March 2014. Spring was here, again, bringing with it pangs of fernweh – a feeling of ‘far-sickness’, a longing for distant places – nagging away at my being. The train of heartbreak had barely left the station, all the more reason why I needed to get away in the opposite direction, all on my own, reinforcing at least to myself, the sense of liberation that came of detachment from all things that brew emotional dependence.
However, I could not detach myself from the yearning for the distant lands I had read about in school or seen on TV – the so-called sand dunes and camel rides in the Thar desert in and around Jaisalmer and Bikaner. And then there was Jodhpur, which a General Knowledge book addressed as the Blue City, something about the colour describing a city only piquing the curiosity to see the place in person. I had also taken a liking for forts, my favorite being Chittorgarh, and all these places in the Thar – Jaisalmer, Bikaner and Jodhpur – wore their forts on their sleeves.
After gaining ample confidence from my solo trips to Jaipur and Udaipur in the two preceding years, it was now time to up the ante or increase the dosage, if you will, given how the duration of my previous two Rajasthan trips had incremented by a day each, with the Jaipur sojourn being one day long and the Udaipur one being for two days. Also, the destination on the second trip, Udaipur, was farther from Delhi than was Jaipur, making it imperative that I strike out even further into Rajasthan this year. With these thoughts in mind, choosing the Holi long weekend, Holi falling on 17th March 2014, a Monday, I straightaway booked well in advance a train ticket for my return from Jaisalmer for the evening of Holi.
Finally, on the evening of 13th March, a Friday, I was standing again at Iffco Chowk after office waiting for the next state road transport bus headed to Jaipur. On the bus, it was a familiar feeling with familiar sights, passing through the outskirts of Gurgaon, then passing through the hill forest beyond Manesar, where I remember listening to the Mad Season album by Matchbox Twenty, and then crossing the barrage near Rewari. By 10 PM, I was in Jaipur, where after having a Rajasthani dinner, I hopped onto a state transport bus to Jodhpur, getting a seat beside a foreigner lady accompanied by his Indian guide. By 6 AM next morning, I was in Jodhpur, where like in my Udaipur trip, I simply walked some distance and checked-in to a budget hotel. And started feeling feverish!
Exploring the Blue City
Nevertheless, feeling feverish was a familiar feeling on my solo trips, which I countered this time, by taking a paracetamol tablet following a breakfast of poha. Then, like on my previous trips, I hired an auto-rickshaw with a whole-day tour package that I determined based on the recommendations given by the hotel receptionist, and reached Umaid Bhawan Palace, the current residence of the ruling dynasty of Jodhpur. Located on a hillock, the construction of the palace was started in 1929 by the Maharaja Umaid Singh, 37th Rathore ruler of Marwar state to provide employment to famine-strike farmers, and was completed in 1943, when the Maharaja started occupying it.
From there, I proceeded to Madore, a place that I only learnt about in Jodhpur, located about 8 km from the city, purported to be the native place of Mandodari, Ravana’s wife. Historically, Mandore, the seat of the Gurjara-Pratiharas in the 6th century AD, later became the capital of the Rathores before Rao Jodha shifted to the newly-founded city of Jodhpur. At Mandore, I was completely mesmerized by the scenes unfolding in front me – beautifully manicured lawns surrounding sandstone temples and cenotaphs, with a stone path trailing beside a canal abounding in lotus and lilies, that crossed a water tank and winded up the hill, with a the ruins of a fort lying on top of the hill. From the hilltop, spires of temples, the domes of the cenotaphs and the lushness of the lawns down in the garden below presented the most eye-pleasing views.
Leaving Mandore with reluctance, the autorickshaw driver drove me to Balsamand Lake, on the banks of which lies a summer palace, and from there, returned inside the city, stopping at Jaswant Thada. The Jaswant Thada, a cenotaph built of Makrana Marble for Maharaja Jaswant Singh II in 1899, itself is located on the top of a flat, barren red-coloured hill of igneous rock, only punctuated with water pools and barely any vegetation, and has the scenic backdrop of the Mehrangarh fort on one side. After admiring the striking landscape around the Jaswant Thada, I moved on to the Mehrangarh fort.
The construction of Mehrangarh fort was started in 1459 AD by Rao Jodha, who founded Jodhpur city after moving from Mandore the same year, with most of the current structures being constructed in the 17th century. The fort stands atop a 122 metre high rocky hill overlooking the city, with its distinct red sandstone profile with the red coloured hill base standing out and visible from long distances all around. I walked through the numerous tall arched gates, and then gawked at the imposing palaces and exquisitely done interiors, before ending the tour at the raised long platform lining the fort wall the end of the fort where the cannons stand.
