Jaisalmer

5 hours across the Thar desert, leaving Jodhpur a little prematurely I guess, and missing Udihpur all together, we watch the higher desert turn to the real deal. Nothing but sand and wind, a few, very few, people, huts, and animals for a hundred kilometers. We pass some camels owned by someone we presume, and the walls of sand just get bigger and bigger. Raj plays chicken with the big rigs, who's going to give in and move, and I have to believe that without Leslie and Phoebe and I all sucking in our breath, we'd have been dust on the road within minutes. Raj really is batman, and we cross the desert with aplomb, stopping at the most beautiful mid-way, a hotel spread and desert camp, replete with air-conditioned tents and a giftshop. We have yet another cup of delicious chai and move on into Jaisalmer.

Jaisalmer just sort of appears, comes up out of the desert like a dream, this fort-city built out of yellow sandstone, so different from the other red sandstone cities we've seen in Rajishtan. And it does come up. All of the sudden the desert is the town, not big, but imposing, and very hot. We do the usual thing - find the hotel, rest, take drinks, then wake the driver to schlep us around. And we want to find Artist Hotel, the place we've promised Pepé we'd drop the copy of his movie. We sort of have an address, and crawl through small alleys and drains, smelling the same Indian smell, this time flavored more with dust than damp. We troll, asking who we think we can ask, then we find it, perched on the hill overlooking the fort (isn't there always a fort in these Rajashtani towns?), and meet Roj-a the half-owner musician clan guy who is in partnership with Helmut, the Austrian who isn't here but who put up the money to build this hotel in the musician's quarter, to sponsor learning and play. And we sit, take tea, exchange gifts and meet people, young Indian/Pakistani people, Kawali singers and travelers. We hear music and dance, listen to old songs sung in Urdu and watch a full moon rise over the city. Through the dust there's a golden hue, and the wind is strong up here so everything sways, including the power cords strung from roof top to roof top, so the power periodically goes out. But the moon is solid and bright, and means something special to us, and to these friends we're making.Roj-a asks us back tomorrow to watch the movie and meet the rest of his family and share mutton and whatever else he cooks. It is a restaurant after all, and we hear he is a very good cook.

The drive back to the hotel, around the fort and through town is a little haunting, but very beautiful, punctuated with the usual clatter of pans, and pots, and car horns, and the Muslim call to prayer we haven't heard much of.We sleep in the heat of an old hotel, never really resting, but drifting through the tales we've been hearing. Get up to take chai and toast and Indian potatoes on the crabgrass lawn someone is pulling by hand. We find Raj and the car and the uniformed man who must have come with the place, who salutes (a real, heart-felt, stiff right hand snapped to the brim of the hat salute) every time we go in or out. He salutes, we go out into the dust of the market to shop for whatever we find - the smiles on youth, the curious stares of the old folk, the smell of the open drains, the dogs, the cows, lunch, textiles, silver, silk.

We shop and get stuff, see stuff, tour the fort and the first Jain temple I've ever seen. Since I was young I wondered about Jainism (maybe because it sounded so plebeian for the name of a religion), and find it to be this remarkable mix of Hindi and Buddhist regalia, lore and practice. And the Jains add their own flavor - no leather in the temples, no thought of business, family, or sex in the temple, and they don't eat anything that grows in the ground, or anything after dark, lest something should die, because they are devout in their attempt to kill nothing. And the temples are sculpted like butter, every surface has a million facets, and it's all carved out of this stone. Someone tells me later that the craftsmen that carved these temples were paid in gold for the weight of the chips they carved out of these sculptures. Everywhere you look there's something. And the 'prophets,' 27 of them, all look strikingly like Buddha, except these images are open eyed and their hands are all palm-up in their laps. There are no hand mudrahs, and no beatific faces.We wander the temples and the fort with Singh, a young 'family' Jain who can touch people, and can obviously think with a business mind, because after telling us he loves the WWF, asks for rs 600 for his efforts. OK, OK.

Then we've convinced Raj to let us loose in the markets, to find what Leslie hasn't found yet and leave more rupies in our trail. We buy tiles, and leather, and an old silk sari for Leslie the guys at Rajashtani Arts will have sewn into a suit. We buy old textile wall hangings and then take lunch in a common café, common because it all working folk, (men, all men) and it's clearly a working man's place. Raj helps up order and the food is superb. After lunch Raj takes us to a jewelry manufacturer, a house of a family caste of jewelers who make amazing gold and silver things. We take the obligatory chai, though it's hot enough to boil it without a stove, and sit for 2 hours watching as he pulls silver finery out of boxes and bags, and with the help of his sons, show us kilo after kilo of necklaces and bracelets and goblets and statues, all of silver and precious stones. Our eyes finally glaze over and we price a few things, buy what we can and then haul the loot home to rest and get ready for the night.

We get to the Artist hotel at 7:30 and Roj-a is still out looking for a television and VCR to show the movie. We've brought water and beer and fruit and pens for the children, and sit with Martin, the New Zealander traveling in India for a year. We talk and wait, and Phoebe and Leslie wander across the street to another family house to deliver pens to the kids. They cheer and draw all over and then Roj-a arrives on his Royal Enfield Bullet with the TV strapped on the back. He start cooking and then Mina, the other New Zealander, arrived in the autorikshaw with the VCR. She had to try 10 shops she says before she found one. By 9 we are eating and drinking and telling more tales. Some of Rog-a's family shows up and though there's no music, the movie plays through intermittent power outages, and at one point I turn around and there are 25 people on the balcony watching what we're watching and watching us. Young folk, old folk, people in the movie, people who know people in the moves, people just watching.. It's crazy up here and the wind is still blowing through the full moon and around the fort.

We stay way to late, take forever saying goodbye and making promises.

People evidently only stay 2 nights in Jaisalmere, so even the captain is surprised to see us the next day, and snaps his salute and we go off, more stuff to see, stuff to buy, chores to accomplish even in this sand desert town inches from the Pakistani boarder. I'm told about a certain brigadier Singh who was brought in some years ago to clean up the Pakistanis over-running-the-boarder, and he asked his command if he could do anything in his power. He was told yes, and did, and since there hasn't been a problem. I didn't ask what it was he did, and it wasn't offered either. At night Phoebe and Raj and I slip back into town to pick up the last of the tailoring, to find an old tailor still working in the near dark of low watt bulbs with a treadle sewing machine. He'll be done in awhile we're told, take drinks on the roof of the shop with the owners we've met, and the smarmy one dressed in white we haven't. All is pleasant enough, the beer is cold, the chai and whiskey are strong, but our conversations drift suspiciously into politics and religion, and finally, the white one and I agree the union Hindi, bad-Budhist, Agnostic, and whatever I say I am is, "No matter where you go, there your are, but you better bring with you everything you have." We agree to pick up the rest of the stuff in the morning on the way to Bikaner, and take wagers on how long we'll have to wait.

Comments

[Linda "T"]

It's all so enchanting...I would love to sip chai the way it's supposed to taste. I hope you buy some there & learn how the locals make it.

Leslie,
I also hope you learn how to wrap a sari. I inherited one from mom & don't know how to wear it. Perhaps you'll come back and show me how....