The next day, we were scheduled to visit the Jaisalmer fort, the Gadisar Lake and the three hawelis. As I said earlier, the Jaisalmer fort is different in the sense that it is a living fort and people actually live inside the fort. The fort is built on Trikuta hills by King Jaisal and hence the name, Jaisal + Mer (comes form “meru” meaning hill). Besides the houses and shops, the fort has seven Jain temples inside - which is surprising because, there are hardly any Jain people residing inside the fort. Apparently, there is a story behind this which goes as follows:
"The original capital of the Bhatti Rajputs was the city of ‘Lodurva’, before King Jaisal built the Jaisalmer fort in 1156. The town of Lodurva is much older than Jaisalmer and was sacked several times, most notably by Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century when he was en route to Somnath, and then by Mohammad Ghori in the next century. The latter invasion persuaded Jaisal to abandon Lodurva, and he shifted his capital to Jaisalmer. On one such invasions, the Jain people residing in Lodurva seeked help from King Jaisal, who provided a secret underground passageway for them to enter the fort. Once inside, the fort, the Jains were allowed to practice their religion and were allowed to build the temples inside." So dont be surprised if you find so many people around ordering strict Jain food in Jaisalmaer :). All of the Seven Jain temples are ornately carved and a must visit. The other interesting thing to note was that the fort has 99 turrets. The lack of water meant that there could be no cement to hold those stones together - which is why the stones are arranged in a fashion to mesh with each other. We lunched at a place called “Little Italy” inside the fort and then went shopping. One could buy a lot of leather goodies, such as shoes, jhuttis, and laptop bags and stuff like that here. We wanted to check out this eating joint called ‘Trio’, so headed there next. But, once inside, we saw, almost every customer complaining about the time they have been waiting for food to arrive. So we gave it a skip :). The hotel had arranged a cab for us, so post lunch we went to Gadisar lake, which is apparently a man-made lake. (inset pictures - Jaisalmer Fort and Gadisar Lake)
Boating facility is available here, but we didn’t opt for one. Next up were the ‘Havelis’. Of the three havelis - only one Patwon ki Haveli is worth the visit. The other two are complete shams. In Nathumalji ki Haveli, they stop you as soon as you enter it. Apparently, the owner has rented out that accommodation :). Salim Singh’s Haveli is another such sham - hardly, worth the visit. We were short on time to catch the bus to Jodhpur, so the hotel owner lied to us and claimed that there is only one haveli and other two names are just nicknames of the same one. We didn’t buy his argument and looked up the havelis ourselves. It is sad that two of them turned out this way. On a brighter side - at least we found the hotel owner was lying and that there are three havelis indeed. Bravo Sherlock.
We alighted the bus to Jodhpur around 4 pm in the evening and reached Jodhpur at around 10 in the night (285 Kms in roughly 6 hours). Luckily we had done our research, so we asked the rickshaw driver to take us to the clock tower, which is apparently the central place in the city. The rickshaw driver helped us find an accommodation and we dined and proceeded for a much needed rest.
Next morning, we had breakfast on the terrace. It was easy from here to see why the city was labeled as the “blue city”. Most houses had copper sprayed on the limestone to keep out insects and pests which gave a distinct bluish tinge to the houses. Post breakfast, we proceeded to see the Meherangarh fort. This is easily the best fort I have seen in India and unbelievably well maintained too. They provide you with the option of an Audio tour, which is highly recommended. The audio tour is primarily a set of headphones and a walkie-talkie set with buttons numbered on them. There are numbered signboards posted throughout the fort. On reaching a signboard, one has to press the appropriate digits on the walkie-talkie set to hear about what happened at that spot. Really kool. I loved the whole experience. The fort was clean and all the memorabilia was very well displayed. Plus the stories were fascinating to hear. All in all, the fort was totally worth the visit. (Inset pictures: Jodhpur - Blue City and Meherangarh Fort)
Next up was Jaswant Thada (Thada meaning place of worship or temple). Jaswant Thada is built in the purest of marbles and is basically a temple with an adjoining cemetery. We clicked a few pictures here and proceeded to see the “Umaid Bhavan Palace”. The palace is really grand and equally amazing is the display of vintage cars next to the manicured lawns. Here is a wiki excerpt on the same - ‘The present owner of the Umaid Bhavan Palace is Gaj Singh. He has divided the Palace into three functional parts - a luxury Taj Palace Hotel (in existence since 1972), the residence of the erstwhile royal family, and an area open to public where a small museum displays pictures, arms, swords, and other artifacts of Jodhpur's royal heritage’. We were ushered into four rooms one after the other where all the artifacts were displayed. It was good to read the Gaj Singh and his ancestors dined with Princes Charles, went to salmon fishing in Scotland, boar hunting in Africa and what not. Hmm. This place smells money. (Inset pictures: Jaswant Thada and Umaid Bhavan Palace)
Our rickshaw driver informed us that we must try the Mawa kachori, so we headed to a sweets shop where we feasted on the kachoris, ghevar and pedas. Post the attack on the sweets shop, we headed to Jaipur for a bus back to Gurgaon.
Overall, I loved the Jaisalmer/ Jodhpur experience. On visiting these places, I realized that people here make up for what nature couldn’t provide. The color in these barren lands comes from people and it is noticeable in everything the people do here from the brightly colored clothes, the fluorescent teekas, the incandescent jewelry to the colorful turbans. No wonder, most cities of Rajasthan, such as Jaipur (the pink city), Jodhpur (the blue city) and Jaisalmer (the golden city) have a color associated with it!!!
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