From Thar to eternity

"Nobody comes here.”

Nakul must have repeated that phrase so many times that it began to ring in my mind like a bell.

Winter, which brings the most tourists to Rajasthan, is a busy time for the manager of Suryagarh, a heritage-themed luxury boutique hotel only a few minutes' drive out of Jaisalmer towards the unending expanse of the Thar. Today, he is up early to off-road me and other journalists to the fringes of the great desert that bounds India's far west and Pakistan's far east, spanning a mosaic of landscapes and cultures so unique and diverse that the dialect is said to change every one hundred kilometres. While Jaisalmer city and its iconic Golden Fort are overrun by tourists and hippies, few travellers venture this far off the map. On our three-day sojourn in early December, we crossed paths with only a handful of other tourists (not including a troop of cyclists from Mumbai).

Nakul is right. Nobody ever came here. And that may be a good thing, for now. The great beauty of the Thar lies in its aloofness. It begs to be discovered with reverence, responsibility, and a tempered curiosity bereft of self-aggrandisement. That is the very experience that Suryagarh curates for its guests. Palatial and opulent, the fort-like hotel looms like a vision in the desert only a few minutes’ drive out of Jaisalmer.

Suryagarh’s mission is to ensconce its guests in the warm embrace of the Thar. Every detail of the hotel draws from Rajasthan’s leitmotifs — from the latticed windows (jaalis) to the patterns on the floor, right down to the bath salts. On my second morning I can already feel the immensity of this vast-hearted Rajasthani hospitality. On my brief stay here I have feasted on so many facets of the Thar — its legends and architecture, cuisine and culture — that I am practically stuffed to the gills and overflowing with it. But all of this, it seems, was a lengthy appetiser. The pièce de résistance is yet to come. 

This morning, we are out to discover the inspiration behind Suryagarh’s new Residences. I ask managing director Manvendra Singh Shekhawat for a sneak preview, but he smiles secretively.

“This evening,” he assures us, “you will be ready for them.”

Despite its monotone, the Thar is a vibrant country and, contrary to Bollywood-addled imagination, not made up entirely of rippled sand dunes. Against the loamy yellow sandstone, a ubiquitous building material, the bright fabrics and ornate jewellery worn by Rajasthani women make for a startling contrast. Gentle winds tug at bright magenta pallus, vermilion lehengas and parakeet-green blouses embroidered with tiny circular mirrors that wink back the mellow winter sun. The men mostly wear sallow white but their bright red and orange turbans glow like beacons on the dun canvas. Everything else — beast and bird — wears the sandy beige of the desert, a most appropriate camouflage. 

Isabelline Wheatears (Oenanthe isabellina)— solitary brown passerine birds slightly larger than sparrows — take wing at our approach. A clod of earth shuffling in the shade of a bush turns out to be an Indian Desert Jird (Meriones hurrianae), a rodent with the endearing face of a squirrel and the ungainly tail of a rat. The horizon, corrugated by mirages, reveals the fluid shapes of chinkaras (Gazella bennettii). These elegant gazelles, also sand-coloured, watch with caution the vehicle invading their hitherto unmolested terrain. Ducking behind bushy Jaal trees (Salvador oleiodes) they disappear from sight.

It is past eleven in the morning but the desert air is flecked with the chill of the winter night — we were told that the temperature had dipped to 4 degrees Celsius at dawn. Peafowl call at Khaba Fort, an eyrie on a hillock from where we take in a commanding view of what was once an orderly habitation with squares and streets and cheek-by-jowl houses, now in crumbling ruins. Suryagarh guests valiant enough to wake at dawn are driven here to be treated to the hotel's signature Breakfast With Peacocks, where they nosh on mash and eggs and sip cognac as the magnificent birds peck at grain doled out by a boy with a bushel. Having gorged to bursting on a fulsome halwai breakfast only a few hours earlier, I am in no condition to eat (fellow traveller, travel writer Anurag Mallick warns our hosts pithily: 'There is a thin line between hospitality and hospitalisation'). 

