An unfortunate disappearance act of most of my photographs, and a new job--thinking about Indo-Russian relations for a new think tank--has kept me away from my blog for a while. But now I'm back and continuing to report on adventures in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan...
Jaisalmer is perhaps the most beautiful town I've seen in all of India, a maze of honeycomb-golden buildings, carved in the most intricate geometric patterns, somewhere in the Thar desert in Rajasthan. At night, the royal palace is lit up, standing out like a golden crenellated cake structure against the dark sky. And, if the myriads of stone designs were not enough, the walls of most houses are covered with colorful paintings done on the occasion of a recent wedding--a Ganesha, a lotus flower, women carrying matkas on top of their heads.
The people are also the wildest-looking creatures I've seen in the already backward Rajasthan, perhaps because Jaisalmer is far from the other towns on the tourist circuit (and only the most hard-core, dirt-encrusted and India-savvy Europeans seem to get here). The local men are moustachioed, with fierce eyes staring out, and the women are veiled from head to toe (not the short cover-up of traditional India). We were in time for the traditional "Mr. Moustache" contest, filled with men who preened and coyly groomed their upturned treasures which gleamed under the bright desert sun.
The majority of the people here are employed in the tourist industry, selling various objects that derive from camels (smelly camelskin belts and wallets, crude sand-colored slippers), or leading those same camels on safari, which I covered in my previous post. While inevitably a bit touristy, it's also a sand-encrusted, sun-burnt golden place out of time.
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