THE WEEKLY #57: LIFE IN THE DESERT

These past seven days have been my last full week of adventures in India. I explored the ‘Golden City’ of Jaisalmer and the  ‘Blue City’ of Jodhpur.

Jaisalmer is close to the west border of India and a stone’s throw from Pakistan. It felt isolated, dry and a little different to the other cities in the state of Rajasthan. The entire city was tinged with dust and golden tones of the desert, while the sun consistently beamed down with no mercy.

I explored rooftop cafes and adventured in and on the Jaisalmer Fort. Heading out during the middle of the day was always tough because the heat just saps you but sunrise and sunset was prime time in Jaisalmer.

The highlight of the time in Jaisalmer was taking a two-night camel safari into the Desert National Park. I visited villages, rode through the national park and slept on sand dunes looking up at thousands of stars. It was a great finish to my time in Jaisalmer and at times the trip felt like an episode of ‘Survivor’ as we battled the heat and lived the simple life.

I’ll be uploading a full blog post about it tomorrow, with some seriously cool photos.

After Jaisalmer, I got on a five-hour bus packed with locals and headed to Jodhpur. This is a place I had been wanting to check out for a while. The ‘Blue City’ sounded epic to me and it lived it up to my internal hype.

Many people have said the city isn’t really that blue but these people are having issues. Every second house has a blue roof or is entirely blue. It’s not clear how the tradition started and I even asked some locals who laughed and said they had no idea.

Jodhpur has a massive fort, which overlooks the entire city. From the rooftops of cafes, you can enjoy the blue houses and buildings with a beautiful backdrop of the fort. It was one of the most relaxed and scenic cities I have been to in a while.

If you follow me on Instagram (@jackson.groves), you will have seen the most epic spot, which I visited this week. In Jodhpur, we found a stepwell, which is already insanely awesome on its own. Kids starting swimming in the water and then jumping in from all parts of the stepwell. I couldn’t resist and before I knew it I was stepping off the 70ft roof into the pool below.

A post shared by LIVING OUT OF A BACKPACK ? (@jackson.groves) on Aug 12, 2017 at 6:57am PDT

This week I reached 1000 combined orders of my free e-book and my Lightroom Presets. To celebrate I gave 50% off on all of my Lightroom Presets and of course, the e-book is still free as always. Use the code ‘1000’ at checkout for 50% off my Lightroom Presets.

Hope you all had a good week. Next time you hear from me I will be out of India and back to the beaches of Indonesia!