Jaiselmer

Touts and agents are the biggest hasstle in the city of Jaiselmer, and they came into action from the bus ride itself, introducing themselves as helpers and friends to foreigners. One goes to Jaiselmer to see the fort and the sand dunes. The latter are to be seen, so I was told, at specific places away from the city -- Khuri, Sam, Tanot, as I learnt later.

I spent the first night at a dharamshala, a religious charity place to stay. It belonged to a specific caste, and cost me Rs 25 for a night -- the bed place outside in the open verendah with 10 other beds. Toilets common.

The fort at Jaiselmer is known as the golden fort, built with yellowish stones. The fort is made famous in Satyajit Ray's detective novel Sonar Killa (Golden Fort), which I had read during my college days.

I met several interesting people here. Right outside the fort there is a shop that sells stuff with hemp / bhang. I met the young shopkeeper who called himself Dr Bhang. He explained the benefits of this drug, and how foreigners take it to cure some ailments. He gave me reference to a cheap hotel that came in handy later.

The fort itself is built on a platform, but not as high as the Jodhpur fort. The palaces of the king and the queen are now museums. An old Hindu temple of Radha Nath caught my attention with its rich carvings. It is interesting to see how scantily clad female figurines in curved poses adorned the door hinges here.

Inside the fort there are shops and houses where people live in. It is considered to be the only fort where people still live inside, though later I found the Taragarh fort at Ajmer, the oldest hill fort, with similar shops and houses inside.

The haveli keeper
One large haveli with a few people seated outside caught my attention as I walked inside the fort. A small conversation ensued with two men here, one of whom had been to Mumbai. The stalky man described his skirmish with a Mumbai stree hawker and his point winning comment was: "How many teeth do you have in your mouth?" The other man turned out to be the keeper of a minister's house (divan haveli) opposite which we were seated.

I asked him about the village life in Rajasthan, and he patiently explained the details. Many families engaged in some form of craft, especially handicraft work, and people also worked away in cities, but kept in touch back home. Water scarcity was a major problem here. Taking me over to the house, he showed me his shop selling antique pieces, mostly replicas as I learnt later at another place. We went upstairs and he showed me the public meeting place of the minister, decorated with Belgium glasses and white, decoreated walls.

He surprised me by telling that a lot of intricate architectural work on display at the palaces and houses was done by workers who took opium. The very nature of the work was such, he said. Hence we see a lot or replicas of antique opium servers everywhere in shops.

The man himself had worked in the cities of Pune and Kolkata at a motor parts supplier's company. Being fed up of the busy working life in the city, he mover over to Jaiselmer for a vacation and did not go back, giving up his last month's salary as well, so he told me.

The most amusing thing was how everyone here too me for a foreigner -- due to my fair complexion. This brought me into another tangle here.

The camel owners and the safari
As I strolled down the streets the next evening looking for a place to stay, two young boys greeted me. They mistook me for a foreigner, as I learnt later. They asked me if I wanted to go on a camel safari -- something I had in mind, but the costs had turned me away. They took me to their home -- it turned out that the young boy was a camel rider, and his brother owned four camels.

The thatch-and-mud house had a compound where I spotted the camels, and was greeted in the compound by a young woman and other females of the house lying on cots. The first question was whether I was married, and then whether I would prefer a fair or dark coloured girl. I was taken in, and treated to a hot, sumptous dinner with rice and curry. The young woman appeared to show a lot of interest. "Will you marry me?" she asked. "Your husband will kill me," I said. I invited her to Mumbai -- "Will take you around in a taxi!" She said she will bring along her family too.

The camel safari took me to Bari Chhatri -- the tombs of the royal family -- down to Amar Sagar, a small pond with a Jain temple, and brought me round back to the city. En route we stopped under a tree where the young boy cooked food at a makeshift fireplace. The camel is an intelligent animal -- and it knows its way quite well. Often at places that bifurcated into two, the animal knew which way to take, though at times it needed guidance. I learnt to navigate the camel with the ropes as I rode alone all day long, the boy following me on his younger camel. But there were no sand dunes to be seen in this region, one of the things I longed to see in Jaiselmer.

Tanot: Near Pakistan border
Coming back to take the Bikaner bus, I found the private bus to Tanot about to go. The conductor asked me, and I settled for the trip, for when again would I come here again? A wooden bench was placed in the centre isle of the bus, and we rode toward the Pakistan border, passing Ramgarh. The temple is managed by the border security forces. The people here believed that, during the war with Pakistan, some of the bombs dropped around the village did not explode due to the influence of the devi maa, goddess of the temple. Replicas of these are kept inside the temple.

There was a big dune right behind one temple we had halted at earlier. Climbing the dune was a challenge, and I had to stop short of the peak and sit down to bring my heart rate down. The sight of a flock of sheep making its way backhome down the dune was serene.

The husband who never saw his unmarried wife
Coming back in the bus, a young man took the seat next to me. He turned out to be a motor mechanic working at Jaiselmer, travellling with his mother and wife for a wish he had made at the temple. He brought out an earlier incident between me and a young woman in veil near whom I had perched myself on a makeshift wooden seat kept in the isle. She had rebuked me in the local tongue, and the matter had to do with my 'smell', though I knew she didn't like a young man seated so close to her. The man explained all she had said, and I said I didn't mind it at all. We spoke at length about various topics.

It turned out that he had to give up studies in high school due to his mother's illness. He was then married to a girl whose name and relation was all he knew. He consented and got married. Traditional marriages, I heard in my childhood, often allowed just a glimpse to the bride and groom of each other. He did not even get that.

Having spent two extra days here, I cancelled the Bikaner trip, and decided to head toward Ajmer, via Jodhpur the next day morning.