Gorbandh Palace Jaisalmer

... option, but defeat or surrender, so they built a large fire below a Palace wall 9near the current main gate. Then all the women would jump from the Palace wall into a huge fire.Their handprints are marked on the walls to this day. Following this event, the Rajputs would dress themselves in saffron cloth, then ride out of the fort in one giant saffron wave. There mission: kill as many of the enemy as possible before their ...

... sporting a turban, who said he would let us see his 4ft moustache if we gave him 10 rupees! so,of course, naturally we said "yes please"!
ate some lunch before leaving Jaisalmer for the desert dunes where we would be saddling up on some camels.
The desert safari was good fun. we rode our camels out onto the dunes, stopping at a small village along the way and having a song sung for us by some local kids. We ...

... s shop where we left without buying anything. Back at the parking lot we met Rampal who returned us to our hotel. We grabbed our already packed suitcases and hit the road-back to Jodhpur, happy to be leaving Jaisalmer. The truth is that we found the city to be a bit primitive. Not so much in its physical structure, but in its social environment. We felt that the caste system was alive and well and the people were superstitious and small ...

... and spend one night in a gorgeous old haveli on the edge of town.We're kind of in off season so we have the huge swimming pool pretty much to ourselves and spend a marvelous 26 hours doing pretty much nothing. Well, our excuse is that we need to recharge our batteries before our 19 hour train journey to Delhi, where we are meeting up with Nikki and Rumi, hurrah!

... many people. This is why I was so happy to meet Mr. India. Mr. India had his flaws...he sounded like Chewy Chewbacca and had quite the odour, but he was very strong, friendly, never tried to sell me anything AND he wasn't human. Mr. India is a camel who takes tourists for trips in the Thar Desert. The daily price for a camel safari in India is roughly equal to a generic veggie burger at a generic ...

... from nearby dunes. I will assume you have all riden a bike at some point..now, imagine you rode this bike for 20 days straight, and that is how our bums were feeling after our one hour trot to the dunes. Sunset in the desert was spectacular to say the least but the whole night was so special that i wont dwell on every single word that exists to explain just how much. So we then headed back on our camels to our camp (now that our bums were sore enough...why not see if ...

... like people were having a lot of fun. The outfits were amazingly colourful and people were letting their hair down a lot more than at your typical western wedding. The hotel owner suggested we get married again here Indian - style!! It would be a laugh... we were almost tempted! Other impressions of India so far... ANIMALS- There are cows everywhere in the towns and even walking down the middle of main roads. They all have the same serene expression ...

If we believe everything we're told you're never too far away from disease in India. Thankfully the one malady they haven't succumbed to yet on the sub-continet is Country & Western music, though it's arguable that if they ever did decide to start twanging banjos they'd have plenty to inspire them in Rajastan. Welcome to India's Wild West! Isolated, conservative, pious, caked in desert - this vast state is an authentic slice of India, a place where men are men and ...