The first thing you see as you come towards Jaisalmer is the fort, a real fort, on a hill:

with big walls and battlements:

The fort is thriving today, and very colourful:

 laundry day

 a stone slops bowl for cattle.

There was music too, a Rajasthani love song:

and a short service at the Laxmi Narayan temple:

Jaisalmer Fort – ten out of ten!

On New Year’s Eve the hotel organised an Indian celebration, great acts and great food:

Here is a short cut of some of the festivities:

Leishia and I hope 2014 is kind to you.

Today we popped out to watch the start of an event called “The Rickshaw Run” where teams travel ridiculous distances in their own brightly decorated auto rickshaws, this time they are travelling from Jaisalmer to Cochin which is about 2,400kms. Here they are:

Nuts! More here if you care:

Rickshaw Run

and here:

Our final sight seeing stop was the Royal cenotaphs at Bada Bagh, the most interesting things about this site were the mix of Hindu and Mughal tomb architecture and the prevalence of tombs where the wives had died with their husbands.

 A typical Mughal era tomb

 Looking down one line of tombs

Here is an example of the wives dying and being buried with their husband:

 A King, his brother and his eleven wives.

The practice was known as Sati and required that the wife throw herself onto her dead husbands funeral pyre. Rajahstan was one of the principal territories where Sati was practised. It was banned by the British in 1829. Amazingly the ban was contested but was upheld in 1932.

We spent the rest of New Years Day doing absolutely nothing – wonderful!

Today we are off to Jodhpur – perhaps I’ll buy some funny trousers 🙂