Jaisalmer and Thar Camel Safari

 Part of the fort walls.

 Through the outer wall.

 Amateur musicians.

 Leading up to the entrance gate.

 Streets in the labyrinth. 

 The Indian Swastika.

 Indian tourists.

 Another camel safari.

 Our camp for the night in the Thar desert.

Sunday, March 25^th.

I woke up with the wind blowing lightly threw my room and the sound of traffic and horns in the distance and pigeons on my roof. I had breakfast with the other Intrepid group and then set out to explore. 

I walked around the outer perimeter wall as far as I could and then ventured into the maze of the town. There are 5000 people living in this fort and 100 000 in the city outside. It is the only residential fort in India, meaning that people still live inside the walls. A lot of those people are involved in the tourist trade as there are mini hotels and guesthouses, restaurants and shops selling all sorts of beautiful things.

I visited the magnificent Jain temples (see next post). There are five in all and they are all interconnected. Really beautiful and the amount of work and detail in the carvings is mind boggling. 

After that I decided to go for a walk around the outside wall of the whole complex and see my room from there. On the way out I found a plaque that said:

This massive fort named after the Bhati ruler Maharawal Jaisal, is also known as Golden Fort, because the fort and residental buildings are all made of yellow sandstone. The fortification wall is about 5 km in circumference, 2-3 metres thick and is strengthened by 99 bastions. The main fort has two walls running parallel with a variable gap of 2-4 metres in between, known as mori, and used for the movement of the security guards around the fort…. The foundation of the fort was laid on Trikuta Hill by Maharawal Jaisal in 1156 and it took seven years to complete. In the course of hundreds of years a number of additions were made to the fort… In the 1700’s people started coming from the old town and building houses in the fort. Today, the main focus is on preservation and restoration.

After walking the circumference, I wandered around the inside again and visited the highest point of the fort wall, where the oldest cannon is still in position, to get a view of the city. I also visited the Fort Palace but I didn’t have enough time to do it justice, so I will do it tomorrow.

I came back and had lunch at Deepak’s with the new Intrepid group that I am going to travel with at 3:30. There I met Varsha, the tour leader, who is a friend of my other tour leader Prerna.

I spent the mid part of the afternoon in my room hiding from the 38-degree dry heat. Then we all met in the lobby and walked to the parking area just outside the gate, loaded up in two vehicles and drove for an hour out into the Thar Desert and towards the Pakistan border and our camels. When we got there we all climbed aboard our camel, which is a weird sensation as you have to lean back as it camel stands on its front legs first, and then when it stands on its rear legs it pitches you forward. We set off in caravan fashion towards our basic camp for the night. Most of the ride was somewhat disappointing as compared to the Sahara. We were not walking on dunes, but past a large number of wind turbines and electricity towers, as they generate the city’s electricity out here (seems odd to me that they don’t do it with solar panels). But, after an hour we reached the sand dunes where we stayed for the night. The sand dune area in this region is only about a square kilometre, the rest is dry scrubland. When we got there they gave us a cup of hot masala chai, when I would have preferred a cold bottle of water. 

We hung around for a bit talking and then walked up a sand dune to watch the sunset, after which we returned to camp for dinner. It was a chipata served with four different little bowls of food. After dinner drinks were served and I had two large Kingfisher beer over the course of the evening. I sat and talked to an English woman about my age, who I had overheard say that she had worked in Ghana. So, we started talking about her experiences there.

At bed time, I had my cot moved about 50 metres from the rest of the group, who were altogether, and lay down under the half moon and stars. I watched the sky, absorbed the atmosphere and listened to a Moonrise album and Moonmadness by Camel, both of which seemed appropriate, and drifted off to sleep.