A lesser known version of Rajasthan

The most touristy thing we did on this trip

Our annual road trip this time was to  Rajasthan -- yes, it was in Jan-Feb this time and  not in November and yes, it was much shorter than the usual three weeks, we did what we could, but at the end of the two weeks we had covered 3342 kilometers which is about the same if not a little more than what we had done in our annual forays lasting about three weeks in previous years. We drove a lot but all that driving was enough only to discover a very tiny part of that large, beautiful, colourful and extremely attractive state. 

There were essentially three cities we planned our trip around this time -- Bikaner, Jaisalmer and Jodhpur. But we also got to experience some parts of Rajasthan that tourists normally do not have time for. We saw many imposing but abandoned hawelis, huge but deserted villages, breathtakingly beautiful architecture and exquisite frescoes, pretty lakes, vast desert landscapes and much more... Also, it was the first time I felt that while on a road trip, the journey itself is what was special, much more than the destination. Looking out of the window of our Kia Seltos into the endless desert sand dunes and the scruffy green-gold landscape filled with low bushes and thorny shrubs, one could experience not just the magnificence of it all, but also the pettiness and meaninglessness of so many of our earthly ambitions...

We started out before dawn on the 20th January from Dehradun and drove through some very dense fog, crossing Paonta Sahib and driving through the beautiful and dense Kalesar Forest Reserve, before arrving at our first planned stop at the archeological site at Rakhigarhi in Haryana. Rakhigarhi and Dholavira (in Gujarat) are the only two Harappan era archeological sites in India, we were told, so after having seen the incredible Dholavira site earlier we were keen to see Rakhigarhi as well. But we were very disappointed. It was very badly kept, very badly marked, sadly littered with a lot of garbage and there wasn't much for an inexperienced eye to see. After a quick look we decided to drive on, but not before we experienced the first taste of the rustic Haryana village hospitality. We -- and our GPS -- found ourselves lost in the winding narrow lanes of the village around the site, but when we stopped to ask for directions, not only did the villagers offer us tea but one of them got on his motor cycle and led us all the way out onto the main road.  We drove past Hansi over beautiful roads till we got to Hisar, where our first night's halt was at a home of the very hospitable Rathores -- Sonam and Vikram -- Hema's friends from the IAF. 

To Bikaner and therabouts:

The next morning, we chose to not take the shortest route to Bikaner but drive via Alsisar, Mandawa and Fatehpur. At all three of these little towns (in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan) we saw some incredibly beautiful old hawelis and mahals. Their beauty and their sheer numbers took us by surprise. That part of Rajasthan was close to the silk route and had many wealthy traders who had built those incredible hawelis to live in. But that period was long over and most of the hawelis are abandoned and crumbling now. A few of them have been tastefully restored and are being used as heritage hotels (such as the Alsisar Mahal), while (portions of some) others have been restored just enough to give tourists a feel of what was in the past. We were told that their owners lived far away in the big cities like Kolkata, Mumbai or abroad and did not want to spend on the upkeep. Many properties were caught up in litigation among the many third generation owners, and nobody wanted to spend anything till the case was settled. The exquisite architecture and the incredibly detailed wall frescoes of these buildings spoke of a time of opulence and prosperity long past. Today most of those incredibly beautiful 200-300 year old buildings stand painfully neglected and ignored, they seemed to be only waiting silently to be demolished by some builder or to just fall apart and crumble slowly.  What was happening here reminded us of a similar story we had witnessed in the village of Chettinad in South India during our trip to Tamilnadu in November 2023. It broke our hearts.

Abandoned hawelis in Alsisar

This one has a temple in one of the front rooms

The renovated posh Alsisar Mahal hotel

Hotel Gaj Kesri in Bikaner

It was past 6 p.m. when we got to Bikaner. The hotel Gaj Kesri where we were staying also looked very much like a splendid Mahal. Only it was newly built to recreate the past grandeur. 

