One Crazy Adventure!

Last year, we visited Rajasthan for our Industrial Visit. There was nothing ‘industrial’ about the visit, but that’s a different matter altogether. This post is about a little adventure of our own that me and a few friends from class had during this trip.
Now, at Jaisalmer, we stayed at a grand palace hotel right in the middle of the Great Indian Desert. We reached there at 2 in the afternoon and to our dismay, we learnt that the whole day was going to be spent at the hotel and that there would be no sightseeing that day. True, the hotel was amazing but the point of travelling to another place is that you explore it, in and out.
So, we were just randomly sitting and cursing the professors for cancelling the plans for the day, when one of us had the scary but exciting idea of sneaking out and exploring the desert on our own. So after some initial hesitation, we picked up our cameras and boldly went to the receptionist and asked him about places nearby that we can go to. He suggested Kuldhara, a ghost town of sorts, evacuated 200 years ago during a battle. Empty town? Ruins in the middle of the desert? You can imagine how much that must have excited a group of rebellious teenagers.
So at 5:30 in the evening, we set off along the road in the middle of the road in the direction pointed out to us. There was not a soul in sight and the sun was just calling it a day. Then suddenly out of nowhere, comes this 6-seater auto rickshaw, which some of us saw as a boon, other were terrified. ‘What if he’s a psycho killer? What if he’s a rapist?’ And so he was dismissed. Then after walking for 5 minutes, laziness triumphed over caution and we sat in the auto and asked him to take us to Kuldhara. What happened next was hilarious. Someone said, “What if he is taking us to some shaddy place?” To which, the rickshaw driver replied in perfect English, “No, I am taking you on the correct way!” Tourism being one of the backbones of Rajasthan’s economy, these locals have learnt English really well.
When we finally reached our destination Kuldhara, we were spellbound. The ruins were spookily mesmerising. There was an ancient, wrinkled caretaker, who also spoke English and lead us into the ruins, where we clicked many pictures, found a broom, a pot and some twigs, that scared the daylights out of us (We really thought there might be a witch living in those ruins), were attacked by bats (well not really, but there too many of them and I swear one of them flew very close to me!), I and a friend also drove the rickshaw for a while and basically, we had the best adventure ever!