The Scorpio is zipping down at 130 km an hour, which is very good speed by Indian standards. When we stop at a camel cart selling ripe orange kinnus by a roadside orchard, I notice the fine film of dust covering it almost completely. If I were 20 years younger I'd be tempted to write a name on it.
There's sand everywhere. It is swirling in the wind, catching in the tousled eyelashes of honey-coloured camels, slipping into shoes and fingernails. Every time I peel my socks off, or change a thought, it trails down in a fine golden trickle. So please bear with it if this travelogue becomes a slide show of images - one replacing the other with a shudder and a squeal; since the sand seems to have gotten under those too.
The journey
An endless black tarred road stretches between dry dunes interspersed with the tortured outlines of twisted kikar bushes all the way from Sri Ganganagar to Jaisalmer. We drive through parched Lunkaransar where my partner recounts a tragic road accident where as a young Captain, many years back, he saw a soldier bleed to death. I’m glad the road is deserted since I know he is not looking ahead but behind. We sit in shared silence for a while and then the sand shifts and covers his pain too.
A fat peahen cocks her head and waits to cross the road. We give her right of way and she legs it hurriedly. A pair of blue bulls amble along the roadside, engrossed in some bullish conversation. A sign board marks the thatched roof village of the black buck loving Bishnoi tribe, nature worshippers and vegetarians, who don’t even cut trees, using fallen branches as firewood. We stop at a ramshackle old railway crossing that looks like it will fall apart any moment. A faded red goods train that has been groaning in our direction for a while breaks down and collapses just beyond the closed gate making us grimace in disgust. Ace photographer whips out his camera, grits his teeth and steps out into the bone-chilling cold to catch the large orange sun that is quietly settling down over the yellow dunes far in the distance.
There's sand everywhere. It is swirling in the wind, catching in the tousled eyelashes of honey-coloured camels, slipping into shoes and fingernails. Every time I peel my socks off, or change a thought, it trails down in a fine golden trickle. So please bear with it if this travelogue becomes a slide show of images - one replacing the other with a shudder and a squeal; since the sand seems to have gotten under those too.
The journey
An endless black tarred road stretches between dry dunes interspersed with the tortured outlines of twisted kikar bushes all the way from Sri Ganganagar to Jaisalmer. We drive through parched Lunkaransar where my partner recounts a tragic road accident where as a young Captain, many years back, he saw a soldier bleed to death. I’m glad the road is deserted since I know he is not looking ahead but behind. We sit in shared silence for a while and then the sand shifts and covers his pain too.
A fat peahen cocks her head and waits to cross the road. We give her right of way and she legs it hurriedly. A pair of blue bulls amble along the roadside, engrossed in some bullish conversation. A sign board marks the thatched roof village of the black buck loving Bishnoi tribe, nature worshippers and vegetarians, who don’t even cut trees, using fallen branches as firewood. We stop at a ramshackle old railway crossing that looks like it will fall apart any moment. A faded red goods train that has been groaning in our direction for a while breaks down and collapses just beyond the closed gate making us grimace in disgust. Ace photographer whips out his camera, grits his teeth and steps out into the bone-chilling cold to catch the large orange sun that is quietly settling down over the yellow dunes far in the distance.
Sun set over the desert
The rat temple
If you don’t love rats, best not to bother with Desnok, near Bikaner, known for its Karni Devi temple. Beady eyed and twitchy tailed, they are scampering across the floor in hundreds, appearing and disappearing down cracks in the wall. They are clambering up walls and darting around my feet, making the toes curl on the floor moist with you-wouldn’t-want-to-know-what. The shrieks of young girls and the reassuring growls of their boyfriends rent the air. This romantic display is causing smoke to curl out of my ears. Or maybe I’m just jealous since my protector from the rats of this world has handed me his camera bag and disappeared behind an ugly black rodent that hypnotized him by wriggling its whiskers. There is a dirty fellow with matted hippie hair trying to nibble my toenail and my reflex is to kick it roof high but I catch the big moustached doorkeeper’s eye, and put my foot back on the ground reluctantly. Rolling my eyes, I point him instead in the direction of the dark alley from where the feminine giggles are emanating and he strides purposefully in that direction giving me a cheap thrill. Lonely Planet has, only last night, told me that the rats are storytellers who were reincarnated by the goddess Karni Devi hundreds of years back to spite Yamraaj (the god of death) when he refused to bring back to life her favourite devotee – you guessed it - a storyteller. Being a sucker for all stories, I try to look at the rats with some affection wondering where they lived in another life and what stories they told. They are too busy eating. I doubt they’ll be telling any tales in this life and move on refusing prasad from the thali where half a dozen of them are gnawing at yellow bundi laddus. Eating prasad with rat saliva on it is believed to fulfill your desires. Since getting rabies is not on my wish list, I pass.