The city of Bikaner has much to offer and we decided to do the tourist route of the grand and impressive Junagarh Fort with the nice collections at the Prachina Museum and the Rampuria Haweli in the old part of town (where some film shooting was going on). The wealth, education, culture and good governance of the Rathore rulers of Bikaner starting with king Bika ji was evident everywhere. In the Rampuria Mohalla we saw many more beautiful hawelis, all in various stages of disrepair; mostly vacant with their owners living elsewhere. So many wealthy people all belonging in a moderate sized kingdom like Bikaner meant it must have been a flourishing little kingdom at one time. Bhanwar Niwas, just behind the Rampuria Haweli, was a boutique hotel and we went in for a glass of chaas just to get a feel of the place. 

Inside the Junagarh Fort

We then walked to the Jain temple at the far end of town which is completely and very colourfully painted over (to my great surprise because I had imagined Jain temples to be very bare and plain white). The Laxmi Narayan temple next door was closed at lunchtime. We did not wait. The frenzied pace of the tuktuk ride back to the fort through the very narrow and congested galis of the old town was an experience to die for (and we barely survived it). Back in the car we drove to see the Lalgarh Palace (which is a very fancy hotel now) and visited the Saidul Museum in the grounds, which is quite nicely done and tells the stories of the illustrious Bikaneri rulers and their links with Europe and the world. We then did some shopping at the Urmul outlet in town before turning in for the night. Urmul seems to be doing a lot of good work to help rural Rajasthani women get some additional income by doing hand embroidery, cutting and stitching.

Elaborately coloured Jain temple in Bikaner

just another regular building in Bikaner

Inside the Junagarh fort

Another haweli in Bikaner

Having done most of the sights on the first day, on the second we first went to the Jorbeer Conservation Park in the outskirts of Bikaner where we saw an incredible number of birds of prey, eagles, vultures, falcons, hawks,...feeding on the animal carcasses that were collected from the town area and brought there every day for the birds. That was quite an experience to see so many such large birds all at the same place. It was also very encouraging to see this initiative to save these grand brids from extinction.

The crowded assembly of pretty Chattris in many different shapes and sizes of the Bikaneri kings, that we next visited, provided a welcome contrast programme. From there we drove to the beautiful Gajner Palace (35 kms away) which is a splendid hotel on the banks of an immense lake. After a quick tea,  we went on a jeep Safari from the Palace (which was actually a Hunting lodge of the Maharaja) into the Gajner Wildlife Reserve. It was midday and quite hot when we were inside the park so we did not see many animals besides deer, neelgai and many species of birds. But the dry and sparse desert landscape was a treat to the eyes -- the safari ended on the banks of a lake (where the hunting party would have stopped in earlier times in wait of their quarry) from where we made our way back. A visit to the Camel Reserch Centre and some shopping there, brought our day to an end...

Gajner Palace Hotel and Lake

The Ganga Nahar is a system of irrigation canal fed by the Sutlej. It was constructed by Maharaja Ganga Singh to bring water to the people of the Ganganagar district of Rajasthan. It was later extended by Mrs. Indira Gandhi to other parts of the arid state and renamed the Indira Gandhi Canal. During our trip we crossed the Canal (or its branches) at many points. We met many along the way who told us that even the few farmers who live in the dry heartland of Rajasthan and try to grow some crops would not have survived without the Canal. It was amazing to see entire stretches of barren desert land being reclaimed for agriculture at certain places along our way...Rajasthan was greener than I had expected...

Sunset over the dunes at Sam

To the sandunes of Sam via Longewala

What would you say if I told you that on this one day when we drove more than 500 kilometres, the desert landscape kept changing every half an hour or so? As long as the Ganga Canal ran parallel to the road, the area was lush green with crops growing in abundance in the fields. But as soon as the water got scarce so did the vegetation... We started out soon after 8 a.m. of the 24th Jan. and drove almost non-stop till 2:30 p.m. or so till we got to Longewala, very close to the Pakistan border. Longewala is full of army memorabilia and a war museum, and is a tourist attraction (like the Wagah border). After a brief but nice stop for tea and snacks there we drove to Sam and arrived at the Desert Overnight Camp where we were booked to stay by 4:30 p.m. We planned to visit Jaisalmer from Sam, which was about 40 kms away. But first the dunes for which Sam was famous had to be done. So we walked up the sand dune right in front of our camp and was there in good time to see a lovely sunset. 

