Change In Plans

Jaisalmer - Rajasthan - India

This post is about our first day in Jaisalmer, exploring the fort and old town. Jaisalmer is a nearly thousand-year-old monumental achievement of architecture, administration, and craftsmanship. Unfortunately, it is being destroyed practically in front of our eyes.

After our adventures at the military airbase yesterday, in the late afternoon we arrived at the camp where we are staying, in the desert about 6 km west of Jaisalmer. The camp is run by the same outfit that we stayed with in Pushkar, but this semi-permanent site is less militaristic, and more comfortable. The kids are delighted to have a beautiful swimming pool in the desert.

Just before dusk, we walked out to the main road, and walked further west, climbing a small rise to watch the sun set over the desert. As we walked through a small village, a group of very friendly kids walked with us for about half an hour. We promised to visit them in their school tomorrow, and to bring pencils for everyone.

This morning we went into Jaisalmer early, to look at the fort and temples before the daily hordes of tourists.

Jaisalmer Fort is more of a fortified city than a military installation. Construction was started in 1156 by a local king, named Jaisal. Although Jaisalmer is in the middle of a dusty nowhere, it is right on the ancient Spice Route, which connected India with Constantinople. Some current versions of history have sanitized the early activities of the Jaisal warriors, saying that the fort “supplied the camel caravans,” or “supported the spice trade.” For the first few hundred years, though, it seems that the main industry in Jaisalmer was raiding and looting caravans, or providing “protection” against raiding and looting. By the 16th century it had become a city of traders and merchants, with protection as a self-interested sideline business. As the port of Mumbai opened in the early 1800s, the Spice Route dwindled, and Jaisalmer declined slowly into economic insignificance.

The fortifications are built from massive blocks of yellow limestone, jutting up out of a low, rocky hill. The walls were generally made using ‘dry technique,’ which means that the blocks were carved and fitted together without mortar, and are still in place 850 years later.

To this day, large, round boulders are perched along the parapets, still ready, if necessary, to be rolled down onto invading troops. A slippery limestone path runs uphill from the old town, the extramural part of Jaisalmer that was settled in the 17th century. The path zigs and zags at 90-degree angles through a series of heavy gates into the fort. As in the other Rajasthani forts, the sharp turns made it difficult for invaders to use their less-than-agile elephants as battering rams.

The main square of the fort (Dussehra Chowk) is directly under the king’s balcony, which is the focal point of the long-abandoned royal palace. The intricate yellow limestone carvings of the palace are exquisite. The square itself has several cows lazing around, amidst piles of garbage and builders’ rubble. The contrast with the beauty of the old buildings is stark.
At ground level, the rest of the fortified village is reminiscent of Fes, or even of some of the hill towns of Tuscany and Umbria. When we looked up, though, the beautiful yellow limestone facades and balconies could only be Jaisalmer.

The most impressive sight in Jaisalmer Fort is the Jain temples, which were built by wealthy merchants in the 15th and 16th centuries.

I am still completely baffled by Jainism. It originated in 500 BC as an offshoot of Hinduism, primarily following 24 prophets rather than the million plus Hindu gods, and prescribing a radically strict form of veganism and pacifism. Paradoxically, Jains have also been hugely successful businesspeople throughout India’s long history.

It isn’t possible to use enough superlatives to describe the two Jain temples that we saw. A small army of exceptional craftsman spent decades carving icons of gods and prophets of all sizes. In one temple there are 6,666 stone representations of prophets in the lotus position.The only way to differentiate which prophet is being honored is by a small mark (a bull, a lion, a fish) carved below the legs. The dome of the same temple is a stack of concentric stone doilies, carved from a single piece of limestone. The base of the dome has hundreds of erotically paired stone singers and dancers, each about eight inches tall. The shrines themselves are four-faced marble statues (each face pointed toward a different compass direction).

Jaisalmer Fort is truly spectacular, but it is literally crumbling. It was designed to contain about 2,000 people with minimum-impact medieval lifestyles. In recent years tourism has exploded in an uncontrolled fashion. About 5,000 people live within the walls today. More important, there are 56 hotels and B&Bs, plus dozens of restaurants.

The water draining from the open sewers is literally eroding the hill and the ‘dry technique’ fortifications out from underneath the city.

It isn’t clear what could be done to save Jaisalmer Fort. Disneyfying it would require displacing several thousand people (whose families have been resident for hundreds of years) and closing scores of businesses. Then an enormous amount of restoration would need to be funded. None of this seems remotely feasible in an Indian democracy.

Under any circumstances, we were delighted to see Jaisalmer, and we were glad that we happened to be staying in the desert camp well outside of the city.