Random Notes from the Great Thar Desert

Currently writing from Jaisalmer, a city in western Rajasthan. This is a desert state and Jaisalmer, founded in the late 12th century prospered on the trade of gold, silver, sandalwood and opium. These days, it sustains itself on tourist and military spending. This is about as far west as most travelers make it in India. The Pakistan border is only a 100 km away - hence the massive military presence.

The main attraction for tourists like us is the massive old fortified city. It cuts quite a profile against the bleak Great Thar Desert. The fort and all the buildings in town are made of the same golden local sandstone much of it carved with fanciful natural and geometric detail. The oldest lanes of the city have the feel of something I'd expect out of caravan times.


If you look on a map, you can see it's isolated out here. At night the stars shine bright and luminous. There is a restaurant that serves passable Italian food - something we haven't had in quite a while. Their location is romance par excellence with seating along the top of one of the ancient walls next to the city gate. Last night, Tami pointed out a satellite cruising overhead as we ate.

People have been living here for a long time - not as many people as live here now, though. Their lifestyles have changed dramatically, too. Until fairly modern times (less than the last 100 years) people who lived in the desert made do with very little water. They cooked their vegetables in the same water in which they washed them. Any water that was left went to the livestock. Rajasthan is in a state of perpetual drought (the definition of a desert, of course). Nonetheless, the population is quite a bit bigger than California and it gets even less rainfall. Currently, Rajasthan has more than 50 million people and is expected to have 80 million by 2016.

Depending on the severity of the 'drought', on any given year over 1000 villages and more than 300 towns receive all their water via truck or train tankers. We saw this camel tanker yesterday. There was a little depot on the edge of town and four of them waited to fill up.

Camels aren't the only big animals out here. This being India, there are plenty of cows - sacred to Hindus. It's not unusual to see big ones like this girl below waiting at the door of a house waiting for any leftover "chapatis" - rounds of flat bread. They'll climb right up the stairs and wait for someone to feed them...and inevitably, someone does.