Mt Abu, India

ESCAPING THE HEAT
At 11.15pm we caught the overnight train back to Jodhpur, retracting our steps of the night before. In Jodhpur by 5am, Etienne headed for Pushkar while George, Jo and I caught another train to Abu Road then a rickety old local bus up the hill to Mt Abu (1,200m) - a shady little hill station perched beside the sadly under-filled Nakki Lake. It was a pleasant little town though and a nice change from the intense heat of the desert. I took the chance try some Thali's; traditional Southern Indian and Gujarati all you can eat meal, similar to Dhal Bhat in Nepal. I tried a few regional variations including a nice Punjabi one with curd but I stayed away from the goats brain curry.

The main attractions in town are the group of exquisite Jain temples- possibly the finest examples of Jain architecture in India where the art of carving marble reached unsurpassed heights. These important and very old temples date from the 11th and 13th centuries, which is difficult to believe after seeing the minute detail paid to the interior of each temple.

Mt Abu - Superstar

After Mt Abu there is only one other place I wanted to visit in Rajasthan - Udaipur, the setting for James Bonds Octopussy.

Jaisalmer, India

OVERNIGHT TO JAISALMER
It was nice to be catching a train with some western reinforcements for once. Every other train I had been on I seemed to be the lone foreigner. I was certainly the only foreigner in the carriage I was on so I was fair game for people to stare at, point at and start random conversations about Indian film stars with. I'll give it to the Indians though; they can get really excited about some truly crap movies.

The train trip was pretty short, departing Jodhpur at 11.15pm and arriving in Jaisalmer just before 5am - a little ahead of schedule. On the train, even before it left the station in Jodhpur, a hotel owner pounced upon us and made an impassioned plea for us to stay at his guesthouse. Knowing that tourist numbers are down all over Rajasthan we managed to beat him down in price to a mere Rs20 each for the night. At other guesthouses I had been paying in the region of Rs100-200 so this was an exceptional deal. We weren't even sure if we wanted to stay the night in Jaisalmer as we had talked about catching another overnight train further south but at that price we decided to pay for one night anyway and quickly fell asleep until a more reasonable hour.

Rajasthan elephant

Before it got too hot Etienne woke everyone up and together we walked the short distance to the Fort. Jaisalmer, the golden city, is special in that the ancient fort is home to several thousand people, a number of guesthouses and restaurants with rooftop views and a stunning set of Jain Temples. We had breakfast at an Indian/Australian restaurant but the Indian owner made a meal of his Australian accent; everything was bloody hot or bloody good and after a while it became bloody irritating. The Jain temples were the highlight though. Usually modest looking from the outside, the inside is always a riot of sculptural ornamentation with elaborate carvings of symmetrical patterns, animals and people dancing. This is partly explained by the Jain notion that beauty is found within. They believe that only by attaining complete purity of the soul can one attain liberation, hence they fast, meditate, retreat to lonely places etc, to purify themselves. They usually maintain a bare minimum of possessions, including a broom with which they sweep the path in front of them to avoid stepping on any living thing and a piece of cloth tied over their mouth to avoid the accidental inhalation of insects. I have killed so many mosquito's on this trip that I am forever barred from becoming a Jain.
 

The Jain temples of Jaisalmer - Me, Georg, Jo and Etienne

Jaisalmer is a desert town that hasn't seen rain in over two years. It's hot and dry and most people come here to do a camel trek into the desert. I have been on a camel trek before in Egypt so I had no intention of doing another one. Maybe if Sara was with me she could of convinced me to go into the plains for a few days but on my own I couldn't be bothered. Besides, the others decided to head to Mt Abu on the overnight train and I wanted to join them.

Rajasthan moustaches