Jaisalmer – Castles in the Sand

JANUARY 2012

No tour of Rajasthan would, or at least should, be complete without a visit to Jaisalmer. No, I’d never heard of it either but somehow it had worked it’s way onto our itinerary, and our itinerary was all the better for it.

It was a four hour drive from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer, a further 300km west, on the edge of the Great Thar Desert. There was military airport but when we visited in 2012 no commercial flights, so flying wasn’t an option; and the train times just did not work in our favour. And so we set off with a rather surly young feller who appeared to speak no English. Half-way through the journey he pulled over into a roadside fuel stop – you couldn’t really call it a petrol station – removed our baggage from the boot and gestured for us to get out. We never did find out why but he then disappeared. And we were transferred to the altogether more charming Mr Singh to resume our journey. I’d like to say I wasn’t anxious at the time, but…

Upon arrival in Jaisalmer Mr Singh transported us up into the fort and the Hotel Garh Jaisal. And while Ratan Vilas in Jodhpur was heritage-and-interesting this place was heritage-and-just-plain-gorgeous. 

Mind you there was, and probably still is, a price to pay, and we’re not talking dollars. According to the Lonely Planet, Jaisalmer Fort is slowly self-destructing as the drainage system is now required to cope with twelve times the volume it was originally designed for, and three of the ninety-nine bastions that support the structure have collapsed since 1993 – there was a noticeable landslip right outside our hotel room window. The Lonely Planet did not advocate staying there and refused to list any of the hotels and guest-houses within the fort. So there was a moral dilemma which we had inadvertently side-stepped due to ignorance of the problem at the time of booking. That was my excuse anyway.

On a brighter note the Lonely Planet described Jaisalmer as a giant sandcastle and in that respect they weren’t wrong. Everything is built out of the local sandstone; beautiful honeycombed structures which contrast the grandiose scale of the fort and the intricate finishing of the palaces and havelis. Everywhere we looked was picture perfect – providing of course we could turn a blind eye to the poverty, rubbish and sacred cow shit.

Once we’d settled into the Blue Sky Room of Hotel Garh Jaisal, complete with open window-seat overlooking the golden-hued town, we set off for a wander round the fort, home to some 3,000 people, several Jain templates, guest houses, cafes and innumerable shops and small businesses. And it truly was magical – far beyond my descriptive powers. We then headed down into the town for further wandering – down one particular street which we would end up wandering down so many times over the next few days that the ever-zealous shopkeepers began to ignore us. I guess that was one way to get them off your back – bore them to death.

We encountered a rather sardonic English feller who spent six months of each year working in the UK and six months travelling. And his line of work? Importing re-conditioned Vespas and Lambrettas from India to the UK. Mind you, he was rather cynical of his market: “…40 year old blokes having a mid-life crisis and doing the Quadrophenia thing…”. Er, yeah.

Dinner that evening was taken in the Saffron restaurant, on the rooftop of a heritage hotel in a gorgeous haveli in the town, with a spectacular view of the tastefully-lit fort rising into the night sly above us. 

The following day found us once again wandering around the fort poking around numerous nooks and crannies overlooked in our preliminary sortis, and sitting in the sun in the main square watching the world go by. There was a riot of life there, from the traders selling their stuff, the locals going about their daily business, crowds of western tour groups, crowds of Indian tourists enjoying Republic Day, and a huge group of boisterous local university students who seemed to like having their picture taken with any random foreigner. Including me. There was also a group of French travellers playing those Indian percussion instruments which reminded me of someone playing the spoons, and who had clearly been in India too long, with their Ghandi specs, wispy beards, semi-dreads, baggy pants, hand-rolled fags and general scuzziness. There seems to be something about India which compels people to go native so much more than other backpacker destinations. You don’t see backpackers in China wearing Manchu queues, granny pyjamas and Mao suits, but in India it’s bindi spots and baggy trousers galore.

The most notable of the havelis in Jaisalmer town is Patma-ki haveli, a five-storey honeycombed structure in a narrow alley, built in 1805 by a wealthy trader of the time. The restoration was a little odd: it was all cleaned and tidied up for the public to wander around but there was not a single item of furnishing or fixtures, and nothing to tell of its history. You were left in a grand but empty house to wander around and figure out for yourself what anything was. It came replete with a colony of sleeping bats lurking in a quiet staircase.