Jaisalmer – the city that rises from the sand
Cross the four intimidating gates of Jaisalmer fort along the winding road and you get the magical feel of having entered a storybook – an Amar Chitra Katha. If sand dunes could turn into stone with a snap of a magician’s fingers, Jaisalmer is what they would look like. Houses are small and numerous and closely packed like grains of sand. Made from yellow sandstone that the sun’s rays turn to rich gold at dusk, it is also called the golden city. If you are blessed with an active imagination that has borrowed from The Mummy movies it’s easy to believe that the city will one day dissolve into a large pile of sand, leaving behind a sprinkle of gold dust and a colourful red and green bandhni dupatta floating in the air. If unchecked tourism keeps clogging the fort that doesn’t have a sewage system designed for the masses, that is bound to happen sooner than we think.
Jaisalmer’s is the only fort in the country which people never vacated over 900 years, which makes it a living fossil. Nowhere else have I got this feel of what life must have been in the times when fearless Rajput kings ran their horses down the winding non skid path down from the fort, believing that guns were for the cowardly because only a hand to hand fight was worthy of the brave. And where their stately queens looked down from exquisitely carved stone jharokhas dressed in their gold embroidered skirts and odhnis, preferring jauhar to a surrender to the enemy. A part of the fort has been converted into a boring museum but the rest is a fascinating maze of narrow interconnected streets with narrow staircases and exquisite temples and havelies hidden away in nooks and corners. In the fine lattice of lanes, internet cafes do lazy business and shops sell turbans, sun dresses, books and beads. Little boys with wide smiles and bright pagdis dance to folk songs for a tip and bespectacled artists sit in the sun doing miniature paintings on palm leaves.
A German bakery dishes out the most delicious Apple pie and coffee, the Taste of Tibet café tries to choke us with hot and sour soup that they serve with the dish cloth left in it. Closer investigation reveals it to be soggy bread taking a swim. Saransh drags us to the roof-top Restaurante Italiano which makes us worry a bit if we are too shabbily dressed. We relax however when we find washed underwear hanging on a wire for interior decoration. It offers Play station 2, wine, a divine moonlit view of the city and Indian thalis. The young chunky-earringed boy taking orders refuses to divulge the contents of the thali, saying womenfolk (who have frowned at us from a doorway on the way up) decide. Since we haven’t liked the design of womenfolk’s drying underwear, we decide to let it pass and come back to our hotel for a hot Rajasthani meal with some spicy gatte ki sabzi taking our breath away. Saransh sulks.
The sand dunes of Sam
A rickety old jeep that shakes the bones and nearly makes us regurgitate lunch takes us to a patch of desert at Sam (pronounced sum, as in the math book), 45 km away from Jaisalmer. Driver Tan Singh keeps up a continuous commentary touching wistfully upon the gori mems who come as tourists and end up falling in love with proud-moustached camel pullers. Never jeep drivers, I read between the lines. He says it has become a “bin-ness” here with rich white wives counting as another source of income. He also shakes his head sadly at how tourism has destroyed childhood in the villages. Parents don’t want to send boys to school because pulling a camel in the dunes or working as a restaurant waiter gets them money faster than education would. That makes me feel quite guilty placing a note in the little hand of 11-year-old Rawari Ram who has taken us to the dunes on his camels Kalu (Black); Lalu (Red) and Ratiya (Darkness). And camels remind me that we also meet Bhanwara Ram jee, a handsome camel trainer who can speak to them. He gives us a quick course in camel conversation, teaching us how to ask them to sit, stand, eat and go drink water. He also introduces us to Mr Bikaner, who won the Desert Festival camel beauty pageant last year for his lovely long eyelashes and bushy ear hair. Showing all the attitude of a celebrity, he ignores us completely.
Songs around the bonfire
The dune safari ends with Rajasthani folk songs around the bonfire. I pull my cap lower over my ears and reach out for the warmth of the fire as the air rings out with the beautiful ‘Mhare hivdaa mein lagi ree kataar haa, Morni, baga ma bole aadhi raat maa’ (when the peahen calls at midnight, it cuts through my heart like a knife) that I once saw Sridevi dance to in a Yash Chopra film. Tonight there is a nimble footed man, dressed as a girl, turning his waist and swinging his hips to the sound of the drums. He is doing it even better than her. The song lifts and travels across the moonlit night. The man singing it has the smell of damp earth in his voice and a sandpaper quality to his words that makes them rub right against my soul. I told you earlier, didn’t I! The sand is everywhere.
Rat storytellers at the Karni mata temple at Desnok
The city born from the desert
Kids wait for tourists and tips. A ruined childhood?
A beautiful haveli by the roadside. Believe it or not, a middleclass household runs right under
Beauty lies in the eyelashes, and the ear hair of the camel
Only at dusk do you realize why Jaisalmer is called The Golden City
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