Later at the camp, music & dance as well as dinner awaited us. These desert camps work on the same principle -- breakfast (of poha and kesri upma besides puri-sabji), afternoon tea and dinner are included in the price that also includes a cultural programme in the evening. For the pittance we paid for the whole package, it was small wonder that our tent was rather basic and our stay not very comfortable. Even the lock to our tent did not work, and the water kept running out in the taps, and hot water was available only in certain short stretches, but there was a very resourceful young man named Piru who seemed to have answers for everything. Hot water, no problem, lock not working, no problem, etc etc. But everything considered, perhaps it would have been better to have stayed in the city or someplace closer to it. We got to see a better version of a desert camp later on our way back in Bikaner. But about that later.

Jaisalmer

If Bikaner was pink then Jaisalmer is golden -- the fort is even called the 'Sonar kila' and the city is called the golden city. In contrast to the Bikaner Fort, the Jaisalmer Fort is a living fort where many people live and hence it was bustling and jostling with activity. It is also a very touristy city, so the narrow lanes were filled with foreign tourists and there were shops everywhere selling souvenirs and handicrafts to tourists. Inside the fort, we visited the Raja and Rani Mahals with its intricate buff coloured jali stonework. 

Gadisar lake

We also visited the Patwon ki haveli where we saw the incredible wealth that these traders had, from mud-refrigerators to kerosene-operated air-conditioners, they had everything they needed to live in great comfort. We saw two more havelis from the outside and then decided to go shopping for cotton bedcovers and sheets, before ending up at a nearby food joint to taste the fabulous Rajasthani thali for all of Rs. 220 (one thali was enough for the two of us). We then drove to the lovely Gadisar Lake and the abandoned city of Kuldhara, but Kuldhara was so full of tourists that we decided to give it a miss and proceeded to the Khaba fort. Khaba was much quieter, cooler and much nicer. Hema remarked that she could almost touch the past there. Many glorious peacocks roamed about in the vast empty areas around the fort, and an old man sat just outside the entrance to the fort, dressed in traditional rajasthani attire; he would start playing a folk instrument the moment he saw some tourists approaching. There we found out that Kuldhara was one of 84 villages that were abandoned overnight at the king's orders. The remains of brick houses of some villages could be seen everywhere around Khaba. This was very reminiscent of what we had seen in Dhanuskodi near Rameshwaram in 2023.

We then tried to go inside the Desert National Park which had been recommended by a few friends. But despite having driven for an hour in the direction we were pointed to both by a signboard, the guard at the pre-entry point and a couple of other people we did not manage to find even the entrance to the park!  After a long and rough ride over a generously pot-holed road we decided to call it a day and head back to Sam. We were back in the camp a little after sunset. 

Jaisalmer to Jodhpur

Exiting Sam our first stop was at the Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls High School in Salkha closeby. It is special because of the (much talked about) circular school building built in such a way that it keeps cool, even in the height of summer. Republic Day Celebrations were on at the school that day; the whole event was being sponsored by the Coast Guwards and a motor-cycle team of the Coast Guards were the honoured guests on the occasion. The Principal turned out to be a very sophisticated member from some local royal family and she very courteously invited us to join the celebrations but we decided not to stay longer than it took to do a quick round of the school. In the handwork section we met a woman from Pakistan who had moved to India with her family some years ago and was teaching sewing, cutting and embroidery to local women in the school.  Next stop was the rather nice wood fossil park in Akal. There were two lovely and very friendly deer at the entrance but by the time we came back from our ride through the park they had disappeared into the bushes, so unfortunately we have no photos of those almost domesticated deer.

