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Jaisalmer
By Mikey
Tuesday, 7th December 2004 10:41

We arrived in Jaisalmer quite late, certainly later than I had thought we would. The bus dropped us off a shortish distance from the fort at about 9.30 and we took an auto up to the fort and hunted for our hotel. It didn't take long to find and we were quickly settled but hungry. We went in search of some food but most of the places in the fort were closed by 10pm and for a moment it looked like we were going to go hungry. We very fortunately stumbled into a roof top restaurant run by some Tibetans who were only too delighted to feed us. After a quick snack we went back to bed and slept.

The sounds of life below the fort woke us up and if they hadn't the jet fighters that screamed overhead shortly afterwards would have. Freshly showered and free of camel nits we packed up and checked out. We went back to the roof top restaurant again as they had a pretty nice menu. To our surprise we found Volker there and we joined him for breakfast. We swapped stories briefly (it had only been two days since we last saw him after all) and then left him talking to an English couple as we went off to explore Jaisalmer.

Guidebooks and tourists alike say that Jaisalmer is the most beautiful city in India. While the fort is ok, I don't think that it compares to Jodhpur at all. The city as well was like an "also ran" to Jodhpur's Grand National winner. There were bits that looked good but the haveli of Jodhpur win it for me. The people to were different. In Jodhpur (and certainly while out in the desert) we had lived a hassle free lifestyle. Very few people tried to get us to buy things or take autos etc and when they did they usually took the first "no" that we gave them. In Jaisalmer though they've had many tourists for longer and the usual rules seem to apply. We had to wear our thick skins again and that detracted from Jaisalmer's appeal in my opinion.

We spent the remainder of our time in Jaisalmer booking bus tickets to Jodhpur, walking around the base of the fort, the town near the fort and the fort itself. After that we had some lunch and caught our bus to Jodhpur.



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