Jaisalmer and Khuri

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The bus from Jdhpur to Jaisalmer passed through 6 hours of desert. We had taken a private bus, meaning we had plush seats assigned to us. Apart from that, private buses operate in exactly the same way to government buses - despite how many times the commission profiteering travel agent who sells you the ticket assures you that you’ll be traveling on a ‘deluxe’, ‘super deluxe’ or ‘tourist’ bus. Although they claim to be faster than government buses, the private ones are always stopping to pick up and set down passengers along the highway. They go from being jam packed to empty to full regularly, as the locals go to market or to other villages. The locals always have a sack, or box, or a big bag full of something they are taking with them - which they stowe in the middle of the aisle. This exposes the flaw of the ‘luggage surcharge’ - which is applied only to foreigners. It is very similar to the autorickshaw driver who quotes a price in per person terms - when one suggests a more reasonable price for the two people who obviously intend to travel together the rickshaw driver will exclaim: “for two!?” as if this is the most outrageous prospect, as if an autorickshaw is rarely seen carrying 6 or 7 locals. We are yet to discover whether the ‘luggage surcharge’, which is applied to bags that the operators insist go into the boot, is applied when the bags are placed in the aisle along with the bags of grain and goods which are exempt either because it would be unfair to charge a Rajasthani local, or because their goods aren’t in the boot. Mark intends to investigate further.

We arrived in Jaisalmer at around 6pm. As all of India is in the same time zone, and because we had traveled far into the West, it still felt like the late afternoon. Our guidebook had warned us of pesky hotel touts at the bus stop - but we weren’t prepared for the british bloke who tried to persuade us to stay at a particular hotel - he told us when his boss wasn’t looking that he was being fed in exchange for his efforts to lure tourists to the hotel. It was a bit disconcerting that some tourists find themselves that poor in India; food is hardly expensive for those with pounds to spend.

That man let us go, but two locals unfortunately didn’t, follwing us all the way into Jaisalmer’s fort, trying to persuade us to stay at their places. After constantly assuring them that we had no intention of having a look at their hotels, Mark was irritated and on the verge of angry that they were so persistent. After having a look at a couple of options inside the fort - which is full of hotels, rooftop restaurants hand handicraft shops - we found a lovely room. Although we agreed to 450 rs (150 more than our average) it was well worth the ‘splurge’. We had a huge room and a large bathroom, along with a sitting room and a 3x3 metre balcony that extended out from the wall of the fort, so that we were 50m above the streets below. Our room was practically a part of the wall of the fort.

We spent our days in Jaisalmer walking around and exploring, but mostly we were on our balcony or sitting inside in the sunshine. Although there is a Jaisalmer fort museum - complete with audi guide, we were content with the combination of our books and our balcony.

Many people come to Jaisalmer to go on a camel safari in the desert. A camel safari, however, was not on the cards for us. Mark thinks that camels are rather repulsive animals - and doesn’t entertain thoughts of bouncing back and forwards and side to side on a camel late at night. Beth’s thoughts are: ‘not favourable’. We wanted to see a little of desert life though, so we caught the local bus down a typical straight, desert road to Khuri, a desert village. It was here that we spent close to two days doing nothing - apart from moving our chairs every hour or so in order to make optimum use of the sunshine while we read.

We stayed at Badal House, a family run guest house where the room charge includes all meals. This is important as there are no restaurants, and not even a chai shop, in Khuri. The food we had during our time in Khuri was excellent: sweet paratha made with honey for breakfast, and vegetable curry and dal accompanied by millet flour chapatti for lunch and dinner. The tea that was served with breakfast was excellent too - it was typical Indian chai made without the milk, and somehow it managed to taste the same as the milk equivalent. Our time in Khuri passed too quickly for our liking, and so after two nights we returned to the relatively big smoke of Jaisalmer (pop 30,000).

We had planned on spending that evening before catching the well advertised 7am bus to Udaipur. We didn’t want to catch the overnight bus after our previous experience on our way to Jodhpur. However, after we asked around we found that the 7am bus no lponger ran - and that we had the option of either catching a ‘direct’ overnight bus to Udaipur, our next stop. Although we knew it would be painful, we gritted our teeth and opted for the direct bus overnight. We only had time for a quick cholla bhatura (chickpeas with friend roti) before catching our bus.

We had chosen seats for this journey after remembering how the bounce of the bus made breathing difficult when lying on one’s back. Unfortunately the seats were no more comfortable. After perhaps three hours on the bus we had made it to Barmer - which we decided was quite good going after looking at the map. Unfortunately things got steadily worse: although we were on the ‘direct’ bus, we discovered that it was only direct in that it didn’t stop in Jodhpur. We realized that this ‘direct’ bus went the most illogical way to Udaipur when we saw signs for Jodhpur (the opposite direction to where we had oringally been going), for Jaipur (a little further North-East), and Amritsar (that town on the Pakistani border North-West of Delhi). It was only after an hour of traveling east along a dirt road, skidding and sliding when we were faced with oncoming traffic, that we started going the right way again - south. After stopping for dinner at a roadside restaurant at midnight, Mark still found sleep had to come by while Beth pretended to doze. Fortunately this was all made up for over the next week by Udaipur itself.

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Photos

Jaisalmer
From our balcony

Khuri
The cows sat out the front of the house for 2 days. The black one would alternate between lying in the shade and the sun.

Khuri
From the guesthouse

Khuri
Badal House. Our room was on the left hand side, where the double windows are.

Khuri
We went to look for the sand dunes, but we went the wrong way.

Goats
The owner of badal house owned a lot of goats. Here is a cheeky one in our room!