From there on to Jodhpur. We were booked to stay at the Reggies Camel Camp in Osian which is about 80 kms. away from Jodhpur. Though we always looked to stay in inexpensive places, this was an indulgence -- tented accommodation at about 11000 per night was a luxury of its own kind. We were booked to stay there for four nights, and since we had already paid up, there was nothing to be done but to give it a go. 

The Camp itself felt like another Fort, and it was hard to believe that it had been build brick by brick by the owner Mr. Reggie in the 1980s, simply because he wanted to own a fort! Reggie (full name Mr. Reggie Singh Rathore) was from the royal family of Jodhpur and happened to be visiting the Camp for a night while we were there. We met him over breakfast; he had the old time charm of a grand Maharaja but seemed to be quite a dreamer. He told us that when he first started the camp, the huge sandy enclosure between the first and the second gates was used for camel racing as he had laid out a one kilometer oval track there. In the first years, there would be real races but slowly the practice had been replaced by staged races on demand, sometimes for use in movies and so on. Among many things the chatty Mr. Reggie shared with us was the fact that he had handed over the everyday managment of the camp to his younger son while his older son took care of another hotel they had elsewhere.

Mr. Reggie was kind, hospitable, and informative; he was sorry for us that we would have to travel the 80 kms  to and from Jodhpur every day and even offerred to upgrade us from a tent to a cottage which was less hot during the day. But on closer inspection of a cottage we found that there was no door separating the toilet from the main room so we decided to stay put in our tent. It was Mr. Reggie who told us about going to watch the birds at Kheechan on our way out, in fact he organised it for us. But first a little about the city of Jodhpur. 

Jodhpur, the blue city

Our first stop on the first day in Jodhpur was at the Mehrangarh Fort and Museum which is all very well organised for tourists, and there was absolutely no harrassment at all, contrary to our previous experiences at Jaisalmer and Bikaner. And we quickly found out why -- the management of the fort etc was still in the hands of the royal family (and not the government, as was the case with the Junahgarh Fort). And signs of the difference in management was everywhere to be seen in the clear signages, the clean toilets, the easy-to-read layout maps, the nice restaurants and the pretty souvenir shops. 

The white marble Jaswant Thada is a stately mausoleum but what we really enjoyed most was our next stop,  the Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park next door which had amazing walking trails through different desert landscapes, rock formations and vegetation. Since it was noon and the sun was beating down we could only do the easiest trail that took us to two lakes and gave us an amazing view of the fort before bringing us back to the entry point. The Umaid Bhawan Museum about the local kings was what one would expect, the Mandore Gardens with many chattris called Dewals for the earlier rulers of Jodhpur before they moved to Mehrangarh, were quite amazing. These Chattris really looked like temples from the outside and if you did not know that they weren't, then there way no easy way to differentiate between them.

At the entrance to the Mehrangarh Fort

The entrance to the Rao Jodha Desert Park

The stately Umaid Bhawan

One of the many Dewals

The Dewals at Mandore

Sunset in Osian

On the second day we decided to take it easy and not do very much. Instead we decided to explore the village of Osian after getting our car washed. Our attempt to visit the very popular temple in Osian ended in failure as we could not figure where to safely park our car and how to easily access the temple. Instead we returned to the camp and spent some lovely hours near the very pretty swimming pool, reading, napping, drinking a refreshing lemonade. We went for a camel-cart ride from the camp at sunset and that was real fun. 

We had done the three cities that we had planned to do and had seen the main sights by then. That was the ninth day and also roughly the midway mark of our trip, and curiously enough, as it turned out, it also was somehow the line between the must-do-bits and the optional bits that turned out to be so much more enjoyable. While enjoying the cultural programme at the Reggies Camp in the evenings we found out that the woman who was dancing was a Hindu while the singer and the instrumentalists were all Muslim. Nonetheless, they were quite relaxed with each other and one time the woman even offered to sing instead of dance, and the men let her sing and accompanied her on their instruments, although it was quite an unusual thing to do.

