Touring Jaisalmer Without a Leg to Stand On

Jaisalmer is a city that seems to lie on the edge of magic, a place where any minute you might slip from reality and into a fairy tale. D, Katie, and I are at an elevated plateau overlooking the city center. Before us stretch miles of amber-hued buildings all built from the same golden sandstone. Though the windows, balconies, and doorways all boast unique detailing, the city still has an undeniable uniformity to it. All the buildings have the appearance of belonging together, with homes and shops that continue to be built in much the same way as they have been built for the past several hundred years. It is impossible for me to discern the difference between those structures that are several centuries old and those constructed only a decade past.

As we get in the car, I ask about the intricately detailed tapestries and bedspread in the hotel. Does D happen to know where we can buy anything like that? I have already fallen madly in love with the bedspread in our room.

As a matter of fact, D knows where we can buy items exactly like that. Well, almost exactly – every piece is unique but made by the same people. D drives us to a shop near the center of town. The shop owner smiles at us. He helps me settle on a bench and offers us a tray with three little cups of chai on it.

"Where are you from?" he asks.

"We're American," I say, "but we live in Korea."

"Ah, is that North Korea or South Korea?" he asks.

The shop keeper then opens up a photo album of the women who fashion and sew his textiles. He points out that the women pictured, some of them bending over long pieces of fabric with a needle, others touching their loom as though they were about to play music on it, belong to a cooperative comprised of Indian and Pakistani women who live in poor villages in the nearby desert. Now that’s he’s gained our interest – point to him for gaining my empathy before the bargaining even begins – he starts to bring out the goods.

Shopping in a traditional Indian store is probably the closest I’ll ever come to feeling like royalty. The sides of the store are stacked from floor to ceiling with neatly folded textiles, which the owner and his son bring out and unfurl before us with a certain regal flourish. What interests me? They are willing to lay their entire store before me. It is a surprisingly effective selling technique. I ask about bedspreads, so the owner pulls out a pile.



The owner takes out one beautiful quilt after another, but I softly refuse the items presented to me. They are all lovely, but none of them are necessary.

"Wait," Katie says, as a coverlet sewn of dreamy blue and green patches is laid upon the floor. "Put that one in a pile for me."

"Would you like to see tablecloths?" the shopkeeper asks.

"No, thanks. We don't own tables," I reply. "Do you have a pink quilt?"

He lays an orange quilt before me, and then a yellow one. I shake my head. Then he pulls out a red quilt. It sparkles from every angle. This is the lure the catches me.

"I want to see more like that!" I exclaim.

"Oh this? The silk patches have been cut from antique wedding saris. It’s a quilt for newlyweds."

{my wedding quilt}

"I could get married," I defensively mumble under my breath. The shop owner brings out a heap of wedding quilts and unfurls them before me.

Glittering things are very much necessary, I decide, but financial restraint prompts me to settle on just one. The owner spreads out a hand-sewn quilt consisting of pink, red, and teal patches. It has sparkly golden elephants, birds outlined in glittering sequins, and delicately-beaded lotus flowers embroidered on it.

Details on my quilt:





It is now the shiniest thing I own. And I own a lot of shiny things.

"May I show you some table cloths?" the shop owner asks Katie.

"No, we don't have tables," Katie responds. "We live in very small apartments, just one room."

Katie buries herself in a stack of decorative patchwork tapestries. I ask to see pashminas.

"Here, let me show you some table cloths," the shopkeeper tells me, pulling down a small pile of them.

"No," I say. "We still haven't got tables since the last time you asked."

With great reluctance, the shopkeeper puts back the table cloths and brings out a pile of soft pashminas, hand-woven and with tasseled ends, for my perusal. I choose one that's a rich royal blue and embroidered with hundreds of starry gold flowers and vines. The shop owner tells me that a woman spent over a month weaving and embroidering it.

Temptations of the shop are many. By the time we leave, Katie and I have amassed far more than we meant to buy but still not as much as we'd like to buy.

