Friday, March 21st – Sunday, March 23rd, 2025
World Tour Days 139 – 141
On Friday we walked 15 minutes past piles of garbage and poop to get to the train station. Jaipur was a stunning city with all of the historical sites but unfortunately like Delhi has a waste problem along many roads. We took the train from Jaipur at 10:10am, arriving in Jaisalmer, ‘the Golden City’, at 10:50pm. No train changes, 12.5 hours direct.
Overall the train experience was a breeze compared to what we had been warned about. It was very easy to find the station, find our platform, and find our train car and seats. Everything was clearly labelled and organized. Our ride went past villages, some garbage, and a dead, swollen cow at the start. The ride got progressively more beautiful as we passed Jodhpur. After that there were more forests and women working in farm fields. Sunset was gorgeous with a bright red sun. The only hiccup we had was ordering our food to the train. After we requested ‘mild’, we got delivered the spiciest food we had had in India and it wasn’t even what we ordered. I had decided to play it safe with a dosa but got balls covered in the hottest sauce imaginable instead. We wonder if the person we ordered with thought it would be a funny prank. We had bought some snacks ahead of time but I would have bought more if I had known the food was going to be a disaster. There may have been a few hangry tears over the spicy balls, but who’s keeping track.
We had two days in Jaisalmer, which turns out to have been too much time since we didn’t do any desert excursions. Nick explored the fort and the Patwon Ki Havelis on his own the first day as I wasn’t feeling well. The Havelis are intricately carved buildings which didn’t take long to look at.
In the evening we strolled the Gadisar Lake together for sunset. We saw lots of puppies, kids playing cricket, and people riding boats on the lake. After dark the lake had a light show. It started with a youtube video (not in full screen) being projected onto the water. It would’ve been more magical if we also weren’t seeing the open tabs at the bottom of the projection. After this it was a light and water show, like ones we’ve seen in Vegas, with music. Lots of families were there with their children.
Our second day we explored all the nooks and crannies of Jaisalmer Fort. The fort is still an active neighborhood, so it was cool to see so many shops, hotels, and cafes inside. It is yellow everywhere so I found it hard to know where we were as everything looked the same. Nick, unsurprisingly, was able to navigate through all the alleys like he had lived there his whole life. The fort had cannons, beautiful buildings, and intact walls surrounding it. The trinkets for sale included earrings, puppets, clothing, and small metal camels or elephants.
We wanted to watch a puppet show at the Desert Culture Center but it wasn’t open when we showed up. While walking around the town we saw the most cows we had seen in India. We couldn’t go anywhere without having to go around cows in the middle of the street. For our final dinner we ate at a rooftop restaurant inside the fort.
Overall Jaisalmer was calm and easy to navigate. The fort was interesting and the town itself is a cool place to visit. That being said, we did not feel like it was worth 13 hours one way to get here and 13 hours back. Many itineraries I read highly recommended it, but we feel it only makes sense to add it if flights are available (the domestic airlines canceled their flights early for the season when we were there), or to have more stops along the way.
