Desert Tales 1

I’m so looking forward to a hot shower. It’s been ages. The nights are cool here, so cool that when I go to massage coconut oil into my skin in the mornings the oil has solidified, and I have to dig it out of its skinny bottle with the back of my tweezers.

Yeah, the mornings are cool, and my wash water is really cold. But I guess that’s good for my circulation.

I guess.

Every day I’ve been exploring a little more of the amazing Jaisalmer Fort, way up on the hill.

The fort is what makes Jaisalmer famous. It’s an incredible structure, built over centuries on top of the only hill around these parts.

It's pretty amazing to see, from any angle. From below, you can see the lower walls, with the round bastions spaced regularly around the whole perimeter of the massive structure.

Of course, its magnificence makes it a magnet for tourists, and at the moment, due to Diwali holidays and the cooler weather, there’s a shitload of Indian tourists traipsing through the fort at any time of the day. It does get much quieter in the evenings though.

There’s not that many Westerners here, I’m not exactly sure where they all are. I guess Jaisalmer’s a little too far from the regular tourist trail to make it an obvious stop for the majority of foreign visitors in India. Almost all of the foreign tourists I’ve met lately are Europeans or North Americans with only two, three or four weeks of leave, and most do the Delhi toTaj Mahal to Jaipur triangle, and maybe fly to Varanasi or Mumbai if they have time, before jetting back home and back to work.

But younger travellers on gap years, or uni students, or people who have more time to explore (like me), do make it here, because, really, it’s a pretty incredible place to experience.

Gravity-defying pigeons

The foundations for the fort were laid in 1156, by Maharwal (King) Jaisal, and the bulk of the structure was built over only about 7 years. Over the next century additions and improvements were made, but the fort in its present form has, incredibly, existed for many centuries now.

Unlike many forts in Rajasthan, this one incorporates an old city inside it, which still functions today. Thousands of people still live up there, in homes their families have occupied for centuries. It’s hard for me to imagine what that’s like.

So yeah, it’s a vibrant, active place.

Once inside the imposing front gates and through the first walls, the cobblestone path rises steeply, and eventually leads to the central part of the inner walled city.

The rulers’ palaces tower over the central square, and provide views over not just the walled city, but over all the plains below.

The lower wall is around 5 km in circumference, 2-3 m thick, and is fortified with 99 bastions, each of which once housed fully armed guards. The main fort has 2 walls running parallel, around 2 - 4 metres apart in different places, and soldiers also occupied this area between the 2 walls, and used it to move between the different bastions and other parts of the city.

The central square inside the fort.

The fort was built to be secure. And it worked. The defences have only been breached 3 times in almost 1000 years, and none of those occupations lasted for long periods. When they faced defeat in battle, however, the Rajputs here never ever surrendered, as they believed in the principle of death over defeat.

On the few occasions when they were blockaded by invading armies, and their ammunition, food and water finally ran out, and therefore defeat was inevitable, the sacred drums would ring out through the city, the men would dress in their orange battle gear, ride through the city gates and then be slaughtered on the battlefield, killing as many of the invaders as they could in the process.

Simultaneously, the women left inside the fort would carry out jauhar, which involved throwing themselves onto huge bonfires, rather than face potential rape or enslavement by the men of the invading army.

And Allah knows what happened to the kids.

Yeah, they were pretty brutal times.

A view of part of the central palace.

This, my friends, is not wood. It’s solid stone. The stonework in this place is nothing short of spectacular, and the stone carvers from centuries ago are the real heroes of this whole place, in my view. Can you imagine the work involved in carving just one of the many windows? It’s unbelievable.

The art and beauty of the architecture here is truly exquisite, and a real sight to behold. I’ve been seriously gobsmacked by the intricate detail in the stonework all over Rajasthan, and by the enormous scale of it all.

Chatting on the corner. Chat, or chaat, is a Hindi word that’s sort of an umbrella term for roadside snacks, normally savoury ones, but sometimes sweets as well.

Making fresh juice. Lots and lots of it.

Beautiful fabrics for sale. Rajasthan and the neighbouring state of Gujarat are famous throughout India for their intricate fabric designs.

School Uniforms of the World Exhibit 37a - the waistcoat look

A view of the Golden City outside the walls, taken from close to the top of the fort

Tourist crowds in the lower courtyard.

Inside The Palace

Parts of the interior of the ancient palace are open to the public, and have been made into a museum of sorts. Of course I went in to explore, along with my complementary audio guide, which was basically a very old repurposed mobile phone brick, which kept distorting and cutting out. No real surprises there, considering where I am.

The steps leading to the palace.

Magnificent architecture all over the place

The first part of the museum contained an armoury of weapons from across the centuries.

Daggers in leather sheaths

Lance heads, and a double-tipped arrow head

All the armies in those days were partly horse-bound. Where there’s horses, there’s horse-whips. Why else would the beasts of burden carry those massively heavily armoured soldiers all over the place?

Gunpowder holders

Next up were some of the lavish living quarters of the royal families.

One of the Maharawal’s thrones. Note the lion hand rests. The lion is a very common and important symbol in India, and is actually the country’s national emblem. The lion represents strength and power, and representations of it appear in many old palaces, statues and state buildings.

Also, the term Maharawal is simply the word used around here for ‘great king.’ Maha means big, or great, and rawal is the local word for king. The term Maharawal is a variation of the more common Maharaja, which is used in some other places. In Udaipur the term is Maharana, in Bundi they were called Maharao.

I know you were just busting to know all that.

Jaisalmer still has a royal family. A new Maharawal, Chaitanya Raj Singh, had his coronation in 2021, after the death of his father, who is this young chap, pictured on his coronation day in 1982. He became Maharawal at the ripe old age of 15.

Another youngster ruler.

There’s some amazing views from the palace

Some of the stone walls, like this one, are so thin, and others are metres thick

The Maharawals claim they are direct descendants of Krishna, and even have a family tree to prove it. Pretty clever of them, given that Krishna is a God.

Other Rajasthani dynasties claim to be descendants of the sun itself. The actual sun. Sons of the sun. Others say they’re descendants of Vishnu, one of the three primary Hindu Gods, who are Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver; and Shiva, the destroyer. Well, that’s not all each of them are of course, but one of the many many divine attributes they apparently have.

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Go to Part 2