Trip to Jaisalmer-Part 5

The next day we started off early to get the glimpse of the city and the life inside the fort. After bargaining for a long time we hired a guide to show us around the fort and the important places. The important places that one has to see are the big canon, the Jain temple and the Palace. There are different sizes of canons and on all four directions they have installed huge canons. Apart from that they has have small size canons around the fort. The specialty of the fort is that, they have not used water to construct the fort. The stones are cut in a shape and placed one over the other without using any type of paste.

Also they have big balls of stones and cylindrical stones that will act as weapon once they run out of weapons or ammunition. It is been told till date they have not used those stones as weaponry. No one has ever conquered this fort. We then headed to the Jain temple, which was simply amazing. There were numerous statues and each statue looks same but every statue is a different god. They differentiate the statue by the symbol. There are around 6666 Jain gods and every god is differentiated by the symbol. There was lots of sculptural working than the Ludarva temple. They also contained some good paintings. When the religion started they did not have temples, it was only stone carving. Later on they started constructing temples.

Then we headed to the Palace, which has now been converted into a museum and the current king lives in a new palace called the Mandir Palace. The old palace just looks like a maze. If a new person is left inside he may get lost. Inside the palace they had the photos, armory, dresses, beds and the vessels that was used by the kings in the olden time. They also had the king’s throne and umbrella that are made of silver and gold.

Once we finished the tour of the fort and Palace we headed for breakfast. After our breakfast we headed to a Haveli called Pathwankot Haveli. Haveli’s look good from outside, but once entered one can see dead pigeons, lots of bats and variety of insects. Since nothing was fascinating us we headed back to the hotel to checkout.

Our tour to Jaisalmer was to end at this point because we had our train at 3.30Pm. The major problem was that our tickets were not confirmed. Later on we come to know that Jaisalmer had only 6 tickets to Delhi and ours was waiting list 1, 2, 3 and 4. Once we were at the station we checked out the ticket status with ticket collector to only find that 2 tickets was confirmed the others are still on the waiting list. But the coach was empty till Jodhpur, so the TT agreed to let us travel by the same coach. In Jodhpur we managed to get the remaining two tickets also confirmed.

Tips
1. Traveling by train is the best option, but book the ticket in a way that you don’t end up in trouble. The best option is to book the ticket from Delhi to Jodhpur and from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer and return vis-a-versa.
2. Plan for a four-day trip.
3. One should not miss the night stay at Sand dunes
4. Arrange the safari with well-known people.
5. Follow any of the travel book

Suggestions.
1. Sahara Travels is good and they stick to their word.
2. Nataraj Restaurant is an ideal place for food.
3. The second option for food is Little Tibet inside the fort.