On the morning of the 19th I walked around a bit in the city near my hotel, just inside the western gate, before breakfast. I visited a nice old haveli turned into a hotel and a late 19th century royal palace also turned into a hotel. After breakfast I walked up to and into the fort, passing through several gates along a u-shaped entry way, and spent two or three hours just wandering around the narrow lanes inside. There are no cars, although there are motorcycles -- and cows. One cow almost knocked me down as it ambled silently down a narrow lane while I was looking up at the delicate carving on one of the buildings. The stone here is yellowish and said to be particularly soft and easy to carve and as a consequence the carving is quite fine. The dry air is said to preserve it. I also walked up onto the ramparts in several places, with good views out over the city and the desert beyond. Unfortunately, the area between the inner and outer walls is full of trash. About a thousand people live within the fort (and 60,000 in the city as a whole), though most of the lanes seem to be taken up with shops selling stuff to tourists. The vendors here are particularly annoying. They just won't leave you alone most of the time. Bad salesmanship, too. I did watch one guy painting a very beautiful Moghul miniature type of portrait, using, he told me, a brush made of squirrel hair.
I had lunch at a little cafe on the walls and then spent the rest of the afternoon touring the royal palace. I had an audio tour and it was quite interesting. Jaisalmer was founded by a guy named Jaisal in the mid 12th century and flourished on the caravan routes trade. In 1195 and 1215, both times after long sieges, with hope running out, the defenders performed what is called jauhar, in which, after religious ceremonies, the women and children jumped on funeral pyres while the men charged into the enemy facing certain death. The fort is mostly 16th century, I think, though there are some obvious recent restorations. Large cannonball size stones and some long cylindrical stones are poised on the walls to roll down on any attackers. There were some interesting rooms in the old palace and good views from windows and rooftops. I stayed in the fort until just about dark
The next morning I walked through the narrow streets of the city to a spectacular haveli built by five Jain brothers from about 1800 to 1860. It contains five residences in a row and you can go into two of them. One is barren, with little decoration, but the other is beautifully decorated, both on the walls and ceilings and with furniture. It was quite interesting. Apparently, in the latter half of the 19th century the value of the caravan routes diminished with the opening of the port of Bombay, and the Jain merchants moved to Bombay and other big cities to follow the trade. There are other havelis around, many also with very beautiful delicate carving of Jaisalmer's trademark yellow stone.
I had a long lunch on the roof of my hotel and then walked around some more in the afternoon, through the narrow lanes and the bazaars full of turbaned, sunburned men from the desert. The turbans can be very colorful, sometimes multi-colored, and the women wear very colorful, flowing clothes, with elaborate nose rings. There are also lots of cows perusing the garbage or waiting for handouts. I've seen them sticking their heads into shops and residences waiting for a handout. Not only here in Jaisalmer but in many other places I've been, I've also seen older men, and sometimes women, with their gray hair dyed an absurdly bright shade of red. There's quite a bit of spitting, too. Not as much as in China, and the Indians are not as pathetic spitters as the Chinese, but it is disgusting enough. Once, in Jaipur, I was walking along and paused to avoid some guy about to spit, and after he spit he looked at me and said "thank you," as if I had paused to be polite.
It takes less than half an hour to walk from the town's western gate, near my hotel, to the eastern gate. From the eastern gate it is a short walk to the Amar Sagar, a small lake that was the town's sole water supply for centuries. Now it is fed by a canal that comes all the way through the desert from the Sutlej River in the Punjab and it seems like Jaisalmer has plenty of water. There are open drains along the narrow lanes of the city and they always seem to be running with dirty water. There are a few derelict pavilions around the lake, which I explored before walking back.
The next morning I was ill again with stomach problems. I read in my room for a while and then up on the roof in the sun. I watched several Indian Air Force fighter jets coming in for landings after patrolling the Pakistani border. I felt okay. In fact, I felt hungry, and frustrated that I was sick for the third time in three weeks. I had some banana porridge for dinner and felt fine.
The next morning I toured another haveli below the fort and then went into the fort to see the Jain temples inside the walls. They were filled with people, almost all Indians. There are quite a few western tourists here, too, though. There are seven temples, originally from the 12th to 16th centuries, but restored, clustered together and they have beautiful carvings. I enjoyed wandering around slowly, avoiding the crowds as best as I could. At 3 pm I left with four others in a vehicle heading west to the sand dunes at Sam. It is only 25 miles away in the desert and we got there before 4. There were hundreds of camels there, ready for tourists, and soon there must have been a thousand Indian tourists on the sand dunes, many on camels. The sand dunes aren't extensive. You can easily see beyond them. They are scenic, despite all the trash on them. There were persistent touts, like flies, wherever you went on the dunes. We stayed till sunset and then drove back. The sun disappeared into the haze on the horizon before it set.
The next morning (today) I woke up with a bad stomach again. I spent the morning at the hotel, had some yogurt (or curd, as it is called here in India) and fruit at noon and then walked around in the afternoon, mostly up in the fort along its narrow lanes. I had an omelet at the cafe on the walls about 3 and then a chicken dinner about 6 and all seems well.
No comments:
Post a Comment