On the third day, we went to Jodhpur again, because Hema had organised a walking tour for us in the Blue city with a person called Imtiaz who had offered his services while we were visiting the Fort. On the walk we learnt that the Brahmin houses were painted a light blue to set them apart from the rest of the population; he also told us that the Brahmins had to be coaxed into coming to settle in the city. They chose blue because indigo is available locally and light blue keeps the inside cool. 

It was lovely walking through the maze of tiny alleys and paths of the old city and to arrive at little pretty corners and staircases. There were also many old hawelis and an old bavdi (water tank) in various stages of disrepair. 

Wall murals 

The Ghanta ghar in Jodhpur

One very special thing we saw in the middle of the old part was a rectangular raised cemented platform called Chowkhi where dead bodies (of local residents)  were apparently kept for sometime so that people from the surrounding houses could come and pay their last respects before the body was taken for cremation. It seemed such a nice tradition, something that we had not seen anywhere else.

Chowkhi for the dead

We then did the round of the markets where we did some shopping (spices, perfumed oils, bedcovers). Imtiaz then took us on a culinary trip to the best eateries of the old city and we were treated to the best gulab jamuns, kalakands and gunjan (with misri inside) at a rather nonedescript shop called Chaturbhuj Rameshchand. We then went to the little shop selling the best makhaniya lassis in town (where I tried the milk phirni, which was also very tasty) and then to a shop selling samosas, kachauris etc. where we bought some food to eat later as we were completely stuffed by then. Such excellent food costs very little even these days in Jodhpur. Also thanks to Imtiaz, we learnt a few words of the local language: Hukm means yes, Khamma Ghani means Hello/thank you/sorry etc. and pols/prols are the gates while Dhani means a hut. All these little things we would not have found out without Imtiaz. So a walking tour of the old city is highly recommended, anywhere, everywhere.

The splendid Kaylana Lake

Still on the offbeat mode, we decided to drive to the Kaylana lake just outside Jodhpur. It was very pretty and scenic all the way along the huge lake from where one could see the craggy outcrops of the surrounding hills, till we came to the touristy boating area from where we scooted as fast as we could. We were tourists too but we seemed to have developed a huge allergy for other tourists -- a rather strange affliction that we shall need to figure out carefully in due time.  Anyway, we returned to Osian as we had an early start  the next day to Kheechan, on Reggies recommendation, to see the birds. 

Back to Bikaner via Kheechan and Nagaur

We started out at 5:30 from the Reggies Camp and went to Kheechan where we were in good time to see thousands of migratry demoiselle cranes coming for their food to the feeding centre. It was an incredible sight, all the more because the birds kept coming wave after wave, in strict geometrical formation and filled up the entire area starting with one lame bird who always was the first to land, followed by the others who came excatly 15 minutes later. A cat got in and caused some additional excitement. The morning we were there, there was a team from Russia who were tracking birds that had travelled from their country. We watched all this from the rooftop of a person's house who claimed he had been feeding the birds for all these years on his own before the government feeding centre was set up. He even treated all his guests to home made tea and poha during the course of the morning.

We stayed there till about 8:30 after which we drove to Nagaur which has a wonderful fort, but by the time we arrived there it was 12:30 p.m. and the fort was closing at 1. Therefore, in view of the heat, and the crazy traffic in the city, we decided to not wait till it reopened but drive on. After a brief lunch stop on the way we arrived at the Umaid Safari Camp in Bikaner after having driven more than 350 kms and more than 7 hours through some incredibly pretty desert landscape.

The Umaid Safari camp is a far cry from Gaj Kesri where we had stayed on our inward journey. But the charges were also a fraction of what we had paid there. And the place is clean and tidy and the food is good. So why not...And the cultural programme in Umaid was also very nice, although there was no live music. But the  Kalbeliya (traditionally snake charmers) dancer was very good and her whole family was in attendance. The husband helped with playing the music and setting up the props etc while the younger daughter joined the mother in the dancing. 

