Jaisalmer - Bikaner (day 12)

Today there's not much on the program, except for driving well over 300 km (about 4 to 6 hours driving) from Jaisalmer to Bikaner. But we started the day in a non-touristic souvenirshop in Jaisalmer. From the outside it looks like an ordinary house. On the inside it's a completely different story: you'll find a gigantic collection of all kind of antique objects. The owner of the shop is of Jain origin, this is a guarantee of a fair trade. The shopowners get their collection by travelling through Rajasthan and visit the local markets to buy the items for peanuts. It's clear that he has knowledge about the items, because he tells what all the items are, where it's used for and he demonstrated the use of the item. After looking around for 1,5 hours we bought some things.

After that we continued our way to Bikaner. After driving a lot of km's, we stopped at a restaurant to have some lunch. Here we sat at a table with an older Dutch couple. Constantly we see these people as long as the travel takes, so why not? After introducing ourselfs (a bit late, so it was about time...), we got to talk to them (already did during the trip actually). This couple resides in Florida and have seen a lot of this world. By the way, they're really nice and smiley people and everytime we bump into eachother we laugh a little and it's like "you here as well?" it's always nice. After the (usually) nice lunch we continued driving 200 km to Bikaner. At a certain moment we pulled over, because we saw remarkable many cotton fields. This is quite rare, because we are in the middle of the desert so it grows in sand ground. Upon arrival at the hotel we noticed that it was a beautiful palace (once again), but the service of clearly less than we've been used to so far. The staff is far more reluctant and less customer friendly. But luckily we've been warned in advance in Jaisalmer by a Flamish couple who travels in the opposite direction and also when we approached the hotel by our driver. Tomorrow we have a short program (taking just 1 or 2 hours) in Bikaner. After that we will be driving to Mandawa, our last stop before New Delhi again!

Day 11

Travel overview

Day 13