Descending from Mehrangarh, we again headed to the outskirts, this time in the west passing on a road flanked by kumat plants with their golden coloured ears, to Kaylana lake, an artificial lake built by Pratap Singh in 1872, in the midst of igneous rock formations. After spending the sunset on the Kaylana Lake, I returned to the city, stopping at the clock tower, and retired to bed, after a day well spent, with my heart throbbing in anticipation of seeing the desert the next day.
Off to the Dunes
The next morning, I left the hotel and was inside a road transport bus headed to Jaisalmer by 8.30 AM. As we left the city, the landscape became progressively arid, with it becoming more distinctively barren and sandy as the bus approached Pokhran, where khejri trees stood scattered with large expanses of empty space between each other. I distinctly remember listening to the album The Bends by Radiohead as I marvelled at the white-yellowish sparsely vegetated soil shimmering under the sun. At 3 PM, as I stepped down at Jaisalmer, a streak of electrified excitement passed through my body. Soon, I was picked up by a local who I had called beforehand based on a colleague’s referral.
The first sight that struck me as I rode pillion on the local’s motorcycle was that of the Jaisalmer fort radiating in all its golden glory with multiple golden coloured stony turrets stacked one after the other along the edge of a golden coloured rocky hillock. It was the physical manifestation of the images that I had created in my mind from reading in a book or hearing in the context of a movie (Sonar Kella by Satyajit Ray) or seeing in pictures or documentaries. But stepping physically inside that physical manifestation of my mental image had to wait, for there was yet another mental image born from childhood dreams that I had to physically soak in first – the sand dunes.
So checking into a budget hotel at the foot of the hill on which the fort is located, I rented a scooter from a nearby shop, and armed with a map and directions provided by the rent-a-bike shop scooted off towards Sam. As I left the periphery of the city, habitation and vegetation disappeared, while the road dipped and rose in curves streaking across the arid landscape shooting and disappearing into the horizon. Alongside the road, stood tall windmills in the midst of tall grass, with the skyline in the background lined by a long sandy ridge running from one end to another end of the purview.
As I rode up and down the wavy road, stopping at places to click photographs of the landscape, the thin clusters of huts and the camels either solitary or in groups whiling away time, I was welcomed by flat patches of sand with sparse vegetation on both sides. After almost an hour of riding, resorts in the form of desert camps started appearing, signalling the arrival of the Sam Sand Dunes. Right at the location where the Jaisalmer local’s contact person at Sam Sand Dunes had indicated earlier over the phone, there stood a camel with its minder waiting for me. And soon, the camel, with its minder and I seated on its back, heaved with a jerk from its kneeling position to stand upright, even as I saw the ground beneath sinking away, and lurched into the vast expanse of shimmering mounds of sand lying in front of me.
After staggering up and down the peaks and troughs of the dunes for about a kilometer, the camel stopped, and the minder beckoned me to get down, and soak in the atmosphere and the sands. As I sat on the sand, sifting through it, taking a fistful of it, and letting it stream down from my hands, I was overcome by the delight and glee of a child that has been left to play in a theme park. I sat marvelling at nature’s unique creation, observing the ribbed contours formed on the sand due to effects of wind, and the trails of footprints left behind by camels and humans and the tracks of the wheel carts swishing across the undulations. Beholding the sun setting behind the dunes, I turned around only to be awestruck by the near full moon hovering just over the horizon in the opposite direction.
In the twilight, I trod by foot over the sand dunes back to the point where I had parked my scooter, and headed across the road to the resort where the Jaisalmer local had arranged for my dinner. After witnessing a folk programme of Rajasthani music and dance, and gorging on the buffet of Rajasthani cuisine, I headed back on my scooter to the city. Riding all alone at 8.30 PM in the night, with the seas of moonlit sands glimmering all the way to the horizon on both sides of road, the near full moon hanging right over my head keeping me company and the cool breeze blowing against my face, I reckoned that I had transcended all bounds of the material world – I was floating in a meditative plane, wanting the ride to never end. It was pure bliss.
Desert Frenzy
The next day was going to be jam-packed, what with my return scheduled on the 6 PM train that evening. So, I started around 9.30 AM after breakfast on the scooter, and headed back on the same road leading to Sam Sand Dunes. Midway though, I took a left turn and headed off on the narrow road piercing the desert, and reached Kuldhara, an abandoned village, also touted as a haunted site, right in the middle of the desert. At Kuldhara, there lay rows of abandoned stone houses with only their walls remaining, alongside a temple around which the town’s life seems to have centered around. Adjacent to the lies a garden dubbed Jurassic Cactus Park, with a fascinating assortment of cactus varieties.
