When are just getting off an overnight train from Jodhpur. The train is late and we reach Jaisalmer at 7:30 AM. Jaisalmer (known as "The Golden City") is in the heart of the Thar Desert. It certainly looks like a desert when we step off of the train. We take a rickshaw into town and you see where they came up with the "Golden City" stuff. Most of the buildings are a yellowy brown color. Chrissy and I had decided to splurge on our hotel in Jaisalmer so we have the rickshaw take us to this fancy historic hotel that we had pre-booked. The place is pretty cool with nice grounds and our room opens onto a nice courtyard that has a friendly pet tortoise living there. We are marginally disappointed with our room for the price we are paying but it's not bad. Neither of us got a solid night's sleep on the train (some dude was snoring really loud) so we crash in our room for a few hours and wake up again around noon.
After our nap we do a quick walk around town. This place is fantastic. Busy, winding streets full of people. A large fort looms up on the hill. There are cool looking shops everywhere selling leather goods and textiles (just what I need, more textile shops). We have lunch at a small restaurant that looks out onto the fort. More wandering after lunch and we end up in this textile shop run by some dude named Yogi. Yogi is quite the salesmen and forty-five minutes later we walk out with a bunch of stuff and promise to come back later if we need more textiles. Fantastic.
After getting taken in by Yogi, we head up to the fort. We had been told by the people at the hotel that this day was a special holiday in Jaisalmer. Today they had a Royal procession from the fort down to a lake on the outside of town. The Maharaja would be escorting an important Hindu idol from the fort down to the Gadisar Lake, which is on the outskirts of town. The whole town joins in. This turns out to be quite fun.
They had bands playing at the fort before the Maharaja came out.
We got pretty close to the Maharaja himself. And then we followed the Raj on his horse down to the lake.
This is the Mahraja's horse (and the dude who gets to hold onto him).
There was a good crowd. People were starring at us (or Chrissy mostly).
After the festivities, we headed back to our hotel to get some food. Our place had a pretty swanky restaurant on the roof. It was called "The Saffron". We got a good table and ordered some beers. Soon these two kids came out and started singing and playing local instruments. They were very good despite being really young. After a bit, the first two kids were joined by two men whom we assumed were the fathers and they brought four more kids. They are singing and dancing. One kid in particular is really talented. He was switching between an accordion, Castaneda’s, drums, and a harmonica. Chrissy gets up and dances with them.
The initial group of talented youngsters and Chrissy dancing the night away
The next day we go back to the fort, but this time to do the obligatory tour, complete with audio guide. Here is the low down on the Jaisalmer Fort:
· Built in 1156 AD by King Jaisal (get it, "Jaisal" hence Jaisalmer)
· It has 99 Bastions
· Oldest fort in the world with people still living inside (a good portion of the city lies inside of the fort)
· One of the 100 most endangered of world historic sites (I don't know who figures this out). This is because when the fort was built there was no plumbing for running water inside. Now there is running water everywhere and there is no accommodation for drainage so the water is eroding the fort. Big problem.
View of one side of the fort from the top of another section. Chrissy posing in a typical archway.
It was really enjoyable walking around the fort and the audio tour was quite good. I would say it didn't have the "wow" factor that the Jodhpur fort has, but maybe I am getting to be a fort snob. We do dinner that night at a nice restaurant in town close to the fort. We are one of only two couples in the place. After our meal we ask to see their tandoori oven. They take us back in the kitchen. This is a slightly modern restaurant, so their tandoori runs off of propane. Still cool. I need to get one of these.
The following day we do yet more shopping. We had been admiring all of the leather goods displayed outside the shops the past couple of days. Now we did a town wide search for the best of the best in leather goods. There are a ton of shops and we go into almost every one we see. We are looking at belts, shoes, bags, stuff that we don't know what it is. Chrissy gets particularly taken by a leather blanket of all things. It is made of leather rectangles, each of which is embroidered with a deferent shape or design. Next thing I know we are walking off through the streets with a shop owner to the guys house where he has most of his line of these leather blankets. Of course I know as soon as we head to this guys house we are buying one. Chrissy knows this too.
Chrissy trying to choose which leather blanket she wants
We spend over an hour at the dudes place. His whole family is there working on the blankets. We see women doing the embroidery and then watch men sew the pieces together. It is pretty cool. They serve us Indian marsala tea as Chrissy goes through the process of studying all the different blankets. During all this we learn that this family owns three different shops in various parts of town. In our tour of the leather shops (during which we had already bought a bunch of stuff) we had managed to only buy things from this families shops. The guy did say they have the best work in town. I guess Chrissy and I can spot quality leather goods. We buy a blanket. I think we funded this family for the next month, at least.
We had to rush to complete our leather purchases because late that afternoon we were off into the desert on a camel safari. This is the tourist attraction that Jaisalmer is most famous for. You ride camels off into the desert and can even camp out there in tents for a night or several nights. Chrissy and I had done some camel ridding in Egypt around the pyramids. Camels are very uncomfortable. My rear wasn't right for two weeks after the Egypt deal and that was only a couple of hours. Knowing this, Chrissy and I bailed on the overnight camel safari and decided to do only a day trip. We had organized this with an agent in town who got us a car and driver to take us out of town to where the camels are. It seemed kind of crazy, we just drove for forty-five minutes out of Jaisalmer and pulled over in the middle of no where to meet these two guys by the side of the road with camels. The guy in the car takes off and leaves us with the camel dudes. I can't help but think we are less than 100 KM from Pakistan at this point. The camel guys are really nice. We mount up and head into the desert. Chrissy and I each have our own camel. Our escorts are walking. Much better than Egypt. The saddles we are sitting in are fairly comfortable.
Saddling up on my trusty camel
Soon we can see sand dunes off to our left. We stroll along at a decent pace, watching desert mice run into their holes, and listen to our guide as he points out various plants and such. As we near the dunes some gypsies come up and want to do a dance for us. We decline per advice of our guide. Apparently they won't leave you alone if they think you will hook them up with some cash. We get into the dunes, still riding the camels. There are heaps of tourists here but they are almost all Indian tourists. The dunes are very picturesque. We dismount and walk around for a bit, leaving the guide behind and go sit on a dune to wait for the sun to set.
Chrissy on a dune
We lounge on a dune and play with these huge sand beetles that are running all over the place.
Go sand beetle go...
The sun sets and we ride our trusty camels back to the car. Our driver is waiting for us and we bid the camel dudes farewell. The safari was a good trip. Back in town we go back to the same restaurant as the night before (why mess with a good thing), then off to bed. We leave by car early in the morning heading to Udaipur.
- Bill