Did a road trip through Rajasthan: Key pointers & route observations

Tanot was horribly crowded, the queue for the border visit here has to taken from the building on the right side of the temple.

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Did a circular trip of Rajasthan couple of weeks back. This was along with few friends who were doing a GJ & RJ trip.  I joined them at the end of their GJ trip by flying down to Ahmedabad from Bangalore and taking train to Patan, Gujarat. Hence no much details on onward journey.

The road section I did was Patan - Barmer - Munabao - Khuri - Sam - Longewala - Tanot - Jaisalmer - Bikaner - Jodhpur -Chitorgarh.

Past that we returned to Bangalore with an overnight halt around Beed.

Details:

Patan to Barmer : Roads are overall good, some sections had patches of bad sections, nothing to be concerned about. Stay at Barmer was at Rishab club , an okay place if you are just looking for an overnight stay.

Barmer - Munabao : Overall good roads, some sections had road work in progress.  At Munabao, you have to get permission to enter station area and also to visit the border post which is couple of kms further from the station.

You have to park your vehicle here, submit your ID proof (one per car) and give some basic details (name / vehicle number / phone number etc). You need to surrender your phone / camera etc here, once the commanding officer gives a go ahead, you can proceed past that. When we arrived, the officer was in a meeting and hence had to wait for some 30 mins to get the approval. We were a group of 14 people in 5 cars, so they asked us to group in to 2 cars and proceed to border after parking the remaining cars at this checkpost.

Apart from us, there was only 1 car at the checkpost. The border view area, there seems to be some work happening there for tourists. A better viewing gallery and toilets seems to be in construction.

The station will take some 10 mins to roam around.

Between Munabao & Khuri, after village of Rohiri, you will come across sand dunes next to road. That was the most beautiful section of sand dunes I felt, not crowded, no trash & next to beautiful road.

At Khuri, we stayed at Dessert trails Khuri, beautiful place. Would suggest to anyone looking for stay options around here.

Next day, we drove through dessert national park towards Sam. This road is broken and can be taken only slow, even past Sam, for few kms the road is not in great condition. However, soon one will join the new Bharatmala road and then onwards its smooth tarmac.

Longewala war museum was bit crowded, but a good visit. Will take close to 2 hours to see around. Do note that its NOT next to border and one can't see the border / fence if

Tanot was horribly crowded, the queue for the border visit here has to taken from the building on the right side of the temple. The queue here is badly managed and overrun by drivers & agents who usually accompany the day tourists from Jaisalmer.

Location of building for permits

We were able to manage permits from the BSF office through some contact we had when the other queue was not moving inspite of waiting in that for some 30 mins. Once permits are received, its a small drive to the border from here. Unless one is keen to see the border fence from this side / havent seen any border fencing, I would suggest skipping this since its not worth the effort in my view. Added to that, you can only go till around 300 meters of the fence, one is not allowed till fence here.

Again, Tanot - Jaisalmer is beautiful roads. Our stay at Jaisalmer was at Nachana Haveli, another beautiful property managed by the same person who were owned the Khuri stay also.

Two days around Jaisalmer was spend mostly on foot.

From Jaisalmer, we headed to Jodhpur via circular route through Bikaner. Bikaner fort again, I would have skipped if doing this trip again. Nothing much compared to other forts + its mostly a closed museum kind of fort. Hence you have limited scope in enjoying the same.

Visited Karni Mata temple enroute and then headed to Jodhpur.

Bikaner to Jodhpur - We took the half constructed - Amritsar - Jamnagar E way. The road has been mostly patched up now after the online debate about the bad quality of work. There are rough patches around, but not an issue overall. However, a surprisingly large number of sleepy truckers in this section. We had two close calls on this section with trucks moving across lanes.

Jodhpur we stayed at Hotel Rajwara palace. Clean rooms, spacious rooms, would suggest to the same. Just that parking is just outside the hotel. Though didn't feel that it was unsafe.

Jodhpur sightseeing apart from that to the fort was on foot / auto.

Fort has manageable wide roads + proper parking, hence taking car to fort is not an issue.  Also, there is a walkway to the fort, if you are interested, do try that. It gives good view of the surroundings too.

From Jodhpur we headed to Chittorgarh and stayed at Grand Chittor, nice place to stay, good parking space.

Fort visit was wrapped up in some 4 hours, though would suggest a half day for the same ideally. The light & sound show is boring and can be avoided if short on time.

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