India Day 12: Jaisalmer

We woke up and went to the fort (which can be seen from our hotel’s restaurant) because, well, the only reason to come to Jaisalmer is to see the fort. Its winding streets are filled with all sorts of vendors, selling almost everything that a tourist could want, and even those things that no traveler ever dreams of purchasing, but will later adorn a mantle or end table for years. We went into a few Jain temples, which seemed to be pretty similar to Buddhist temples. I think the most noteworthy thing about Jain temples is that you can’t wear leather into them-as the Jains believe in non-violence towards all living creatures. I didn’t get the chance to ask one about his views on mosquitoes. Looking at the enormous size of the fort from the outside should have made it obvious, but then again my brain runs fairly slowly, so it was still astonishing to me to realize that the fort was actually just wall around the city. From what I gathered, until recently the entire city lived up on the hill, inside the fort, and only recently (with tourism) has the city expanded into the plain below. I probably could have spent days wandering around the twisting, thin, stone-walled alleys, avoiding cows and hawker’s calls at every corner. Some of the lookouts along the wall provided great views of the surroundings-which was nothing but lots of yellow rocks and sparse shrubs.

In the afternoon we went on a jeep tour with Sukia, a very nice and helpful driver. We had arranged this through our hotel, and got front door service. The main point of the tour was to see the sunset over the desert, but included compulsory stops at some of the ruins scattered in the desert surrounding Jaisalmer. The first place we stopped was gorgeous, a set of sarcophagi placed individually in stone gazebo like structures. We then stopped in a village, where some children were overly eager to show me around the homes in the village. It was pretty cool to look into a few houses, which were mostly two rooms, one a bedroom with mats on the floor, and the other a kitchen with a wood/grain stalk burning stove in the corner. Two of the kids spoke passable English, and claimed they weren’t truants, but just had school in the morning. I took some pictures with them and observed that it generally seemed that a young women preparing food in one of the houses was keeping an eye on them-but as they most likely spoke better English than her, she didn’t have any problem with them “helping” out us tourists. It was no surprise when I got back to the jeep where Sukia and Danthemanstan were waiting that they asked for 10 rupees. Sukia didn’t seem to think it was a big deal, so I told them next time they should tell me the tour cost money when they approach another tourist and offer. Driving between the various ruins was a wonderful experience. (We hit up three more: two that weren’t as impressive as the first, and amazing ruins of an entire town). It was really great to look out and around a landscape that was so different from that of the Midwest. We even saw a few wild camels and some type of desert deer/antelope. We capped off the day watching the sun set above some sand dunes with a few other tourists. As we waited for the sun to set, amazingly a man arrived from among the dunes traveling by camel. I was prescient enough to correctly predict that he would produce some ice-cold Kingfisher beers out of his pack. I of course bought a bottle, as I am all about encouraging super cheesy tourist gimmicks. It was a beautiful sunset, and I’m sure you can Google and find pictures taken by a far better photographer than I. On the jeep ride back to the hotel I couldn’t hold myself back and tried some of the superlatively popular Indian chewing tobacco. Don’t worry-I had just a pinch; I don’t want to end up looking like the Delhi taxi drivers.