Travellers and story-tellers dust up the forsaken desert kaleidoscope in monsoon, looking for traces of the Silk Route in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. Ritu Pandey joins them in the pursuit
Were we in the footsteps of Ibn BattutaIJ Only the desert would have known. If the shimmering sand, the golden sandstone and the trees, few and far between, keep a record of the ages and people gone by, that is. The Manganiyars and the langas do sing of welcomes and farewells. Did they also serenade the 11th century Moorish traveller who arrived in India via SindhIJ We were out looking for traces of the Silk Route in Jaisalmer, a bunch of travellers, and our trail promised that the “Desert remembers.”
From the 16th to the 18th century, Jaisalmer was well established as a halt on the Silk Route when traders favoured a southern route through India and Pakistan over the treacherous Pamirs of Central Asia.
ETCHED IN SAND
Silk Route or just a load of yarn, I wouldn’t know. May be the men with twirling mustaches around me did. But our journey had been timed well with the monsoon to get a feel of the spurt of greenery on gold. As a rule, desert journeys are painfully slow and excruciatingly tough, even with modern-day amenities. The undulating sand, magical as it may seem, isn’t usually kind to its inhabitants, its rich texture just a neat foil to the perils within. Except perhaps in the monsoon when the benign rain gods cast a brief spell of balm. For us the largesse seemed particularly good with most water bodies full and the surroundings rather leafy.
Water is the lifeline of the desert and here each droplet counts. So our first stop were a few ancient wells and ponds around which not just caravan sarais and inns but also farmlands flourished. Govardhan or water markers in carved stones were erected to guide caravans to places like these. These ingenious systems revealed just how the people in this part secured every drop of water for use through the year. The watering hole at Bhandberi leads to a sarai constructed by the Bhati village head who would often stamp passports of the traders and provide them protection from robbers in exchange of tax money. Joshida Talao, another reservoir, was the pleasure haunt of the royalty with beautifully sculpted machaans and shades built around it.
But Jaisalmer wasn’t always the parched expanse it is today. History reveals that till the 12th century, it was fed by the Kak river, which also happens to be the spot of the legendary love tale of Moomal and Mahendra. The much-married Sodha prince from Amarkot in Sindh would cross the river by camel every night to meet his beloved Moomal, the princess of lodurva, the ancient capital of Jaisalmer. In fact, Moomal Ni Thadi or the embankment which housed the royal palace and where the couple had their rendezvous still stands testimony to their romance. Just as it does to an era, which can only be imagined today. Moomal and Mahendra’s love tale embodies the folk songs that the nomadic minstrels serenaded us with when we took a camel ride across the sands at sunset followed by a memorable shared community meal of ker sangri kachumar, biryani and khameeri roti under the moonlight. This was pampering, truly caravan style!
HOlDING FORT
A rich trade centre and the capital of laudra Rajputs, lodurva, it is said, always remained a city embattled but defiant against avaricious invaders. Every decade of its past was rife with instances of plundering, loot and brutality by everyone from Mohammed Ghauri to Mahmud of Ghazni. But nature, it seems, brought it to its knees. Around the 12th century when the Kak river changed its course to ultimately dry up, the lodurva fort began sinking in the sand. The Bhati Rajputs, who had captured the fort in the 9th century, abandoned it during the reign of Rawal Jaisal for the much grander Jaisalmer fort. Historians presume the Thadi to be remains of the sunken fort.
Jaisalmer too, like lodurva, is a city that boasts of amazing survival tactics. Survival against both — unforgiving nature as well as marauders. The largest fort in the world, housing an entire city within its walls, is now fighting its most crucial battle. Don’t stay within the fort, you’re warned, if you want your children to see it. Built on a weak sedimentary rock with an ingenious drainage system, it faces an extreme threat from water seepage and abusive construction. Will it give in like lodurvaIJ Pray it doesn’t. Because Satyajit Ray’s Sonar Kella within its precincts holds a treasure trove of breathtakingly exquisite seven Jain temples and five havelis of the Patwa Kothari clan, like nowhere else in Rajasthan.
