Jaisalmer had been pending on my list for a very long time. I wanted to visit this place three years back during our Rajasthan trip, but then in the interest of time, we had to choose between Udaipur and Jaisalmer, and had to give up Jaisalmer.

Finally after we moved to Delhi, I got a chance to plan for a long weekend trip to Jaisalmer. I had never been to a desert so far and I was really eager to see how it looks like and how people there survive, and this trip helped me in providing clarity for my questions.

Jaisalmer took us around 16hrs by train from Delhi and it goes via Jaipur and Jodhpur. After crossing Jodhpur, the land started looking barren and deserted with a lot of sand and less vegetation. I am personally very fond of greenery, but for once in my life, I eagerly waited for the vegetation to end, to witness the actual desert as the train passed by. We finally reached Jaisalmer at around 11am. We booked our accommodation in a desert camp for that night, which is around 40kms away from the city. So, we planned to reach there by evening after covering all the attractions in Jaisalmer city/town.

As soon as we got down, we took an auto and reached the Jaisalmer fort. Though it was February, it felt extremely sunny and hot outside. One thing that cannot go unnoticed in Jaisalmer is the colour and stone used in the building constructions. All of them were built consistently using yellow sandstone, from where it got its name as “Golden city”. This kind of pattern was observed in Jaipur too with pink sand stone used in buildings, but it was restricted to only older parts of the city. But I see that there was a conscious effort done by the Jaisalmer municipality to use only yellow sand stone in all the latest constructions too, which should be really appreciated, and that made the city look very beautiful 🙂

We spent some time going around the Jaisalmer fort. Unlike other forts where they were only open for tourism purpose, there was a big colony within the Jaisalmer fort where lot of local people have been staying for centuries, and it looked very lively with lot of shops, houses etc. Due to heat, we couldn’t spend lot of time there.

We took a small break for having authentic Rajasthani lunch with our most favourite dish Dal Baati (this is also one of the reasons why we plan Rajasthan trips 😛 ). We had the authentic and the tastiest Dal Baati ever there.

After that, we headed to Gadisar lake, the only reservoir(man-made) of Jaisalmer with temples surrounding it. It felt so lively and beautiful witnessing a lot of birds coming there to quench their thirst and a lot of people coming there for selfies 😛

After visiting the lake, we moved on to visit Patwa Haweli (Palace). Patwa Hawelis are a cluster of five hawelis aligned in a narrow lane in the heart of the city, facing the Jaisalmer fort. Of the five hawelis, the first haweli in the lane is called the Kothari’s Patwa Haveli is open to visitors to experience the lifestyle of the erstwhile patwas (community of jewellery merchants in that region). The Haweli had an architecture full of great stone work.

We observed something interesting there. Inside haweli we felt cool, irrespective of the intense heat outside, and the reason that we got know is that, it is because of the usage of yellow sand stone in the construction, which is widely available in Jaisalmer region. That is one of the reasons behind people building those kind of houses. I was amazed at how nature provides us solution to our problems. We have a natural AC in the form of stone 🙂

 

Later, we started our journey to a desert camp located around 30kms from Jaislamer, where we decided to stay for the night. Finally, I could witness a desert kind of terrain on the way with lot of sand and windmills.

Our camp is located at the beginning of the Thar desert and it looked very organized and neat. After resting for a while at the camp, we headed on to Desert safari, close to our camp, in the evening.

This is the first time I was going on this kind of safari. It felt so scary in the beginning with the jeep going into a sand hole and then coming out of it. The speed of the jeep is also high that it raised sand all over. There were camel rides too in that place, but we preferred safari over camel ride.

We waited to watch sunset from the middle of the desert and it was great.

A group cultural dinner was organized by the camp authorities for the guests, to give us a proper feel of Rajasthani culture and food.

 

 

 

Day 2:

Today, we planned to visit India-Pakistan border from Jaisalmer, which is around 150kms from Jaisalmer. We need a special permission to visit the border, which we obtained with the help of a person we know from Jaisalmer (This needs some planning ahead).

We first stopped at Longewala war memorial, where we could find the tanks captured during 1971 war (The days where there is no fencing over the border) and a video clip was played in the memorial, which shows the details of 1971 war and the valour of soldiers who fought the war. We felt very grateful for the soldiers. Border movie was shot in that location with the same story.

We then moved to Tanot Mata temple, from where our journey to the border actually started. We could see large sections of desert with shrubs and couldn’t spot people on the way. It was an amazing ride.

 

We had to leave our original identity cards at the temple check-post and not use any mobiles further. The route to the border is completely deserted in its true sense (desert + no people) and we were thrilled with that experience. We got the true enigmatic feeling of the border with military check-post and fence all over. It was an absolutely great experience to visit the western border of India. We had a quick lunch after that and reached railway station to catch our train back to Delhi.

With this trip, I had completed visiting the borders of India in all four directions. It felt wonderful to have accomplished that, and what’s more amazing was that, each border had a different geographical formation, diverse culture and all the trips to the border felt equally awesome 🙂

North – Kashmir (Mountain)

South – Kanya Kumari (Ocean)

East – Tawang (Mountain)

West – Jaisalmer(Desert)

As per sandwich theory, I should have completed visiting whole of the country. But mathematical theorems don’t apply to geography I guess 😛

I still have a lot of places to visit in this Incredible India!! 🙂