Day 14: Jaisamlmer. A huge sandcastle.

Following advice that the fort is a 10 minute walk away and easy to find (well it is sitting atop the only hill for miles around and visible from everywhere) we head off to explore running the usual gamut of dogs, pigs, cows, camels and, of course, people. This is our first exposure to Jaisalmer residents and the experience is a good one. The people (generalisation warning) are polite and respectful, take ‘no’ for an answer and look you in the eye with a sense of personal pride. We like it already.

The fort is made of beautiful yellow sandstone built straight out of the sandy rock, which makes it looks like a giant sandcastle.

We manage to find the entrance to the fort and start to walk around the narrow alleyways of this ancient place – seems the newest things here (other than mobile phone installations) are about 400 years old! This is much smaller than many of the forts we’ve seen so far and without trying we navigate our way to the top of the fort for a commanding view of the surrounding desert. This fort is a completely different scale; it’s small, intricate and gives you the impression that it’s a fortified town rather than a fort created for battle (Ranthambore Fort for example housed 14,000 troops at its peak). However, what it lacks in defensive armour, it gains in detailed beauty. Some of the buildings here are amongst the most detailed and intricately carved we have seen. It also has an abundance of tiny stalls and shops selling the usual textiles and leather goods and Jemima manages to pick up a pair of camel leather flip flops – the camel most certainly died of natural causes…!

Beyond the main gates we thread our way along narrow streets bustling with stalls, shops, handcarts, pedestrians and all the other usual road traffic. It’s hot, about 30 degrees in the shade and we pop-out onto the ‘ring-road’ on the wrong side of town. We have a long, hot and dusty walk back to the calm and quiet of Hotel Fifu and feel like we deserve a rest – which is what we work at for the rest of the afternoon J