The Jerusalem of India

Location: Jaislamer
Country: India

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My last night in Pushkar I was witness to something rather unpleasant. This woman of about 40 was sitting around with the pot-heads from my guesthouse and decided to drink a whole glass of medium strength Bhang lassi, which is this drink with marihuana in it. Apparently it is very strong and even people who smoke a lot have to be cautious with it. This woman had never had any drugs before in her life.
When I came along she was in a delusional state and in total paranoia. It was so scary seeing her; she had this crazed look in her eyes and all these weird twitches in her body. I have never seen anything like it.
The group there were very good and took care of her, even though no one even knew who she was, she wasn’t from our guesthouse and was alone. We didn’t know what guesthouse she was from so couldn’t take her back there and there were no spare rooms in our guesthouse. In the end one of the girls bunked with someone else and gave her her room. They managed to get her asleep eventually and I was told that she was ok in the morning.
It was a very scary situation to witness.
And that is a lesson to all you kids out there – stay away from drugs, or at least apply some sense when using them.....

The 10 hour trip from Pushkar to Jaislamer went slow but well.
I was on a sleeper bus, which is just a brilliant invention. It has chairs as normal, but on top of them there are sleeping cubicles. You have the bus windows on one side and also windows with blinds on the other side, so you are completely cut off from the rest of the bus. It is ideal to sleep all the way, but I decided to annoy myself and couldn’t sleep at all.

On the way I met a lovely girl – Moran, ended up taking a room with her in the guesthouse and spending all the time in Jaislamer together. We got on really well and it was a great arrangement, unfortunately I have just said goodbye to her and she is on her way home.

Jaislamer is nothing short of amazing, it is now officially on my top-5 list of the most amazing places I have ever seen. The visit here was just perfect.
It is a fort city, reminds me of very much of Jerusalem. It is so beautiful.

You walk along these narrow streets with all little shops and restaurants. The buildings are all from this light brown stone and the carvings on them are amazing. There are also many different temples and castles all around the fort.

The first day we just spent walking round the fort not being able to put the camera down for a minute. The pictures just won’t do it justice.

The second day we ran in to Aya – the older woman I had gotten friendly with in Pushkar, I was very glad to see her and we ended up spending the whole day with her. We walked round this nice market, some site seeing, card playing and jewelry shopping (I am becoming such a girl here).

The third day, in the morning we went to see this amazing temple in the fort, there was such a strong spiritual feeling inside, beautiful carvings and statues of the gods, all in dim light, unfortunatly couldn't take any pictures inside.

After that came the camel ride. I have to explain something here – mort people come to Jaislamer for a camel safari of 3-4 days. No way would you get me on a camel for that long or sleeping in the nature. Moran being in total agreement with me on this matter.
So our compromise was taking a jeep out of town, then riding a camel for about an hour (about 50 minutes too long for our liking) and watching the sunset on the sand dunes.
The camel ride was as bad as expected (with my backside still hurting), but it was worth doing in order to see the area out of town a bit and to see the amazing sunset.

This morning we went to see the lake. It is no ordinary lake as one would expect, it has all carved stone building in the middle of it.

Then we went to the Jaislamer folklore museum and the desert culture museum (or actually that would be an attempt at museums), both very simple and amateur (the explanation are written by hand), but was nice to see.
We were surprised to see a “chanukia” on display at one of the one of the museums; apparently the Hindus also use it for one of their festivals.

Jaislamer has been a very busy time, felt like a proper tourist. Just so you understand, I has a TV in my room and didn’t get round to watching it once. It was a nice break to the shanti mode.

Tomorrow at 05:00 am I am off to Mount Abu on a 12 hour trip on a government bus, wish me luck.