The bare minimum village life in Jaisalmer

This post shows you the photos of a simplest village house in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. While most of us have our origins in villages or at least have good exposures to villages, the villages in Rajasthan survive on bare minimum stuff. The houses are often too far from each other and lack most amenities we take for granted.

One such village is picturized below- clicked during our quick stop-over during the desert exploration with Suryagarh,

Above: Two tiny houses, that had about 4-6 residents. The women in the house seemed very reluctant when we went close, but as the male visitors stepped aside, they opened up a bit and interacted with female bloggers in the group.

Below: Village people, clicked from a distance (Clarification: one on the right most is NOT a village person- guess who is that?)


Above: Cloth washing area
Below: Cattle shed

Below-left: A tiny storage area
Below right-the cot

Was good to see a small bit of technology reaching these villages- I could see some solar panels and a radio device

 A donkey and a goat

Above photo by Sudha Ganapathy

 We also visited another village on our way to Kiradu

 A Jaisalmer villager

Above: A well that has good amount of sweet water even in peak summer. Unfortunately there are very few of them.
Below: Villagers carrying water on their heads, clicked from a moving car

Above: Village kids
Below: Roof of a village hut in Rajasthan

The camels, when looked upon closely, feel very aged and poorly fed. Spotted a marking on the neck, which I believe is for identification purpose. As I tried going closer, the camel got scared and tried to limp away (its front legs were tied to each other to prevent it from escaping), so I moved back and returned, so as not to scare it further.

Most modern facilities are yet to reach their villages. Over time, they have learned to live in a self sustained way, growing their food locally and with near zero dependency on towns or governments. Of course the times are changing. Village youth are finding employment in cities, bringing better facilities to their homes, but it is still a long way before these remote villages get basic facilities we city people have taken for granted. Suryagarh has good number of people from these villages employed at its botique hotel and also spends good money sponsoring village schools and so on.

Also read: Kuldhara * Jaisalmer Fort  * Lodhruva Jain temple *