India Day 7 - Jaisalmer

Added: December 19, 2008

Friday 7th November. We woke up in train, it was uneventful night, it passed very well. We had still 6 hours to go and based on arrival to the last station we are late about 1 hour. Not so bad.

I took Azithromycin, followed by stomach ache (I confirmed it was caused by that pill just recently). We stayed in lying position for a few hours more, because nobody asked us to sit properly. I started to like these trains. They are cheaper than hostel, they just miss hot water :-)

As time passes it is getting hot, because air conditioning is not on. We are passing through dessert for last several hours so there is no wonder it is getting hotter.

Eventually I got up and sat opposite to my berth as Zuzka was still sleeping and it was not possible to sit when middle berth is deployed in AC/3. After some time a guy came, wanting to sell accommodation, but I got rid of him as soon as I realized that (described in the first part of series thoroughly).

To my big surprise we arrived to Jaisalmer on time. I do not get it how they do that :-)

Jaisalmer

As we got out of train hot weather have struck us. It was the hottest place we have been to. We passed quickly to parking lot, a lot of touts surrounding us. They would certainly got us ;-) if Danish guy did not call us that our taxi is ready.

This was really interesting. As Canadians and Danish couple went to same hostel it was normal they were picked up by the one taxi. But we were heading to different one that did not provide their own pickup, but still they asked the other hostel to pick us too. Very nice of them! They even went to show us where ours is.

Hotel Shreenath Palace

We have arrived to our hostel at about 1pm. Taxi took us inside the fort, where it stopped and we continued by walking. Hostel is located directly inside fort.

We were looking forward for this hostel as it was promising very nice room. We realized we reserved plain room, but still owner was so nice that he offered us one of those beautiful rooms for the same price (photos will be posted next time, I do not want to mix nice and ordinary photos here). It is 450 years old, very nicely decorated as most of buildings in Jaisalmer are. It belonged to Governor of (now I do not remember - either Jaisalmer or Rajastan) at one time, his descendants are living there now.

So we showered, rested a bit and went to explore Fort. Zuzka put on her saree that asked to be worn. Because we went without backpacks it was the best opportunity we had till now.

A view directly from our room. It is not the nicest view you could get, but I like it a lot. It has a character. Notice that black container. We could see them everywhere and they could explain nicely why showers do not have really hot water usually.
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A couple of photos from immediate surroundings of Shreenath Palace. Narrow and complicated streets. Electricity cables are everywhere (that drove me crazy at times).
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Jaisalmer Palace

Everybody acknowledged that Zuzka has indeed bought very nice saree in Agra. I am not sure if she was aware of that before, but there were no doubts now. I can imagine that men shouting "Indian woman!" and "Beautiful saree!" would not be satisfying a lot, but women said the same and also asked where she bought it. She looked like a princess!

We were rambling for some time around Fort. It takes some time to get oriented there. Jain temples were closed, but we have found Jaisalmer Palace. Very nice, but those electricity cables around!

Entrance was 250 Rs, audio guide was included. Great! We dove in and spent there several hours (or it looked like so).

As we finished exploration of Palace I was tired (as I hate hot weather and I did not eat much due stomach problems I had for some time) so we rambled around for some time more and went to hotel. We will have still several hours tomorrow to explore Jaisalmer "properly".

Palace from outside. Our hotel has similar design (bit simpler), but it was not easy to take photo of, because of narrow street.
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Princess Zuzka :-) Audio guide does not make the best prop for royal photography I guess :-(
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Jaisalmer town.
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Sophisticated funnel for catching all 15mm of rain in year. All floors are done in way that water can flow to lower place until all is collected. See also next photo.
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