Desert Havali Guest House review, Jaisalmer

We weren't going to come here as Mariana thought it was too far to go
but we were both pleasantly surprised we came here!

We met a nice Canadian family on our 5am train (and we're meant to be
on holiday!) They had 2 children aged 11 and 7! They had been
travelling for 3 months so far with stops in Europe, Egypt and now
India! This place is tough enough for us at times so we were intigued
to see how it was with 2 young kids in tow! They said that generally
it had been a good experience and the school had been very supportive
by arranging school work for the kids. They generally tried to stay at
the nicer guest houses. It was interesting to hear of how they were
getting on anyway.

Jaisalmer was also built around a fort along the old silk route. It's
an amazing little place as it's literally built in the middle of
nowhere! Apparently not far here is where India tested it's 1st
nuclear bomb!

This place is in the middle of the Thar Desert with temperatures to
match. It can get up to 50C in the summer!
It's built around the fort on the hill again which makes it look
beautiful. It's strange to see this with a modern wind farm in the
background.

We got roped in to staying a one guest house for the first night as we
couldn't stand all the hotel touts who greeted us at the train station.

Once there we were promptly encouraged to take a desert camel safari:
Him: "you want a receipt now for your camel safari"
Me: "no we have just arrived, thank you"
Hotel owner: " you want a receipt for your camel safari"
Me: "NO! Just let us pay for our room"

And so it went. I think the hotel owners made so much commission from
these trips that this is all they could talk about!

So we decided to find another place and came across a friendly hotel
manager called Muna (meaning boy, alot of kids are never given a name
and often don't know when they were born over here!)

He was a friendly chap who's favourite phrase was "we drink some
chai" (chai for those who don't know is the delicious tea over here
made from spices and full of sugar. Well I thought it was delicious
and so kept getting Mariana's chai!)

We found a great room looking out over the desert from the fort, an
amazing view and place staying in one of the fort buildings itself!

We also decided to go on a camel safari and so began our negotiations
with Muna! Indians can be very clever and when we had agreed to a
price we thought it was the total price but he was quoting us a daily
rate for a 2 day safari. (very crafty!)

Next day we met a lovely couple from Germany & Finland and they wanted
to do the safari too so we managed do some more negotiations which the
others fully got into. This wasn't before Muna hoped to give us a
lower price than our new friends if we kept quiet about the price we
had negotiated! Well in the end we were all happy.

We met another American couple who decided to come on the trip and a
Swiss guy so we were 7 on our 2 day camel safari!