to knock the camel with my heel to keep him on course. I had forgotten to do that until now and decided to try. What happened next felt like a roller coaster ride. Mr.India took off in full speed downhill. I got thrown about and it felt like any minute now I would land on the camel’s head and then land on my head on the dune to be kicked by the camel for kicking him. These docile looking animals can run on the sand and how! they are not called ‘Ship of the Desert’ for nothing!
An hour’s journey later we got to the waiting jeep that ferried us back to the hotel, where the Jaisalmer fort on the Trikuta hill beckoned. The hotel that we were stayed was outside the fort, which was a conscious decision. We did not want to contribute to the fragile ramparts of the fort that were already sagging into the hill due to the ancient drainage systems that are still in use. We try to do our bit 🙂
The plan for the day was to visit some places inside the yellow sandstone fort and take a tour of the fort itself. I will not venture into describing the history or the architecture, since all of it is very well documented and an internet search will probably provide the same information that I might write in here. But some experiences are worth recounting.
We learnt on this trip (and follow on every trip that we have been on after this) is that we are better off with a guide to walk us through the usual tourist spots rather than looking around on our own. The point is, they are usually local, know the local history, stories and legends which makes our visits to such places more interesting. For most of the guides, this is their daily bread and they do their best to make sure that the narration is entertaining. Their fee is quite nominal as well (anywhere between 50-200 Rs.) Tip: Archeological Survey of India usually has designated guides in almost all heritage sites. You could check for the ID. But this does not mean that the private ones are not on par, just that they might not adhere to the fee that the govt. has set.
We visited the 12th century Jain temple, the palaces of the King and the Queen, palaces of the merchants – Salim Singh Ki Haveli and Patwaon ki Haveli. In all of these monuments, a common feature was the the chiselled stone windows in these monuments with minute orifices which act like an air conditioner. Due to this, the temperature inside these monuments are cooler (some even get breezy). The heat did not bother us there. The decor gave us an idea of the of the grandiosity of the people who lived there in the past. The palaces are extremely well planned – for instance, there was a specific place in the queen’s palace, which was one of the highest points in the fort, desert visible as far as eyes can see, from where she could wait for the King – returning from a war or from a treaty or from a hunt. The courtyard was visible from all the rooms within the palace, which means that the queen and all the women in the palace could watch all the proceedings/festivities that happened in the courtyard without being seen.
All high points in fort had cannons and probably would have been absolutely impossible for an enemy to sneak past unseen – such was the view. We walked inside the fort quite in awe since this was our history and no history books in school describe such splendor of the Marwars (the northern part of Rajasthan)
Walking through the fort we crossed several small shops selling local crafts. Jaisalmer is famous for its Banithani or miniature paintings. Our guide took us to a local artist, whose family has been painting for generations. As we finalized the painting we were to buy, we requested the artist to pack the painting in a hardcover so as to preserve it well over the next 10 days, since we were riding on a bullet from Delhi to Bangalore. He seemed pretty excited to hear this and said that he loved riding too. But his parents were very scared and so he had to lie about his riding, but managed to do a few rides down to Ramdeora, Udaipur and Bikaner. He would do that by parking the bike at a friend’s place during the night and start the ride next morning from there, after telling his parents that he was travelling by bus. heh! He was so happy that he found someone who could understand his joy for riding, he offered us a signed Banithani painting as a gift along with the one we had bought! He insisted that he would come over to our hotel a bit later on in the evening to drop these off, since he wanted to see the bike we were travelling on 🙂
We got back to the hotel for lunch and realized that the bike was punctured and had to get it fixed before the shops closed for the day. Due to this, we couldn’t go anywhere else around Jaisalmer. I took the time to catch up on some sleep and pack the dried clothes (we had washed some clothes and hung it to dry on a temporary clothesline we put up in the room)
Abhi: Just adding here, that I met a local who was very intersted in travel and motorcycles. He had a small motorcycle which he’d ridden to many places around Jaisalmer and hoped to go farther one day. He helped me out with finding a guy to fix my tyre. We bought some paintings from him, which I hope to frame some day. The tyre shop guy didn’t do a good job the first time around and had to open up the tyre to do it all over again. Having some company while fixing the motorcycle sure made the job little less boring.
The Rajasthani dinner was at the terrace of the hotel with the view of beautifully lit up fort walls. Looking at the fort, we wondered at the sight the fort would have made to someone on the outside centuries ago – the walls lit by fire-torches would have been intimidating and beautiful at the same time. It was an unforgettable magical sight and a fitting end to the night.
