Jaisalmer, Tanot

July 03, 2011

 Hello,

I woke up at about 0800 hrs this morning though I had slept quite late last night / early this morning.

I wanted to take a look around the city something that I had missed yesterday. So I ordered a taxi to take me around on a spin of the city.

The city, both the historical and the modern day construction, is built with the yellow sand stone with intricate carvings. Jaisalmer is called the golden city because of this. The city was built by King Jaisal in 1156. The 16^th and the 17^th century was the golden era for this city. This was a majour centre of trade and commerce but over the subsequent period its prosperity and importance as a a majour trade centre ebbed.

Raju and I first visited the Jaisalmer fort. About 80% of the fort is built on the Trikuta hill and is about 100 m above the altitude of the rest of the city. It has four gates known as prols as its  entrance – the Ganesh Prol, Suraj Prol, Bhuja Prol and Hawa Prol. Immediately after this is the Dashahara Chawk where the Dashahara festival was celebrated and was watched by the king and the queens. The entire fort and the palace is made / constructed out of yellow sand stone and abundant with beautiful and intricate carvings. We went through the entire fort and the palace. From the top one can get a panoramic view of this golden city. It is said that 20 to 25% of Jaisalmer’s population still lives inside the fort!

From here we went to Nathmalji Ki Haweli. The construction of this building was started by two brothers from two ends which converged at the centre. Hence we can see that the both the sides of the building are similar as a whole but differ in detail. Again some exquisite pieces of carvings here! People live in this Haweli and visitors are not allowed inside.

We came back to the hotel, picked up Phadke ajoba and left for Tanot, 120 kms North West of Jaisalmer and about 20 kms away from the actual Indo-Pak border. Here there is a temple of temple of Tanot Devi. This goddess is said to be the saving and protecting goddess of this region and the soldiers. In the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars this region was heavily bombarded by the Pakistan army yet the temple of the goddess was completely unharmed. The bombs which fell in the vicinity of the temple did not explode at all! Some such unexploded bombs are still kept in the temple. The temple is currently looked after by BSF. We were not allowed to go to the border since there is a curfew order from 1700 hrs to 0600 hrs in this region and it was past 1700 hrs when we reached this place. The road to Tanot is excellent and it takes just about an hour and a half to reach here. On the way one gets to see several wind mills.

We returned to hotel, had dinner and now going to bed. We leave Jaisalmer tomorrow for Dwarka. Everybody is now eagerly looking forward to reaching home.

Bye and good night.