To explore the ruins I descend a flight of steps to the village – about two hundred homes once inhabited by the enterprising Paliwal Brahmins, originally from Pali in central Rajasthan, who had moved west and settled in Jaisalmer. There are the remains of streets and temples, a village square and govardhans — carved pillar-like markers pointing to water sources in this unforgivingly arid landscape.

Not far from here lies the village of Kuldhara. Roughly two hundred years ago, the Paliwals, tyrannised by the debauchery of Salim Singh, prime minister to Maharawal Mulraj, fled Kuldhara and flung a curse upon it that nobody would live here any more. At least, that is the more popular version of the story; it could well be that Salim Singh levied taxes so burdensome on the prosperous Paliwal Brahmins that they had no option but to flee. Either way, their villages, numbering about 84 in all, were never reinhabited. 

Though not a single living Paliwal Brahmin of that lineage remains here today, the land abounds in relics of their resourceful ingenuity. Besides the architecture of their structures, which used locally sourced yellow sandstone and virtually no cementing mixture (the stone pillars, for instance, employed interlocking joints that, over time, fused under gravitational pressure), their agrarian practices continue to benefit the desert communities. 

Khadeen, a system of rainwater harvesting, makes use of bunds and earthen embankments to collect and farm runoff water. Crops are cultivated in cycles on the flooded land until the water evaporates completely. Every caste of village-folk exercised a share in the fair use of these resources. Khadeens, which are similar to the water-harvesting practices of the Nabateans and the Sumerian civilization of Ur dating back to 4500 BC, have a local antiquity of about 700 years. 

We stop next at a cremation ground of the Paliwals. The cenotaphs here lie in ruins, weathered by time and neglect, and pillaged by souvenir-hunters. "Come back here after a month and you'll see that a few more of these stones are missing," says Manvendra. Among the broken chhatris are headstones depicting Phoenicians and Egyptians, we are informed. 

How did they get here? The answer lies in history, some of it buried in legend. So entwined are they in folklore that it’s hard to prise them apart. 

Fact is that Jaisalmer of yore was a stop on one of the southern Silk Roads, which brought caravans from Central Asia. Founded by Maharawal Jaisal in the 12th century, this western Rajput princely state thrived on taxes collected from the caravans passing the desert en route to Osian and Leh towards China. It was when seaports opened on the western coast in Gujarat, and later Bombay (today’s Mumbai), that Jaisalmer's fortunes declined and the regal desert-state was reduced to a feudatory of successive masters in the Mughals, the Marathas and the British. 

Today, Jaisalmer’s richness shines in its legends and leitmotifs, in its music and folk art. The local people, though, grumble that the western district gets only a fraction of the attention and funds that are flushed by the state government into developing tourism in Jodhpur, Udaipur and Jaipur. 

Over lunch, we ruminate on how much tourism is too much for Jaisalmer to handle. We are sitting in the sagacious shade of a time-honoured Khejri tree (Prosopis cineraria) beside a rippling eye of water in the desert. Jaziya Talao is one of the few oases that retain water even in the most unforgiving summer and, naturally, it is the lifeline of this land. As water tankers line up on its shore, sandpipers and lapwings tiptoe in the moist clay of its banks. Bulbuls and warblers chitter in the matted canopy of the gnarled Khejri. As wine is served to accompany the freshly grilled meats that arrive in an unending procession, a Manganiyar folk singer in a bright red turban begins to play a heartrending melody on his algoza and then regales us with folk songs about valour and love, before slyly tucking in a reference to sharab (liquor).

Life is languidly generous, but we have a taste of generosity far deeper when we visit the Bhil people in a remote nook of the scrub desert. It is sundown, and we have just reached here after drinking unbelievably sweet water from the wells of Mundhari and visiting the magnificent expanse of Joshida Talao. The nomadic Bhils, who are shepherds, practise no agriculture and live in semi-permanent settlements called dhanis. They have no electricity but I notice a solar charger firing up a mobile phone. As the light wanes, the goats bleat to their kids who, in unison, rush to their mothers’ udders for a bedtime suckle. We are about to leave when the mother of the house calls to us, inviting us to stay for dinner. We are a group of seven people with ravenous appetites but her eyes shine with kindness true and sincere. We decline politely, bid the Bhils goodbye, and return fuller of heart. 