"Where next?" D asks. "It will be sunset in less than an hour."

Katie and I both shrug. Our research on Jaisalmer was minimal and what's more, we're not sure which places, exactly, I can physically manage on one leg and a walker.

We get into the car and D drives us to the outside of a famous mansion. Peering through the entrance, it seems long and labyrinthine. Not ideal for my current state. We keep driving.


{Patwa Ki Haveli Mansion}

We turn down one road and up another, just beyond the city proper, and park outside a lake. Gadi Sagar was built in 1367 to act as the main water supply for the entire city. It is surrounded on all sides by cenotaphs and shrines, domes and ghats, all fashioned from the achingly beautiful gold sandstone.

{Gadi Sagar}



We see about a dozen boats on Gadi Sagar, most of them floating empty along the edge of the lake.

"Let's rent a paddle boat," I quip.

"Alright, come on, then," says D.

D and Katie lead the way onto the floating, shifting docks and I hobble-hop behind them. We climb into a three-seater paddle boat that bobbles in the water each time one of us enters it. It is bright green and made of plastic. It reminds me of an oversized bathtub toy.



When the sun sinks into the horizon, the entire area lights up gold, "[nature's] hardest hue to hold."








Not bad for my first day of bed rest. Not bad at all.

Hospital Tour of India

“Ow-ow-ow-ow-AAYYEEEEEE!” I eloquently explain to the doctor, who simultaneously asks me where it hurts and pushes down on the puffiest bits of my injured foot. He is to be the first of three doctors I will see that night in Jaisalmer, each exam beginning with that same painful introduction.

It was not exactly an easy feat to get me to the hospital in the first place. Oh, the hotel is in possession of a car that can drive me there without problem. It is more a matter of overcoming my fortitude of denial. With my usual combination of stubbornness and optimism, I insist that the lump on my foot is no more than the sign of a bad sprain.

Upon our arrival at the Shahi Palace Hotel, I almost immediately crawl to the rooftop. It has, one of the hotel employees informs me, both a restaurant and a great view. The view is, indeed, magnificent. In the light of the dying sun, the Golden Fort seems to glow from deep within the ancient stone. Long stone benches, covered in an assortment of mustard yellow and ochre red cushions, jut over the sides of the Shahi’s roof. I prop my foot on a bolster and stretch out across one of the benches. I order a large mug of steamy masala chai. Someone drapes a blanket over me.

{rooftop of the Shahi Palace Hotel}

One of the hotel workers offers me a tube of ointment, which I gently and optimistically daub on my foot.

“I think the swelling’s going down,” I lie to both Katie and myself.

Katie looks dubiously at my super-sized foot but amicably nods in agreement.

{"Good luck storming the castle!"}

Jaisalmer is a sleepy town at the edge of the Thar Desert. I feel at peace for the first time in India while basking in the remnants of the sun. From my bird's eye vantage point, I can see the edge of town. Passing on the street are just a couple of motorbikes, a few ambling cows, a young goatherd boy and his charges. There is the faintly melodic sound of tiny bells as the herd passes beneath the hotel. Later that night the silence will be broken by revelers at the Titanic Hotel, which is across the street, as a group of men sings a passionate version of the chorus to "My Heart Will Go On." After the last notes of their song die down, Jaisalmer will return to quietness once more.

It isn’t until I crawl back down from the roof to my hotel room that the hotel owner sees me. He first encourages, then kindly tricks me, into going to the hospital. Our dialogue goes something like this:

D: Oh, that looks bad, very bad. You need to see a doctor.

Me: No, not so bad. (hides wincing) Just need a good night’s sleep and I’ll be ready for our camel trek tomorrow.

D: I don’t think you can ride a camel like that.

M: I’m getting better. The swelling’s gone down.

D looks to Katie for affirmation. She shakes her head slightly in the negative.

D: If you come to the hospital, they can give you drugs for your foot. You’ll enjoy your camel trek more if the swelling goes down.