While we’re at forts, let me digress a bit to a fairly new one that is often mistaken for a piece of history simply on account of its architectural purity and golden grandeur so difficult to miss on the forked highway from Jodhpur to the Sam dunes. A bespoke luxury hotel, Suryagarh has yet to complete five years of its existence. Manvendra Singh, the owner (once a Gladrags model), reveals it was planned as a way bigger but not luxury hotel. “I cut down the number of rooms by a third to create something unheard of around here,” says Singh. Suryagarh mixes the royal experiences of heritage hotels with modern indulgence to curate experiences — those like our Silk Route search — for the discerning guests.
GHOSTS OF THE PAST
Which brings us back to lodurva, which wasn’t the only casualty of Kak’s extinction. Turns out 82 villages of the very affluent Paliwal Brahmins, the very first farming community of the region, too, were deserted overnight leaving behind remains of what once must’ve been populated spaces. Myth-making, however, has given an interesting twist to what seems like a very logical stream of events. legend says the villages were deserted overnight after the licentious Prime Minister of Jaisalmer set his eyes on the daughter of the village chief of Kuldhara — the very first of the 84 Paliwal hamlets and an oasis for weary travellers who arrived here via Sam — and presumably also poisoned their water resources. Historians contradict saying the community’s prosperity made it a frequent target of invaders and one such raid in the 18th century resulted in the poisoning of their wells from animal carcasses. With the river having already dried up, the community was left with no choice but to migrate together secretly, lest they be tracked down.
Today Kuldhara has earned the dubious reputation of a haunted village attributed to the belief that the village chief probably killed his daughter before leaving. We arrived there an hour before midnight and the desolation was eerie. The desert winds had snatched the thatched roofs but nicely intact sandstone buildings lined the deserted roads. The homes, cowsheds, town square were just as they were left 200 years ago with well preserved granaries, carts, wheat mills and chulhas. Even the wells and the drainage system was in place. We had been warned not to touch anything precious lying around. Could the ghost story just be a fantastical attempt to keep thieves away from the treasure that lies here unsecuredIJ Kuldhara it seems has been a freeway for smugglers so far. The village temple exists minus the idol, perhaps a handiwork of smugglers. The Chinese lion, however, on its dome gives away its Silk Route link. like Kuldhara, the other deserted village of Khaba is overlooked by a fort, dating back to 1300 AD. It is said that the Paliwals got Khaba in dowry from a Goyal landlord. It was daybreak and the surroundings from atop the fort — where we were having tea surrounded by a bunch of 25 peacocks, crows and pigeons — looked like a picture frozen in time. The bird feeding is a daily ritual here but no one knows its origins. A jangle of cowbells below alerted us to a herd being taken for grazing and the lensmen in the group went berserk.
A kilometre away from Kuldhara lies its cemetery with about a 15 cenotaphs on stone altars, elaborately carved chhatris and plaques describing the people they enshrine. I say people because the cenotaph of every male also carries with it the image of a woman, who performed sati with him. A few have images of a man, a woman as well as a child but the inscription below them are in a language difficult to decipher. The Thar seems to have an abundance of such cenotaphs — a few even belonging to Oriental and Phoenician travellers going by the features of the images they carry. You only wish one of them would wake up to tell their tale. Or just spin a yarn.
GETTING THERE
By Air: Jaisalmer has an armed forces airport and supports only chartered flights, hence is sparingly used by travellers
By Rail: Jaisalmer has good rail links with most cities like Delhi, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Mumbai and others. Every Sunday, the luxury Palace on Wheels stops at Jaisalmer. The Delhi-Jaisalmer Express is a direct train from Old Delhi, while the Mandore Superfast goes up to Jodhpur
By Road: A daily Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation bus plies to and from Jaipur. There are also regular bus and taxi services from Jodhpur and Bikaner