This desert, which by day appears warm and welcoming, benign and forlorn, transforms into a different creature after sundown. We had a taste of that the night before. It started over dinner when Manvendra and Nakul began to relate ghost stories. One was about a mysterious hitchhiker who flagged down a biker asking for a lift. Halfway through the ride, the rider looked in his rear-view mirror and saw the pillion seat was empty. He turned around only to confirm his fears. More tales followed, each more bone-chilling than the last, until we were eventually on the subject of chudails, female demons with inverted feet that are believed to wander the night thirsting for the blood of human males. Local people aver that they are the spirits of women who suffered brutal deaths at the hands of men and their dark minds seethe with sex and revenge. Ironic how misogyny doesn’t tarnish even in the afterlife. 

Close to midnight, stuffed with dinner and slightly tipsy from our cocktails, we were driven out into the desert to experience Suryagarh’s signature Chudail Trail. The chudails of Kuldhara are thought to be particularly bloodthirsty as they still nurse the scars of Salim Singh's misdeeds. Off-roading in darkness was an edge-of-the-seat experience and no one spoke a word as we bumped around the desert. In biting cold, we arrived at the haunted village of Kuldhara and were shown to sites where legend holds that the bodies of Salim Singh’s victims were found. We stopped at the cenotaphs that had seemed so fascinating by daylight, peering at headstones gingerly in the cold glare of the SUV’s headlamps. As one of the ladies in our group stepped back, something cracked underfoot and she yelped in alarm. A hyena sniggered in the scrub jungle. With a great thrashing of wings, a large white bird darted out of a tree. Pale with shock and struggling to hold our bladders, we returned to the hotel. I slept with the light on. 

In the evening Manvendra keeps his promise. We are shown to the Residences, private suites set apart from the main hotel that enshrine the values of community living while maintaining an excellently devised sense of exclusivity and privacy. What we see here is dazzling. Not only has the architect drawn inspiration from the villages of Kuldhara in styling the yellow sandstone edifices, the ambience is a crystallisation of the experiences we have enjoyed over the last two days. Every handcrafted detail, every motif, has been inspired by the glorious Thar. In a final touch, each of the four Residences is named after the karigar, or chief mason, who supervised its construction. 

This night in Suryagarh feels like Diwali. Illuminated like a palace of gods, every detail of the hotel’s magnificence springs to vibrant life. Nodding to the plaintively beautiful music of the Manganiyars, we dine in the open on wild rabbit and quail, sipping shots of local liqueur and huddling close to the sigris (coal braziers) that keep us warm. 

On my way out the next morning, I sigh with dismay for having forgotten to buy some Jaisalmer Ghotwa, a delectable sweet of roasted gram flour that I had enjoyed at the halwai breakfast. Nakul eavesdrops on my plaint and promptly presses into my hands a little box containing exactly that. Touched, I remark at his memory.

“The desert remembers,” he says, reiterating Suryagarh’s mission. It’s a parting remark I shall never forget.

TRAVEL INFORMATION

Jaisalmer lies to the west of Rajasthan, four hours’ drive from the nearest airport, Jodhpur, which has daily connections to Delhi and Mumbai. Suryagarh is another 15 minutes’ drive from the city.

Suryagarh, Kahala Phata, Sam Road, Jaisalmer - 345001 Rajasthan, India
Tel:  +91-9001995880, +91-02992-269269 Fax: +91-02992-269270
E-mail: reservation@suryagarh.com

Tariff: From INR 15,000
More information: www.suryagarh.com

Bijoy Venugopal is Editor - Yahoo India. He was invited to experience Suryagarh, Jaisalmer. Read more of his travel writing at his blog Afoot. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter