The giant sandcastle
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
1
75
272
Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Jaisalmer,
India
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
We went on a little excursion in the morning to see if we could find some havelis in the backstreets of the town. Havelis are extremely ornate houses that were constructed in a bunch of Rajastani towns. The first one we stumbled across was still occupied, so we could only look at the outside. It is pretty special though. In our search for the second haveli (which we never found), we walked along an old street to find out that almost all the houses were carved and decorated in some way. We came out onto the third house we were looking for, which was privately owned. We paid a ticket and were escorted upstairs by our "guide."
This was a strange situation from the start
front of haveli
. A lot of places have unofficial guides that tourists assume are included in the ticket price and then slam them with high fees at the end. So one is never sure whether these people are scamming you or just being friendly. But what the guy was saying was pretty interesting so I just figured we'd give him a tip at the end. He spoke really good English but he spoke very fast and his words had sort of a hypnotic effect on me, meaning I had to let it sink in before I could understand what he said. We passed an older British couple coming down the stairs, and the guy said something to the tune of, "You're wasting your money" as he passed. I was still trying to figure out whether that meant the entrance ticket or the guide while he was explaining what haveli meant (a building cooled by air) and said that there were spaces between floors for a reason. At this point he apparently saw something he didn't like because he said something about us not being interested and wanting to see the place for ourselves. Then he disappeared up to the roof. We were both left waiting for him to tell us what the spaces between floors were for.
It just got more awkward after that. He stood and sulked while we self-consciously looked around. Erin asked him what the spaces were for and he started again, then said something about how tourist's time is important and he didn't want to waste it
haveli tower
. We laughed and said no no we want to hear what you have to say. Then something we said or didn't say put him off again and he muttered something and went off again. At this point it was getting uncomfortable and when Erin asked him about something he showed me a incense holder and told me to smell it. I was moving to do so (with perhaps a little delay), when he snatched it away and said something about us not wanting to do what he said. At this point I was getting pretty angry that no matter what we did we couldn't please this guy, so we left. It still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I can venture a guess that our tour guide had an unpleasant encounter with the group in front of us, and was still bitter and took it out on us. In any case, we had a great lunch at a fancier restaurant near our place and then I went off wandering for a bit while Erin went back. I passed through the city and down to a man-made lake which was water storage for the fort. Apparently the large gate was built by a prostitute. I also went through a rather dusty but interesting desert culture museum.
There are a bunch of sweet shops in Jaisalmer and I wanted to try a couple, so we went to a shop and started pointing at things. We got maybe 12 different sweets for about $2. We tried Internet but all the connections in Jaisalmer apparently run really really slowly (like they don't work) in the evening time. So we gave up. We tried some sweets back in the hotel. Half of them were soaked in really sweet honey (it was a sweetmeat, and tasted like it). The other half was of fudgelike consistency. It was way too much for us to eat. I liked some of them but Erin couldn't stomach most of it. We ended up giving them to the camel drivers the next day.
~Travis
