25th February 2014 (Day 17) Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India

Walking past, an ancient door opens to a mysterious courtyard.

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I’m not sure whether it was a private residence or a hotel but since the doorway was open, I went in a little further for this view.

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There is an old city inside the fort, with a myriad of narrow passageways and shops, havelis, hotels, palaces and temples.

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The fort dates back to the twelfth century but it was sacked and then abandoned on at least one occasion.  The current temples date from at least the sixteenth century.  I recall reading that the old town dates from the seventeenth or eighteenth century though I can’t find the reference.  The toothbrush in the above image is likely to be more recent.

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You may have heard of people going “off the beaten track” and wondered where that might be.  Well here it is.  In the back streets of Jaisalmer Fort.

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For a while it seemed we had entered the land of the dead motor scooters…

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A door in a state of rather precarious disrepair.  Probably there is another entrance.

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This is the entrance of the hotel where we stopped to have lunch.

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This and succeeding images are from the roof patio where we had lunch.

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Two-thirds of the population of Jaisalmer live outside the fort.

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A group of women at the entrance of the fort selling jewellery.  The passing cow didn’t seem too interested.

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Jaisalmer fort has three concentric walls and ninety-nine bastions, ninety-two of which were built between 1633 and 1647 to be used as gun platforms.

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There are some underlying structural problems with Jaisalmer Fort, though, causing a palace and some walls to collapse.  It is built on soft sedimentary rock and the main cause of the problems seems to be that the sewerage system is leaking and undermining the foundations.

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