M: Well, that makes sense. Okay. Let me just crawl to a taxi or something.

And that’s how to successfully lure me into a hospital.

{inexplicably but genuinely happy in the red wheelchair -- before drugs or cast!}

The second doctor I visit takes an x-ray which verifies the worst: I am dead. Okay, maybe I don't get the absolute worst diagnosis following an accident, but possibly the second worst: my foot is broken.

"You know what I miss?" I ask Katie and then answer without waiting for her to reply. "I miss the time when rats were our biggest problem."

I continue on to visit a succession of doctors, each one established at a seemingly dirtier hospital than the last. Now, I'm a messy person, a very messy person. The state in which I kept my bedroom during my teenage years still gives my mother nightmares. "I was looking through a pile of papers on your desk, and in the middle of them was a koosh ball!" she'll still exclaim at times, a shock which has not lessened with the years. "You filed a ball in a pile of papers!" My messiness is very possibly my worst trait. But even by my low standards for tidiness, I am shocked by the hospitals' stratum of filth. At the final hospital I visit, I unwillingly heave myself onto an examining table that is covered by a thin green pad. The pad has dried blood, mucus, and other unidentifiable (to me, at least) bodily fluids spattering it. It is a veritable Pollock of pestilence.

One of the doctors comes at me with a long needle filled with some sort of clear fluid. He holds it, the sharp tip pointing heavenward, while walking quickly towards me. I have not seen him, or anyone, unwrap this needle. I am motionless, trapped on the examination table, unable to run away. But my voice still works.

"NO! NEEDLES!!!" I enthusiastically shout.

Katie folds into herself from embarrassment.

But I am glad to have shouted, whatever social mores I have broken. When I return home from my Indian trip, I read on the Internet (paraphrased), "While larger Indian cities boast some of the finest medical facilities in the world, the opposite is true of hospitals found in smaller towns. . . . It is not uncommon for the same needles to be cleaned with water and used for multiple patients."

After my outburst, the doctors quietly take the needle away. I ask if I can wash my foot, since I have just ridden the train two nights in a row without any means of bathing, but they only let me dab at it with a moistened cotton ball.

"Washing it is bad for your health," one of them says.

"That philosophy explains the state of their hospital," I wryly think to myself.

One of the doctors brings out a big plastic bucket filled with something wet and faintly white, a liquid which looks like watered-down milk. He bandages my leg, nearly up to my knee, by winding multiple strips of cotton and plaster of Paris around it. It soon dries in the air, forming a hard white shell. Only the toes, knee, and upper thigh are free.

After this, we visit a pharmacy of sorts, where I will be handed a fistful of opiates. The opiates pose some danger to me, not from risk of addiction but because, coupled with my fast-flowing adrenaline, they act as a wonder drug. I feel good, really good. There's still a pain in my foot, but it just doesn't seem that important.

At the end of the hospital tour, I am driven back to the Shahi Palace Hotel. I climb into the soft, clean bed and begin to rest as per the doctor's orders. I sleep all the way until about noon the next day. After waking and downing a few opiates, I declare to Katie that I feel fine. I want to go out. I want to ride camels.

{beautiful bed for resting at the Shahi Palace Hotel}

"No! Bed rest!" Katie declares, with as much sternness as her gentle nature can muster. She then distracts me by ordering room service. I eat tandoori chicken, deliciously savory from herbs and smoke, and swallow a tall, lumpy glass of lassi. When lunch is finished, I nestle back into my pillows and read several stories from the Mark Twain book I'd brought with me to India. I am so good, a model patient. Then Katie leaves the room to set out laundry and buy more bottled water.

I only have one functioning leg, but a few minutes after she leaves, I blithely use it to spring out the bedroom door like a deranged version of Tigger. I chance to see the hotel owner in the hallway.

"So. . ." I beam at him, radiant with the success of my bedrest escape. "What's there to do in Jaisalmer?"