The Forts of Rajasthan

Since Ahmedabad, we have visited Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, two cities with tremendous forts and palaces sitting atop hills. Jodhpur is home to Meharangah Fort, built in the early 19th century by Maharaja Man Singh. It is surrounded by the blue city, thousands of small houses painted indigo-blue to indicate the homes of those of the Brahmin caste.

From there, we took a very noisy overnight train to Jaisalmer, a 12th century sandstone fort and palace. Due to excessive water use by the hotels, restaurants and residents, the desert Fort is slowly beginning to collapse. It is the oldest living fort in the world and there are many restoration groups working to fix the plumbing and overdevelopment problems in order to keep the fort in its original place- atop the hill. Yesterday evening, we packed into a jeep with 7 other Indian tourists to Sam Sand Dunes Park, a pretty isolated area of the Thar desert where we rode camels to the highest point of the dunes and watched the sun set. While I thought the camel ride through the desert was romantic, S found it to be unbearably uncomfortable.
We are in the most touristed state in India - Rajasthan. While is easy to understand why so many tourists come to Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, it does dramatically increase the hassle-factor and we have started telling all the touts that we hate shopping. They are usually stymied by this and leave us alone. Despite the overwhelming amount of tourist infrastructure, we have successfully been able to explore less visited parts of these areas, which has been very rewarding. While exploring some gardens in Jodhpur, we met two Nepali brothers who own one of the millions of tourist handicrafts shops in Thamel, Kathmandu. We shared chai with them while the older brother recounted to us how he met his wife through her accidentally dialing him as a wrong number.

Traveling through the desert has been extremely cold. We have been wearing our thermal underwear and wool socks everyday! Tonight we head to Bikaner where a 16th century fort and camel rides through the desert are the primary tourist attractions. I think we will be skipping out on the camel trek, given S's 45 minutes of pain last time.

Rajasthan- Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Bikaner