The Golden City
Trip Start
Aug 28, 2005
1
30
37
Trip End
Dec 10, 2005
Jaisalmer,
India
Friday, November 25, 2005
Jaisalmer is known as the Golden City of India and is famous for the Jaisalmer Fort referred to as the "Jewel in Rajasthan's Crown", which they say is the only living fort left in the world. From a distance, it really does look like a giant sand castle raising up out from the desert. Although specialists say that the fort is suffering from all the tourists and 300+ families still living inside the fort itself, we couldn't resist the opportunity to stay inside. They say that in years to come, tourists will not be allowed to stay inside so for now we were lucky to stay inside. The guesthouse we stayed in was the Moti Palace and was about 500+ years old. The fort is just amazing, the main palace was build 850 years ago and is beautiful
Camel Safari
. The narrow little streets are lined with houses, restaurants, shops and guesthouses and wandering around are cows, goats, dogs and even a camel which helps out in the restoration work! The buildings originally lived in by the wealthy stand out and are called Havali and have incredible balcony and front design work all carved beautifully from the stone. Apart from the palace, the other main attraction inside the fort is the 2 Jain temples which are also just amazing stonework. It is hard to believe people were living like this long long before NZ was up and running!
Being in the desert, Jaisalmer is famous for Camel Safaris. There were two things I was most looking forward to in India and 1 was doing a camel safari and the other was seeing the Taj Mahal. I had heard rave reviews from people who had done camel safaris and was really excited. We chose to do a 2 day/1 night safari through our guesthouse and I must say that this is the biggest disappointment of my 3 months travelling! I didn't like the camels, I especially didn't like riding the camel, the desert is far from my fav place, our camel drivers didn't speak very good English so wouldn't talk to us, the food was terrible, they parked us up for the night amongst hundreds of dung beetles which we spent all night making sure they didn't come into our bed and climb on us, sand is soooo uncomfortable to sleep on, our camp fire ran out very early, the camel drivers took off and left us for hours after dinner to find the silly smelly camels but the American couple that was also with us was cool which was good and they gave us bottled water and oranges
Jaisalmer Fort
. From talking to others, sounds like we got a bung deal. I couldn't and didn't want to get back on the camel after lunch so walked the last 2 hours. They were surprised that we kept up with the camels the whole way! I was so glad to get back onto the jeep and get back into Jaisalmer. Dan was quite good at camel riding and enjoyed that part a little more than me but I don't like riding horses, didn't enjoy riding the elephant for more than 30mins and definitely did not like riding the camel. I have now resigned from riding all animals!One of the cool things we did here was get a silver ring made up each. We stumbled across HariOm Jewellers shop and met 3 brothers Om Ji, Roop Kishore and Raja. They showed us some of the rings that Roop handcrafts and were instantly amazed. Dan ordered a ring that has the 7 Wonders of the World plus Big Ben and Mt Fuji carved into it and engraved. Initially when I looked at them, although they were all incredible, nothing instantly jumped out at me until Mr. Roop came into the shop and showed me a ring he had just finished that day that took him 9 days to make and had flower designs off the Jaisalmer Havali buildings carved into it and that grabbed me. He invited us back to his house to see how he makes the rings and for a Chai tea. He needed to resize the ring he had just finished to fit my finger and needed to start Dan's ring which he said he could do in 4 days which usually takes him about 7 days to make. It was so awesome to see him at work on our rings and chat to him about his work. He trained under his father who once engraved 827 Indian characters into 1 grain of rice! Such a steady hand and great eyesight! We are stoked with the rings, which we have been getting so many comments on and it was fun sitting around chatting and drinking chai tea with the guys. That will be one of the good memories from India!
Jaisalmer is just the coolest city I have ever seen. We are hoping the rest of the cities we visit will be just as good and for now, we are free from Delhi belly.
