Jaisalmer

Jaisalmer is built from the same yellow sandstone it stands on, which is why at six in the evening the whole fort looks lit from inside — and why at midday it looks like nothing much at all. Time your first look for the last hour of light. The fort is one of very few in the world still lived in: several thousand people, with shops, homes, temples and plumbing inside the walls. That is what makes it extraordinary and also what is slowly destroying it, because the drainage was never built for modern water use and the bastions are being undermined. Conservationists ask visitors to sleep outside the walls rather than in the fort hotels. It is worth honouring. Patwon ki Haveli is the finest carved stone in the city. The Jain temples inside the fort are quieter and, to my eye, better. For the desert, the choice matters. Sam dunes at sunset is a full circus of camels, jeeps and loudspeakers. Khuri is further out, plainer, and gives you the silence people actually come to the Thar for. November to February. Nights in the desert get genuinely cold — bring more than you think.