Jaisalmer

We’re presently in the middle of the Indian Thar desert, in a fortified town called Jaisalmer. And this is a world away from anything I’ve ever seen. The fort is like a giant sandcastle! Literally, a big triangle of 99 curved outer-wall sections, filled with a thriving town inside full of winding alleyways, shops, hotels, and (as usual) cows. Very much lived in, but it does feel like you’re in a novel or on a different planet.

The downside of being in the desert is the wind – we’ve been blasted by a sandstorm, so have taken shelter in our nice hotel (which again looks like something from Arabian Nights)! The other downside is that storms lead to power cuts! The sandstorm developed into a thunder and lightning storm (complete with more rain than Jaisalmer is meant to have in all of April), and knocked out the power for a few hours. Which wasn’t such a bad thing - thanks to Georg’s leaving present (an extremely powerful torch) we managed to navigate across town for dinner, avoiding cowpats successfully! It was actually almost magical to see the town lit only with candles (and Georg’s torch).

Jaisalmer is literally in the middle of nowhere – out on the Western edge of India, not a million miles from the border with Pakistan. The train we took from Jaipur took 15 hours to get here (but it did seem to spend a very very long time stationary!). We spent most of the journey trying to sleep, or chatting to a couple from Ireland in the bay across from us. They were doing a practically identical world trip to us, except in reverse order (and so they’re nearly at the end or it) – it was good to hear about some of the places we’ll be visiting in a few months time.