About Jaisalmer

The city with the living fort, or the Golden City is 857 yrs old. Maharawal Jaisal Dev founded it. The current ruler is Maharawal BRIJRAJ SINGH. Even though the city comes under Rajasthan State still they call this as Raj. Here the kings are not called Maharaja, but as Maharawal since they believe they are the descendents of Lord Krishna.

The first capital for this kingdom was Ludarva, which is around 17kms from the current capital. It is been said that Ludarva had been under frequent attacks. Previous there stood a Lord Krishna temple and that was demolished during the Mogul Invasion. Now this place hosts a Jain Temple. This temple is 150 yrs old, and it has some good carvings on sand stone.

The reason for it been called as Golden city is that the whole city is built on sand stone. The name Jaisalmer is because it was founded by Maharawal Jaisal and built over a mer (Hill) called the Trikuta Hills. The whole fort is a 5km stretch, in which the king and his queens lived. Brahmins, Kshatriyas and the relatives of the King where the only people lived inside the fort.

During an invasion or a war the ladies and children were taken to Ludarva by a secret underground path. After the construction of this fort to till date no one had been able to conquer this fort or the city.

Jaisalmer is been considered as one of the richest city, because it was one the major junction for the silk route. It is been told that even the poorest guy will have around 5kg of gold. The only costliest item during the olden times was water. The rule during olden times was if a person requires one bucket of water he had to do social work for 5hrs. They did not have the concept of buying water. Also this one-bucket of water was reused 4 times, first for bathing then for washing clothes then for cleaning the house and finally for toilet.

Jaisalmer is considered as the smallest city but as a kingdom it is the largest one. One end of the boundary to the other end it is 300Kms. The people in this region are mostly business man.