Jaisalmer – The Golden City, the land known for desert safari’s.
It was month of November and wanted to get away from my daily routine and just listed out some places that can be explored for the winter and this place definately struck me, desert – a place which till that time I had only seen in pictures and read in my school days Geography.
So a plan was set with my two best buddies, and we made it happen. (Sucess!!!! – need to highlight as most of the times it doesn’t happen 🙂 )
We woke up at 3 am in the morning got fresh and don’t know if it was the excitement or any other reason we got ready in time, and Cab was waiting down for us to take to Mumbai Airport. We were not at all sleepy, made fun of each other enroute Mumbai. Had a small tea break in middle (Poha costed us 70 bucks / pax :0 ). And finally we reached Mumbai International Airport at 7:30 am.
We quickly got fresh and had some breakfast in KFC (thats the place for some reason I feel a bit cheaper in airport 🙂 ) and boarded our flight (It was first time for one of my buddy and we two were just scaring him up) to add more it was a Jet Airways Plane (service stopped at that time) bought on lease by Spicejet and even the sticker of Jet Airways not completely removed (plus the dreadful Boeing 737 Max written on it :D)
There are Direct Flights from Mumbai to Jaisalmer which if booked two months prior with offer can get you a ticket for a price around Rs 4000 / pax
But once we took our seat, we were far asleep and for next two hours till we landed we took a good nap. offcourse we didnt miss the take off and landing reaction of our best friend travelling first time 🙂
While landing we could see lot many windmills and whole lot of barren land, no vegetation and could hardly spot any house.
Finally we came out of plane and we got to feel the weather for the first time and let me tell you there are no words to describe it and you need to visit it yourself to experience it, It was around 11:30 am and the temperature read 21 degrees, and the cool air flowing around just made us wait and keep appreciating the weather, put a tent next to airport and spend your time . It was cloudy (So the Sun screen lotion we bought was of no use :P).
Jaisalmer Airport is Defence airport so please don’t click photos.
And our trip Started, we had our Trip Package pre booked so our driver was waiting for us and he took us to the hotel to get fresh. The roads were so good and so was the weather (I couldn’t stop appreciating it !!!) , but the driving of localities wasn’t 😦 (including our driver). they were a bit rash in driving but nature wise they were good. enroute we had glimse of city and each and everything is built up of yellow sandstones and thats where it got the name the Golden City (And not because of Thar Desert as I thought before reaching here.)
We reached the hotel and first thing we did before getting fresh is had a cup of tea (Tea Lovers 😀 ), and next thing was not getting fresh but we straight away headed to the roof top of hotel and let me tell you the view of fort was next level and we were just feeling proud of ourselves that we had come to the right place.
We did some photo shoot headed to get fresh as we couldnt waste more time as we had lot more activities to do for the day, We quickly had our Lunch (food was average tastewise) and we went down to have a word with hotel owner who had planned the day for us.
As per our initial discussion he had mentioned we will get a Etios Sedan car for our site seeing, but he gave us a better option and that is Jeep for all site seeing and jeep safari through outskirt area for a private safari rides, now our happiness had doubled and we couldn’t hide those from our face.
We headed out, but a rare incident happened, it started RAINING in Jaisalmer.
We were a bit dissapointed of how the next half day will span out, but our new Driver was very good and motivating us all along that it will stop raining (It was unseasonal rains) and you will have great time. The only step at that time we took is change our footwear 😛
From the Picture Itself you can get a glimse of where exactly we headed to (right corner in above pic). Yes, Kuldhara Village – One of India’s top listed Haunted Village. I had read a lot of stories on Internet, but our Driver (who was a Jailsalmer Localite – Rajput Marwadi) told us its all fake and that its not haunted anymore. But entry for this village is closed at night.For more details and stories surrounding Kuldhara Village you can Google it !!! . We quickly roamed around the village and had some snaps, before heading to our next spot
Our next stop was Amar Sagar Adinath Jain Temple. It was a calm place and Architecture of temple was really good and by this time our eyes were already acceptng the Golden colour of this city, except for the rains which was irritating a bit at this time.
