Jaisalmer

Jaisalmer is the last great city before the sand takes over. Set deep in the Thar Desert of far-western Rajasthan, closer to the Pakistan border than to any major Indian metropolis, it grew from the yellow sandstone the desert offered and glows the colour of honey at sunrise and burnt gold at dusk — which is how it earned its name, the Golden City. Nothing about it feels incidental: the town, the fort, the merchant mansions and even the cenotaphs of its kings are all cut from the same warm stone, so the whole place reads as a single sculptural object rising out of a flat, shadeless plain.

At its heart is Jaisalmer Fort, and it is unlike almost any other fort you will visit in India or the world. Founded in 1156 by the Bhati Rajput ruler Rawal Jaisal, it is not an evacuated monument policed by ticket-takers but a living fort — a walled hilltop town where several thousand people still live, worship, cook and trade inside the ramparts, exactly as their ancestors did across nearly nine centuries. In 2013 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as part of the serial property Hill Forts of Rajasthan, alongside Chittorgarh, Kumbhalgarh, Ranthambore, Gagron and Amber. Its local name, Sonar Quila — the Golden Fort — is the one you will hear most.

Jaisalmer owes its existence to trade rather than agriculture. For centuries it sat astride the caravan routes that carried spices, silk, opium and indigo between India and Central Asia, and the fortunes those routes generated built the second reason to come here: the havelis. These are the ornately carved sandstone town-houses of the merchant families who grew rich on the caravan trade — Patwon Ki Haveli, Nathmal Ki Haveli, Salim Singh Ki Haveli — and their filigree-fine stone screens (jharokhas and jaalis) are among the finest examples of the stone-carver's art anywhere in Rajasthan. When the sea routes and, later, Partition killed the overland trade, Jaisalmer's commercial reason for being fell away, and the town slid into a long, quiet decline that, ironically, preserved it almost intact.

The third reason to come is the desert itself. West of town the plain gives way to the shifting dunes of the Thar, and Jaisalmer is the natural launch point for the classic Rajasthan desert experience — a camel safari across the sand, a night in a desert camp under an enormous sky, folk music and dance around a fire, and the specific silence you only get far from any road. The two dune areas, Sam and Khuri, offer versions of this from the highly organised to the near-solitary, and choosing well between them shapes the whole trip.

Practically, Jaisalmer is a destination you commit to rather than pass through. It sits at the end of the railway line and a long way from the nearest airport, so it takes effort to reach — but that remoteness is the point, and it filters the crowds. Give it two to three days: one for the fort and the havelis, one for the dunes and the desert-fringe sights like Kuldhara and Bada Bagh, and, if you can, a slow extra day to watch the stone change colour and to do very little at all. It rewards travellers who slow down, and it is at its best in the cool months between October and March.