Back in Bikaner again and looking back at the names of places we had visited since we were last there, I realised that we had had some strange names -- Sam (pronounced Sum), Osian, Kheechan, Au etc etc. Not sure what these names mean or how they first came up with them.

Village excursion

This was for me the best day of the tour even though we did nothing from the touristy standpoint. We drove through desert country to a village literally named 7AD! These are name of settlements created for refugees from the 1972 war with our neighbour  and name had to do with the numbering of the irrigation canal that passes closest to it. 7AD is located near the small village of Pogul and is really hard to find and access.  Ladies of the village do lovely hand embroidery and this is what we were going to see.  It took us more than 2.5 hours to get there, made worse by the dense morning fog which cleared only around 10 am. One of the sons of our contact Liluram joined us at some point of our journey and showed us the rest of the way but it did not keep us from getting stuck in the sand, just as we were turning a corner. Tense moments ensued before, and very luckily for us, a young man coming on a motor cycle, parked his motorcycle, got into the car and got us out making everything look very simple.  

Our hosts were simple and warm fold and the hand embroidered stuff that the two ladies took out to show us were simply amazing. These people had moved over the border from Sindh and had brought the knowledge of this special kind of hand embroidery with them.  The embroidery is geometrical and has essentially two forms, diamond shaped filling called suf and square shaped filling with boundary called khark. We were reminded of the handwork teacher we had met in that circular school earlier. She was also from Sindh.

Liluram's family had come from Sindh in Pakistan in 1971. There are Hindu Sindhis and had first stayed in Barmer but had moved to this village because the government had given them 25 bighas of land to settle there. The irrigation canal made it possible for them to grow peanuts, mustard and gehu (wheat) even in the middle of the desert, and with the women supplementing their income with their fantastic embroidery, they were all quite well off today. 

Liluram's wife Phoolwanti and their relation Kavita Devi both posed for us. It seems there were many others in the village who did the same kind of work. Many in the village worked for Urmul, Fab India and other such big organisations. From the rates they quoted they got for their fine embroidery work, we wondered if they were being exploited by the middlemen or by the organsiations themselves. I bought whatever suitable we could find there and I promised to put up some of the samples of their embroidery in our little handwork store 'Creative Hands' in Guwahati, a platform selling products made by hand at home. 

On our way we saw the circular brick houses with reed roofs used mostly to keep animals now and also as a kitchen. There was also masses of a yellow fruit lying on the sand which we thought were lemons but they turned out to be some inedible fruit with medicinal seeds. We also saw dense green Isobgul plants whose seeds from the dried plants were used as a laxative.  

We decided to take another route while returning and the ever smiling Liluram came part of the way with us. We got back to the camp by 4:30 p.m. just as dusk was about to set. 

This was essentially the end of our desert tour as we would be returning to Dehradun after spending two nights in Padha where Hema had some work in her school. We had done more than 2500 kms till then. 

The last toll gate in Rajasthan

Our last day of driving in Rajasthan started at 8:18 in the morning from Umaid Camp, and ended in Padha in 4:53 p.m. a drive of nearly 9 straight hours with a half an hour stop in between. The initial bit was along sand dunes and desert landscape right up till the point when we hit the Nagaur-Ambala Haryana Expressway which is a 6-lane motorway much like in the West. We stopped at a highway eatery and were treated to the largest samosas I have ever seen or eaten, all for 40 rupees apiece.

We had good roads everywhere we went in Rajasthan -- and we were quite amazed at how good they uniformly were. Not sure when all this happened, but signs of development were to be seen everywhere in Rajasthan, not just with the roads and irrigation canals, but also with the greening of the desert that was beginning to happen in a big way there....