Established in the 13th century by Paliwal Brahmins who had emigrated from Pali, and is said as per a local legend, to have been abandoned overnight and cursed by the villagers when the prime minister Salim Singh set eyes on the village chief’s daughter and threatened the villagers with dire consequences if they defied his wish. However, research seems to suggest that Kuldhara and other such villages nearby were abandoned gradually over time, mainly due to damage due to earthquakes and dwindling water supply, and the abandonment seems to have been precipitated by early 19th century due to the oppressive tax regime of Jaisalmer state propagated by Salim Singh.
Pushing further into the desert, all alone on the scooter, with nary a human in sight, I headed towards Khabha. About half an hour later, passing through sands with occasional patches of 3 feet tall grass beneath some of which, one or more camels would be resting, I beheld a ridge, resembling a plateau on which stood a compact golden-coloured fort. Ascending up the ridge, I was soon inside the Khabha fort, with tiny turrets lining its peripheral wall, where I was amazed to find a museum of natural history. The fort stood all alone in desolation, a lone sentinel on the edge of a low cliff in the middle of the desert, overlooking, in the escarpment below, the stony ruins of an abandoned village, a sight similar to that I had just seen in Kuldhara.
Leaving Khabha, I rode back towards the Sam road, and crossed it to move over to the other side, where the landscape was relatively greener, and then riding parallel to the Sam road but towards Jaisalmer, I reached Lodurva, which was the capital of the Bhattis before Rawal Jaisal founded Jaisalmer in 1156 CE. At Lodurva, I visited the Shree Parshvanath temple, dedicated to the 23rd Tirthankara, built in the 9th century in yellow limestone and sandstone, which was destroyed in 1152 by invaders, and later renovated and repaired in 1615 AD. Riding further, I was accosted by a couple of youth on a motorcycle who were intent on smearing rangoli, since it was Holi. I sped as fast as I could, with the duo in hot pursuit, finally managing to lose them, and only stopped, nearer to Jaisalmer, at the Amar Singh Jain temple.
It was now 1 PM, and I had on my wish list, still one more outstation site to see, but this site was located on the other side of the city. Calculating the time I had in hand, I crossed Jaisalmer city, and sped on the Barmer highway to reach Akal Wood Fossil Park, lying about 18 km south-east of Jaisalmer, where I was welcomed by a couple of emus and an assortment of wood fossils dating back to 200 million years. I rode through the desolate desolate brown rocky land, coming across more preserved fossilized wood dating and pairs of pillars for which there was no explanation. After wandering for a while inside the fascinating park, I headed back to the city, where I stopped at Gadisar Lake, an artificial lake created in 1156 to serve as the main water source for the then newly-founded city.
After surrendering the scooter at the rent-a-bike shop, at around 4 PM, I finally found myself inside Jaisalmer fort. Soon, I was walking through the streets of the bustling town lying inside the fort premises. After whizzing past the courtyards, corridors and halls in the palaces, I came upon the the alleys running along the ramparts of the fort, winding around the turrets, in maze-like form. Standing on the ramparts, I was treated to breathtaking views of the cityscape and the barren, desert landscape beyond it with its meeting point with the sky shrouded in a haze of sand, leaving me in a trance.
My reverie was broken when the local who had arranged my accommodation and camel ride at Sam Sand Dunes called, asking if I was prepared to be dropped at the railway station. Walking down the fort road, I was not able to escape an assault of rangoli launched by a passerby, rendering patches of colour on my shirt and hair, leaving me fuming. But then, I saw a group of white tourists who had completely immersed themselves enjoyment of the festival of colours, and I told myself, what’s the big deal?, and greeted them, followed by exchanges of polite colour smearing.
As I mounted the motorcycle to sit behind the Jaisalmer local, with my backpack lugging on my back, I took one parting look at the mesmerizing golden fort sitting proudly and timelessly on the rock. An hour later, I was inside the train, fondly scrolling through the gallery on my Nokia Lumia phone, with the photographs on my phone, the smudges of rangoli on my person, and the wistfulness in my heart, being the only remaining and undying vestiges of my tryst with the Thar.
Trip Map of Jodhpur
Trip Map of Jaisalmer
The Timber Trawler 
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