And it was almost 4 pm by now and slight drizzling still happening, the happy faces started to struggle and were turning into sad before the jeep ride started through to the Dune area, well I must say the roads were so awesome and cool air flowing with slight drizzle, and the speed with which driver was driving, the happiness just broke out the max level it had in us, it was so much fun that we even didnt stop to click any pictures and were just enjoying the ride. Splash of water, windwills around, cool breeze flowing and straight roads and no one infront or following us. Some things will remain in memory even though we didnt click pictures and store them.
But it was not going to end over here, we started offroading and this time through routes surrounded by windmills and cactus all over. We were just enjoying the max we could and GIF below will just give a small glimse of it.
And as we moved ahead we could see the dunes which were never ending and to add to our delight it stopped raining and we could see the sun peeping out of the clouds.
No words to describe the fun we had in the Dunes, There was no one there except we three and Romeo and David (name of the camels) along with their care taker, taking us through the dunes and watching the sun set. I was witnessing the dunes for the first time and riding Camel was fun too. before we stepped down soon so that the poor animal dont need to take our burden and just walked and ran over the dumes like school kids. took some snaps and even though our batteries ran out by this time (both camera and ours), we enjoyed whatever time we spent over there before heading to our tents.
As we were moving to our Tent site, we were tired (so much that we didn’t click a single photo). Got fresh, kept phones for charging in Swiss tents and we went to charge ourselves with some tea and onion pakodas and we enjoyed some traditional folk songs and dance. We had our dinner which was a tradional Rajasthani Thali and went out for a walk.
The tent was surrounded by Dunes where we took a walk and sat till midnight to chill before we went to sleep . A day added to our memory to remember. 🙂
We were to talk and chill out but weather was so chilling that we fell asleep and directly woke up at 7 am in the morning. We were lazy enough to start our day. Clicked some photos as earlier day we didn’t. and had a must cup of tea.
The Sunrise had just happened and it was time for our Jeep Safari in Dunes. We quickly got fresh and set out on 4*4 Gypsy safari over the Dunes. Was real adventure to stand at the backside of Gypsy as it drives around like a roller coaster over the Dunes.
The second day also started well and by now we were done with the activities in the Dunes and had to head back to the Jaisalmer City. But must say a night stay with activities in Dunes is a must in bucket list of any traveller. Now it was time to say Good Bye to this beautiful place. But before that we had our breakfast and let me tell you the tea over here is one of the best that we had five cups each in the morning 🙂
Now we were back to Jaisalmer City Hotel where we had landed first and we just kept our luggage in the locker room and set out walking to explore the Jaisalmer city and fort.
For first it was time of the Golden Fort – Jaisalmer Fort. The View from outside was amazing, but as we entered it was way too crowded with too much commercialization.Later we got to know that there are many hotel stays within the fort. The architecture is somewhat you can’t shift your eye from. We took a guide who guided us through the places and explained us the details about the fort.
We than had our lunch in hotel just opposite to the fort and walked ourselves to our next destination which was Patwon ki Haveli. We witnessed some nice architecture work and carvings on the roof and walls and couldn’t stop clicking pictures.
Finally as it was 4 pm in the evening and we had a train to catch for our next destination we had to quickly wrap up and walk to the Hotel to collect our luggage and head straight to the Railway station. We had tea at hotel itself and Hotel manager was kind enough to drop us to the station.
Jailsalmer is one of the awesome place which everyone need to explore and would recommend it to everyone irrespective of age group. Signing off till next Destination :).
There is Train From Jailsamer to Jodhpur at 5 pm.
The Total Package Including Stay, Site Seeing, Safari and Dinner costed us approx Rs 2700 per head
Travel Diary 