Trip to Jaisalmer-Part 2

We woke up early having a plan that we will do some city watch till 9Am, before our excited trip is to start. The day before we enquired about what is the places to see around the city. The list of places was three Havelis, the Sunset point, the Gadisar Lake, the Fort and Palace and the Mandir palace. Once we were out of the hotel room we straight away started to the Havelis. Haveli is nothing but the living place of a top official, like a prime minister or a diwan. The three Havelis were Salim Singh’s haveli, Patwankot haveli, and the Natamlji haveli. We found out that in Jaisalmer except for teashops and schools everything opens either after 8am or 9am.

Around 8 we entered into the Salim Singh’s haveli and we found that people are living in those monuments. We had to get an entrance ticket, which they told it was for the maintenance of the monument. Salim Singh was the prime minister of the kingdom. He was first officer to come out of the fort, and live outside. The building previously consisted of nine stories. But as on date it has only 7 stories. It is been told that after the death of the prime minister the king did not want any other building which was equivalent to the fort and demolished the above two stories.

As usual the building is constructed with sandstone. One will be astonished to know the way the building is built. Since there was no water, there is no concept of pasting two stones together. The stones were carved in male female model and where locked. All the doors leading to rooms were only 4 to 4.5 ft high and the breadth was only 3ft, but it is been told the prime minister was some where around 6ft. This made difficult for the enemies to enter into the house for an attack. The carvings on the sandstone are also remarkable. It is been told the prime minister wanted to build a bridge between his house and the fort, but before he could do that he died. It is been told that this prime Minster had seven wives.

The whole tour to the haveli took us around 1 hr and end of the tour we asked the guide why was he staying in this and what is the relationship between him and the prime minister. But we only got a smile as a reply. Since we had no time we headed back to the hotel, to check out and get ready for our safari. We had a quick breakfast and headed to Sahara Travels, by which they were ready with the jeep and all our food items and food for the next two days.

On our way to the sand dunes we had the chance to visit two more places, which we will see more, on the coming updates.

More to come…