More than one fleece in the desert

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Cash only, Mick opines. After emptying our coffers to pay this most expensive segment of the trip, we request a cash receipt with tax ID. Mick promises to send one later. Sure! Having enjoyed our safari we leave feeling a little like the desert sheep, fleeced. North and then west, we head for the garrison town of Jaisalmer, just 100 km from the Pakistan border. The scrubby flat desert stretches away in all directions, unbroken except for small holdings and piles of rubbish. There’s not much between Osiyan and our destination except the dilapidated fort at Pokron, which despite Lonely Planet’s indifferent description holds a surprise in store.



Having wandered through the fort, a 15 minute outing, and resisted the guide who demonstrated his art by pointing significantly at round iron spheres and solemnly identifying them as cannon balls, we end up back at the main courtyard and entrance to a distinctly smarter part of this crumbling edifice: 7 beguiling suites straight out of the Arabian Nights give this hotel a boutique cachet in what is an otherwise unprepossessing town. Jill “Kiwi” Poswillo is disappointed to learn that we’ve just missed the NZ High Commissioner who checked out at 10. The tax payers among you will hope her entourage slept in the more modest accommodation of the Fort Hotel.



Our wayside “tourist” restaurant serves a simple but uncommonly good repast: Dum Aloo (potato in a tomato sauce with dried fruits and cashews, spiced cauliflower and chapatti fresh off the grill with ice cold Kingfisher to ease its passage. On learning our nationality, the waiter’s reflex response (common to his class) is to name the former Australian cricket captain: ”Ricky Pointing” he beams.



Overloaded lorries, Jain pilgrims clad from head to toe in white, camels, cows and carts all share the straight black strip. From 5 km off we spy the crenulated walls and sandstone houses rising from the desert sand, bathed in golden rays of late afternoon sun. We hurry to check in to our look-alike 😉 accommodation and make poste haste for “sunset” lookout, which also happens to be the Brahmin burial ground and funeral pyre. No place to toast marshmasllows over the still shouldering pile.



The spectacular sunset does not disappoint, illuminating both medieval and latter day fortifications while bringing into stark relief against the pastel sky hundreds of wind turbines, which power a surfeit of military installations as well as flood lighting along the Pakistan border.



After roaming through the market resisting entreaties to examine every “handicraft” item in every shop, which stallholders spill from cellophane packages at the merest hint of a pause in one’s purposeful stride, we head up the stairs of a handsome Haveli to the evocatively named rooftop restaurant Saffron. A delicious meal complemented by barely teenage Rajput troubadours provided a pleasant end to an otherwise uneventful day of touring.

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