Second Day

Each day we had tours out in one of 3 or 4 buses; we were a green badged group – naturally Drena and I taught them all to refer to us as ‘emerald group'. A different guide joined each day. On the second day at the desert fort town of Jaisalmer we were joined by Raj (every other guys name in Rajasthan is Raj). Raj kept reminding us he was from the warrior class; that was probably his excuse for not having much between his ears.

This town is in the most western part of Rajasthan, only 10's of Kilometers from Pakistan, and on the edge of the Thar desert which made it part of the historic camel train spice and trade route for thousands of years.

This town was our favorite - it showed many good examples of the merging of religions and architecture that characterizes Mogul culture. The original religion at zero AD was mainly Buddhist. Next came Jain, who were very strong in this town because they are traders, followed by Hindu from about the 7 th century. Moslems came along from Persia much later, about the 12 th century. Now when the Moguls invaded from the north central Asian areas, where all the nations names end in ‘stan'; they took over all of Rajasthan because they bought with them gun powder, muskets and canon's. But the Mogul's (like the Roman's) adopted the religions and philosophy's of the nations they invaded and this led to some strange melding of architecture. We saw for instance Islamic arches in the Jain temples and combinations of all sorts of architecture in the Mogul palaces.

The population now is mainly Hindu and Moslem, since the camel trade died out a century or more ago, the Jain have mostly moved on. Most of the people we do business with in the diamond industry are Jain; it is very much like Hindu, but apparently predates Hindu. I think the Jain fit in like an upper cast of Hindu. They are certainly very pleasant people and we rarely if ever have problems or difficulties dealing with them.

Solid marble 12 th century Jain Temple with Islamic arches. This was amazingly ornate inside.

Camel Ride

After lunch we headed out to the desert for camel rides and to watch the sun set across the desert.

Yes we actually went on a 1 hour camel ride – and let me tell you, if you had to ride one of these things for a few days you would hardly be able to walk.

They were well behaved though; ours was led by a 12 year old, so it was just as well.

That night we were carted off for a ‘cultural dinner', you know the type where if you do not enjoy the cultural dances and jangly music, you get no dinner.

We were well greeted at the new desert hotel, and Barry and Cydonia shared our desire to start eating before the festivities were completely over.