There were a few things that really surprised me as this was my first real trip into Rajasthan. Let me try to list a few of them below:

1. The first thing that really surprised and fascinated me was the vast empty spaces without any habitation and scarce vegetation and the desert landscape -- dunes with babul trees (and camels munching on them) but no big trees and tufts of reed like grass sometimes alternating with the dhatura plant -- in the earth colours of yellow-green-brown. The flat and mostly sandy terrain -- it was hard to imagine such plain empty spaces where nothing (or very little) grows and where nobody lives, anywhere else in India. Interspersed with this emptiness would be water, either from the Indira Gandhi Canal which had worked wonders in the state or from a little lake or from some smaller irrigation canal, and it will be green... otherwise it was only yellow and brown;

2. But the cities in sharp contrast are bursting -- they are horribly crowded and absolutely full, dirty, and busy, like anywhere else in India. Every city also seems to have at least one fort (durg), a palace (mahal), a few well endowed hawelis, a talab (water tank), a few busy temples and a very busy bazar. We saw so many forts and hawelis on this trip that at the end of it all it was difficult for me to tell them apart. But that is me, I guess. Hema had no such problem.

3. The other thing we noticed about the cities was that there were no high rise buildings -- huge tall apartment towers blocks were not to be seen in the places we visited, although I guess it will not take very long for that to happen.

4. About the people, Rajasthan is mostly Hindu with some Muslims in pockets but almost no Christians. We also saw no Christian missionary private schools or even large churches -- this must be the state with least missonary activity. The Muslims, although present, were not conspicuous at all and they did not belong to the rich landed class in any case.

5. Actually we did not see many private English medium schools at all, at least outside the cities. Government schools, hospitals and colleges and dispensaries seem to be doing quite well. Of course, there was that circular private school which was run by a royal family. 

6. Jodhpur is the land of the Marwaris -- Marwa; Mewar is the south-central part of Rajathan that we did not touch this time. And we had crossed the Shekhawati region when we first entered Rajasthan. This is a fairy tale world of kings and princes and their courtiers -- hard to imagine that it is still a living and breathing space. The many splendid museums we visited in the the three cities where the proud history of the local royal family is so well documented bore testimony to that. 

7. But even today it was easy to see the differences in status of the former royal families, the well endowed haweli owners who were the ministers,  the traders and businessmen, and the rest of the population.  In terms of wealth and personal property however, many haweli owners could probably match some of the petty rulers. 

8. The many princely states that once made up Rajasthan were probably not all very big, just one big city and some adjoining land. But each ruler tried to build some amazing buildings and seemed to have lived in great splendour and luxury, taxing the population. We were told that some rulers were very progressive and had done a lot for education, health and also improving the livelihoods of their people. The history of Rajasthan as we know it is the history of its rulers. It does not tell us much about the lives of the common people and how they lived under these incredibly harsh climatic conditions.

9. Tourism seems to be really at a different level in Rajasthan -- every place is geared for it. Many of the mahals and hawelis have become luxury hotels, museums or had been repurposed into other tourist attractions. 

10. But many other grand buildings were rotting and falling apart because they were under litigation among the descendants or the owners simply did not have the means (or were not interested) to keep the place going. 

11. The other thing that did not fail to amaze us were the incredible variety and high quality of their handicrafts, leather-work, stone carving etc. Excellent quality combined with affordable prices. The hardworking Rajasthani women found time to create such amazing embroidery even after taking care of their homes and fields. Jewellery using precious stones and stone carving are easier to understand given that stones and precious stones are to be found in plenty in the state. And there were enough rich people who wanted to buy jewellery or the intricately carved stone pieces to decorate their homes. The fine wood carving and painting is mostly done by the Muslims who live in the state. 

12. Rajasthan is a very colourful state, one sees it everywhere, in the clothes one wears, in the variety of precious and semi-precious stones and gems that one finds there; it is also a very culturally rich state with music and dance to be seen everywhere accompanied by traditional stringed instruments and drums of many different kinds. It is also the land of the camel and some other animals that one does not usually see elsewhere in India.

However, at the end of the trip a few images will remain much longer than the rest -- one is that of sunsets over the desert, the other of birds, both of the vultures and eagles and of the egrets, and yet other of those haunted ghost villages....and the many beautifully painted and elaborate but empty hawelis that stood silently carrying the memory of a glorious and eventful past into a forlorn and forgotten present...