The Desert City

pWe hit Jaisalmer around 9:30 PM and as we entered the city were chased by 2 bikes!! Someone should put a warning sign at the entrance saying "Beware:Touts out to get you" or Jaisalmer -The city of touts! :)
After managing to escape from them and grabbing some dinner, we decided to look for some place to stay the night. WE got second time lucky, when we found this place called Gorakh Haveli. Like most of the tourist places, you can bargain and get down the rates here too. The hotel was neat, big rooms, clean bathrooms with hot water. Had a good nights sleep and were ready to see the city in the morning.
The day started with breakfasting on the rooftop, and this is when I realised the desperation of the guys on the bikes. Every house in Jaisalmer is a hotel and every rooftop is a restaurant. With no other source of income and so much competition; I do not think they have much choice. Sad but true, I felt the charm of the place was lost beacause of excessive commercialisation.
We started our site seeing with the Havelis - Patwa and Nathmal. The former was really beautiful and well maintained, while the latter wasnt too great. But the most disappointing thing was the very badly maintained city roads with open drains flowing all around (you can see sewage flowing and it stinks like crazy). Kind of spoils the experience and makes you wonder why a place that survives on tourism would not want to maintain itself??
After the visit to the havelis, we went to see the famed fort. The fort kind of is visible from everywhere in the city, but the view does not remain as good coz of the constructions and the mobile signal towers. The fort is quite a massive one, really really huge! Half of the city lives inside the fort; shops restaurants everything is found in there. We walked around the fort and did a bit of seeing about. Somehow we did not explore it fully.....i think the number of people in there kind of put us off.
After lunch, we finally headed to the desert. This was the most awaited part of my trip, i was dying to see the desert! I was hoping to see a Bollywood style never ending beautiful desert......but was a tad disappointed. The desert actually wasn't too big, it actually got over pretty fast :). I would want to sue all the movie ppl who show wrong images :). We did the camel ride in the desert, which was real good fun. Unlike Leh, vik and I sat on the same camel this time; poor camel though (he he he). Went for a short ride, away from the maddening crowd and then stopped on top of a dune to watch the sunset and paint the sky with beautiful colors. This was a truly amazing sight! After spending some time wit the sand and the camels, we got back to land.
We spent the night in a desert camp, actually just a part of the night. They had some cultural programs there, which were good and enjoyable. This is a normal practice in the desert, there are lots of camps that serve dinner and have cultural traditional programs. You can also spend the night there, but we decided to head back to the city. We needed to start early the next day and head back to Jodhpur, to continue with the rest of our trip.
After a good night's sleep, again at Gorakh and a good breakfast we hit the road at around 9:30 AM. We made good time and reached Jodhpur by around 1.
Jaisalmer as a city wasn't too impressive but the desert trip made up for it, even though the camel ride was a bit steep. Advice to tourists, make sure you bargain and decide the rates before starting the ride.