Jaisalmer - girl

Jaisalmer 25/02-02/03/2010




It really feels as if we’ve left the UK now. We’re staying in a typical backpackers’ hostel that serves banana pancakes on the roof and offers mediocre tours; we spend our days walking in the blistering heat and retiring for cheap but delicious curry in the evening. We have successfully evaded the ubiquitous ‘camel safari’ and have not been seduced into buying travellers’ clothing - although perhaps after a few more weeks we will give into that one. We’re still washing on a daily basis so perhaps some would say we’re not entering into the full spirit of things. What the hell, chaque’un a son gout, non?



Jaisalmer is a fascinating city 19 hours west of Delhi as the train flies. And to be honest, it didn’t really fly, more hobble. We were in a ‘3AC’ carriage, which is nowhere near as grand as it sounds. The ‘3’ stands for three bunks high. Who knows what the ‘AC’ might stand for as there was certainly no ‘AC’ that I noticed. However, the 19 hours passed fairly painlessly and we eventually found ourselves on a hot, dusty, yet busy station at Jaisalmer. It turned out the unthinkable had happened - our train was a full hour early, confusing locals and visitors alike.



Think Carcassone, think Jerusalem or any other walled, fortified town and then add a great big desert, that’s Jaisalmer. Built in the 12th century, this place is simply stunning. 99 sandstone bastions protecting a town of winding lanes barely big enough for the inhabitants let alone the cows and motorbikes that clamour for their space. Inside the fortress is the Maharaja’s palace, now a fascinating museum and a complex of Jain temples where intricate carvings in the same sandstone offer tourists another opportunity to part with their rupees as devout monks spend their day chasing foreigners for baksheesh. God’s will and all that, or should it be Gods’ will?



Wandering through the streets of the fortress and the new city I have been particularly struck by another dichotomy of religion and reality: cows are holy yet left to forage through rubbish for sustenance. People may put out scraps in the evening but most of the cows, although huge, are unhealthy and seem to be subsisting on cardboard boxes and scraps of cloth.



What appears particularly absent from Jaisalmer is the desperate, highly visible, poverty of India. Most people appear healthy and happy. I got a brief glimpse of reality, though, as we drove through a small area on the outskirts of town with homes resembling African huts. Villages out in the desert also offered the poverty we were expecting. Contrast this with the hotel owner we met today who pulled out his new i-phone to demonstrate the speed of his hotel’s wi-fi.



Throughout our days in Jaisalmer, excitement was brewing. Vendors were doing a brisk trade in coloured powders and plastic water pistols and children were getting more and more high pitched - imagine Christmas excited but outside, in 33 degree heat. Holi (pronounced ‘holy’) was almost here. Day 1 meant singing in the street outside our hotel as people collected funds for ‘the party’. By Day 2 even the tourists were being let in on the secret of Holi although I think C and I learned more than most thanks to an extremely kind (big mouthed?) hotelier. He mentioned to me that there was a big party down at the lake in the evening. So after supper we took a stroll lake-wards to see what was up. Unwittingly we found ourselves in a crowd streaming through a small gate. The party was, in fact, four separate parties for different strata of society and, naturally, we’d been corralled into the ‘upper class’ party. Amazingly, at a party for thousands of people where we thought we knew no one, we bumped into the guy who’d told me about the party. He was a little shocked to see us but took us under his wing, offering us sweets to try and explaining what was going on. We excused ourselves fairly quickly, feeling that we shouldn’t intrude on something that was so clearly not for tourists. Luckily we’d left our cameras behind as I suspect the temptation would have been too great.



Day 3 involved nothing more than digging up the roads at select intervals and making fire for people to walk around. Day 4, however, was the most fun of all. Between 9am and 2pm the entire town, resident and visitor alike, was out on the street greeting others with a ‘Happy Holi’, a daubing of coloured powder and a big hug. I suspect the hugging may have been an excuse for touching women but who am I to question the motives behind religious requirements? Within minutes of leaving the hotel we were quite literally covered, from head to toe, in coloured powders - as was everyone else. The atmosphere was incredible as everyone came together to enjoy the coming of spring (doesn’t everyone celebrate spring this way?). And I, for one, have never been groped so many times before lunch in one day!

I assume other towns were also celebrating today but I’m glad we were here, in Jaisalmer, this ancient city with a population that lives regardless of the thousands of tourists wandering in and out of their streets, taking intrusive photos and getting in the way.