Do you know what we did this November? — p1
It’s vacation time !
My husband’s friend lives in Chandigarh and he has been inviting us over there for the last 4 yrs. We were postponing the trip for one or other reason until this Nov.
If you think, we made a trip to Chandigarh, you are only partially right. :) Somehow, the trip’s track changed to ‘Royal Rajasthan’ with Chandigarh also in the picture.
Jaipur to Jaisalmer
We landed in Jaipur and the first place in the agenda is a road trip from Jaipur to Jaisalmer. My husband loves driving. So, we took a ‘Myles’ car on rent to get the self driving experience. Roads are fairly nice to drive. Inspite the warning “Avoid late hour driving”, we did end up with a late hour (not purposefully) drive in the pitch dark road. It was a drive to remember. Definitely. We saw camels crossing the roads joyfully, spotted a deer (surprising though) and a lots of cows roaming across the road. Once in a while, we came across light from the road side shops and some people. :)
It was a great relief when we reached the hotel. We stayed in a place called ‘Hotel Fifu’. We loved the food there and we somehow liked the ‘Dal-Bhati-Churma’ from here better than other places we tried. The room was compact and comfortable. We were chatting with the owner. He seemed to have travelled a lot. He mentioned it was joy for him to be in areas with river/ocean/any water body when we he visited southern india.
We visited the famous Jaisalmer fort. It’s the only living fort in Rajasthan (i guess). Within the fort, you will find places for king and queen (like any other fort), some Jain temples with note-worthy architecture, museum, canons and a lots of houses. There are view points in the fort from where you can catch a quick look of the entire city. Jaisalmer is called the “Golden City” because of the yellowish stone used in the construction.
But, what will be always part of my memory about Jaisalmer is our guide. We were intending to take audio guide but when we met him, we couldn’t say no. But, no regrets.
He is a very old fellow still eager about his job. He is living within the fort since his childhood. He showed us around the fort. I don’t follow Hindi much. He repeated everything twice for me with English words substituted where ever possible. He took pictures of us clearing the crowd and asked us to validate everytime if it’s ok.
You need to buy tickets for carrying a phone inside the Jain temples in the fort. Since, we were not willing to leave our phones outside, we got tickets for both of our phones. Our guide ensured we take pictures using both the phones. :)
When the tour is over, he walked down with us almost till the Auto stand. I was partly sad that he had to work at this age but was happy that we ended up with him that day even though we were ignoring many guide offers on the way.
Next is the much awaited Sand dunes. We had booked for a Camel ride to sand dunes. Man, riding on a camel is scary. It’s tall and i felt no balance on the top. Once we hit the sand dunes, i felt a sense of happiness. Yey!! I’m in the only desert of India, The Thar Desert.
We wandered in the desert, ran up and down the steep sand hills and watched Sunset from there.
Apart from these, we also visited the Royal Cenotaphs and Kuldara, fondly called as the haunted village.
An interesting observation we had about the sand stones used in the construction. While we were at a Jain temple, we were standing on a stoned pathway and it felt chill even though it was hot outside. We weren’t sure if it’s the property of the stone. Anyway, such things will be a boon to the people there for the kind of climate they have.
To be continued..
>> p2