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Today was our first day in Jaisalmer, a desert city in the northwest of India close to the Pakistani border. Its a city where everything is made of sandstone, basically because everything around it is sand.
Sleeping in the Desert
K.thambi2006-01-06 14:04:02
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Today was our first day in Jaisalmer, a desert city in the northwest of India close to the Pakistani border. Its a city where everything is made of sandstone, basically because everything around it is sand.
Our main reason for visiting Jaisalmer was to wander the desert on a camel and then spend a night sleeping under the desert sky.
The first task for the day was to find a travel agent to book a desert tour with. The first guy we talked to seemed really dodgy so we told him that we'd think about it and come back in an hour if we were interested. However, we managed to find a more trustworthy guy and so booked with him. This caused some problems later in the day unfortunately (see below).
We then wandered through the desert fort - a walled fort made of sand with lots of sand buildings inside. Unfortunately thanks to tourism the inside of the fort was packed with shopkeepers harassing you to buy their wares, so it wasn't very emotive. We did manage to see some cool looking Jain temples (Jainism is a minor religion in India) which had lots of intricate carvings of goodness knows what.
After a tasty lunch of praathas, mutton and spinach curry and butter chicken, we wandered over to the travel agent to commence our desert tour.
The tour guy had overbooked his tour, so we had to try and squeeze 7 people into a landrover that only fit 5. Thus one guy rode in the boot while Melenie sat on my lap in the front in a fairly contorted and uncomfotable position.
Enroute to the desert we saw a number of Rajasthani villages. Lots of rather poor people whom we felt sorry for, especially because rich tourists frequently stopped at these villages to gawk at them. Many of them asked for money but alas we were counseled not to give them anything.
We also stopped at another Jain temple which was moderately interesting. However, even
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See photographs from:
India Gallery
