Back from Sam

19 Oct 2010

After a curried rice breakfast we hit the open road again, but not before I tried the third of the dancing lady’s tricks; a bed of nails. Turns out the nails weren’t sharp; standing on the bed of nails is only uncomfortable – not agonising.

Proof I'm as hard as nails!

Back on the road we passed one of the many English Wine and Beer Shops. These often are out in the middle of nowhere, certainly not anything like our off licences.

We passed yet more camels. Take a close look at the photo and you will see that the camels front legs are tied together; ‘scuttled’. The camel owners do this to allow the camels free but to stop them running miles away. There are often very few trees that the camels could be tied to.

Since we couldn’t find it on our way out to the dunes, we decided to take a look at Kuldhra on the way back to Jaisalmer. It is a town that is now completely empty. According to the story, the Maharaja wanted to marry a girl in the town. The townsfolk were placed in an awkward position by this proposal since the girl’s caste and the Maharaja’s caste were incompatible. Rather than rejecting the Maharaja they decided to vacate their town and disappear. Hundred of towns were vacated overnight and nobody knows where the people went!

The town was very eerie, especially since we were also the only people there.

Khuldra- a ghost town

Most of the houses were simple one room buildings, but there were a couple of bigger buildings, one a temple the other a larger house.

We also found their wells which were deep cuttings with stairs all the way down to the water line.

We got back safe and sound and handed the motorbike back to the owner and wandered back to the hotel. Not sure what to do with our last remaining afternoon in Jaisalmer we decided to wander into town for one last explore. Whilst wandering around the backstreets we found this girl totally blocking the way.

Then turning the corner we came across two boys running around with fireworks, lighting them then running off. What’s amazing is how young the boys were, they can’t have been much older than ten! At least they checked for overhead wires before setting them off...

The view from our roof-top restaurant

Later on in the evening we caught our sleeper train back to Jodhpur so that we could catch the bus to our final Rajasthan destination; Udaipur.