Shopping. Having been propositioned by just about every trader in town Sue had finally decided which one was worthy of our custom so we sat for an hour or so as they unfurled every variety of every fabric item our eyes rested upon for even a second until we’d finally settled upon a range of scarves that would address all gift requirements fro several years to come, and the kindly lady had made some repairs to Sue’s cheapo Indian pants. She even invited us to dinner at her house that evening – an invitation we’d have been thrilled to accept had we not been scheduled to hit the road again that afternoon. With hindsight, it might have been worth disrupting the planned itinerary to enjoy some true local hospitality. Instead there was time for one more thali, arguably the best of them all complete with free refills of everything for the princely sum of HKD 22 (£2), before we were squeezed into a jeep and driven out into the desert.

It was a dirty and dusty 45-minute drive to Damodra Desert Camp, a place recommended (or run?) by the hotel in Jaisalmer, and at first glance it was, well, a shit-hole. But we chose to reserve judgement until later as we immediately headed out on a camel safari – not something we’d normally sign up for but it was part of the package and subsequently turned out to be the highlight.

Camels are weird creatures. They just look odd. Lumps and bumps in all the wrong places. The way they sit is positively ungainly as they drop to their front knees and then everything else just seems to crumple up behind them. My beast, Rajat, was remarkably flatulent but as I was not downwind of his rear-end (Sue was) it wasn’t an issue for me. Sue’s beast, Peacock, brayed alarmingly whenever Sue had to mount or dismount. And while they’re renowned for carrying large volumes of water, they’re also capable of discharging similarly large volumes – their piss-breaks went on forever.

Once we were on board they ambled amiably along in a gentle if bumpy rhythm. And our camel-boy, Jackie, was a canner feller who walked alongside keeping the camels going in the right direction – and they did have a tendency to wander off wherever they saw fit. We wandered through some scrub for an hour until we came to the Sam Sand Dunes which, spectacular as they were, left me a little underwhelmed. My vision of a desert was one of endless sand dunes stretching away to the horizon, not vast swathes of scrub with the occasional sandy mound. That said, it was spectacular in its vastness, emptiness, silence and big, big sky.

Our man Jackie took us to a large and relatively peaceful dune to watch the sunset although it quickly became apparent that the sunset was not going to be as spectacular as we’d hoped. And even out there there was no escaping the poverty. From the middle of nowhere two truly beautiful wee girls appeared in all their traditional finery to dance for our rupees, closely followed by their father/manager/musical accompaniment. They should have been in school, or out playing, not singing for their supper. It was heart-breaking but what do you do? Give them money and perpetuate the situation? Or not give them money and send them home hungry?

Sod the sunset, we’d rather ride camels; so we got back in the saddle, navigated the other vastly overcrowded dunes, got the camels up to a trot, and then returned to the spot where Mr. Singh was waiting to pick us up. From where it was back to Damodra Desert Camp Poo Hole.

Dinner was served around a camp fire complete with musicians and dancers from the local village. Aside from our good selves there were two Indian families, and a British couple celebrating the feller’s 65^th birthday, whose presence managed to make the evening quite entertaining (he was once a roadie for Madness) but we were keen to sneak off to bed just as soon as we reasonably could.

Camping out in the vastness of the desert, with a camp fire, the peace and quiet, looking at the stars, all sounds wonderfully romantic. And it would have been except for one thing. It was bloody freezing. Late January in northern India is warm and sunny during the day, cool in the mornings and evenings. Most days had seen me in shorts and t-shirts; evenings in jeans and long sleeves. Hotel rooms came with heaters which had been liberally employed. Out there in the desert at night it must be down to three or four degrees and I’m afraid that we were just not built for that. All of which made the whole experience rather damned miserable. Had it been warm, the (very) basic facilities would have been more tolerable, even amusing. But in the cold, it was just grim.

And apparently I exacerbated the grimness by stealing all the blankets in the middle of the night. As soon as morning came we were on the move again, desperate for the sun to rise and warm us up again. Mr. Singh took us back to Jaisalmer to trade the jeep for a Tata Indigo and then we were off again. The lack of planes and trains had left us relying on cars for the 570km, 8-9 hour journey from Jaisalmer to Jaipur. Indian roads are poor and Indian drivers are insane beyond all known levels of insanity, but Mr. Singh managed it all as fast as he reasonably could without ever making us feel unsafe. 

Not that Sue would know. She slept most of the way. You’d think she hadn’t slept the night before or something.