Jaisalmer was founded in 1156 by a leader of the Bhati Rajput clan named Jaisal. The Bhati’s, who trace their lineage back to Krishna, ruled right through until Indian Independence in 1947. By the 16th Century, Jaisalmer was prospering from its position on the camel-train routes between India and South East Asia. Under British rule, the rise of sea trade through places like Mumbai and the railways saw a decline in importance and population of Jaisalmer. Today tourism and the area’s many military instillations are the pillars of the city’s economy.
A 5:20am start was a bit too much for me this morning, but after showering I met the auto-rickshaw driver…and his son. It seems that starting an auto-rickshaw is a two person job; one person to sit in the drivers seat with their foot on the breaks, and another to remove the chocks from underneath the front wheels.
Driving the streets of Jodhpur at 6am was actually very interesting. The rickshaw took me through otherwise busy markets streets before any of the hubbub, seeing the cows getting grass distributed into the streets (I was actually wondering how, if they lived in the city with no green space, the cows actually get fed properly).
Once at the bus station, it was actually really difficult to figure out where to stand, and where to get the bus from. Evidently you wait until the bus turns up and then buy a ticket, it’s chaos, but it does seem to work!
I did get on the bus eventually. It took almost six hours to get to Jaisalmer, and a lot of that was on stretches of land that didn’t appear to have any road surface, just dirt. It was quite bouncy!
In the Lonely Planet guide, it warns you to be very wary of anyone at the bus or train stations, meaning touts. As I disembarked the bus, my bag was literally taken out of my hand. I got quite annoyed actually. It’s very full on. It was the typical conversation where you tell the person that you have a room booked and then they tell you that the place has burnt down, or that his brother can get you a room for cheaper, and so on and so forth. As we drove towards the hotel that I wanted to go to, he kept telling me that it was a very bad hotel and that he had a hotel that was cheaper and better…now I’m not sure what he thinks tourists do before they come to India, but I’m pretty sure most people would have read at least a little bit about the town that they are visiting. Everywhere you read about Jaisalmer tells you to be wary of the ‘Camel-Safari’ Men! Apparently they offer you rooms in their hotels for silly prices like ₨100 and then when you don’t actually want to go on a camel safari they either kick you out or hike the price of your room up.
Now obviously I’m the most anxious and anal person when it comes to sorting out travel and holidays etc. I was not going to just go to some random person’s hotel because they tell me it’s good! He even got out his Rough Guide (from 2010) and showed me that his hotel was in it…I still insisted to be taken to the hotel that I had initially wanted to go to!
Once there he waited for me to go inside the hotel, just incase, and whilst I was in there I told the owner of the nice hotel. He told me that he has had groups of tourists in the past who have come to his hotel following a bad encounter with these people ‘…they are weeping…these are bad camel men…’. This more or less sealed the deal for me, I just wanted to take the room to piss of the camel man.
The hotel that I had chosen: ‘Hotel Renouka’ is actually very nice. Initially I asked about air conditioning and then considered having a room without it. The owner said that I can have the room for ₨450 tonight and just have the fan to cool myself and then if, in the morning, I decided that I’d like air conditioning he’ll turn it on and then charge me the higher price, but only if I use the air conditioning! I do think this is because he wanted the trade, but he didn’t have to do that, he could have just charged the higher rate…
After I had settled myself into the room, I took my passport down to reception, filled my details into the big hotel signing in book, sorted out the washing, took it down to be laundered and THEN read my book for forty-five minutes! It was lovely and relaxing, also very productive. It felt weird to be running errands.
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