Having been told a day prior that Bikaner<\/a>, a city about 330 kms away from Jaisalmer<\/a>, was having a yearly Bikaner Camel Festival<\/a>, Shu and I decided to drive there as soon as possible. Against Sunil’s pleas to leave at the later hour, we embarked on the trip at 6.30 am and witnessed another beautiful sunrise in Thar desert<\/a>. Along the way we stopped at the restaurant\/gift-shop road-stop so that I could in n-th time be ripped off. My advice – never stop at the road stop even if it is recommended by your driver. I ended up buying a box of cookies that turned out to be half eaten.<\/p>\n We reached Bikaner around noon and went straight to the hotel Sunil recommended – Hotel Harasar Haveli<\/a>. It might not be the best hotel in the area but it is definitely the most authentic one with an incredible stuff and a very charismatic owner, Mr. Bubbles<\/a>. I would consider an encounter with Mr. Bubbles to be a blessing of traveling in India, he was very knowledgeable, entertaining, kind, generous and very funny. Mr. Bubbles owns a horse ranch not far from Bikaner that is why most of the walls in the Haveli are decorated with the pictures of beautiful horses. He inherited a haveli from his father who, according to Mr. Bubbles, was very disappointed with his son’s weak school performance and desire to have a fun life. However, Mr. Bubbles had an entrepreneurial gene in him and after restoring an old haveli, he started to rent rooms to tourists until he had enough money to convert the entire haveli into a hotel.\u00a0Presently, Haveli had two adjacent buildings and from what I learnt from Mr. Bubbles, he was about to open another hotel very soon.<\/p>\n We were\u00a0shown a few rooms and after settling in one and Shu in another, and running a few bureaucratic formalities related to the criminal charges I filed in Jodhpur<\/a>, we went to the rooftop restaurant to have breakfast\/lunch. The restaurant and the hotel were full of people from all over the world who came to see the Camel Safari. Haveli is located outside the old city, next to the Dr. Karni Singh Stadium<\/a> and this is where the main events of the day took place, so we just needed to cross the street to be in the center of action. Bilal, Haveli’s manager, was kind enough to provide us with the schedule of the Festival. We added +2-3 hours to the posted times, knowing that nothing starts in India on time, and followed the schedule.<\/p>\n A three day Bikaner Camel Festival usually takes place in January during the full moon but please don’t confuse it with the Pushkar Camel Fair<\/a> which is a real trade fair of Rajasthan<\/a>, while Bikaner Camel Festival is an opportunity to present the “ships of the desert” at their best. Besides an incredible camel race, it also hosts multiple competitions e.g. Camel Milking Competition, Camel Fur Cutting Competition, Camel Dance Competition etc. and attracts not only foreigners but a large number of locals from the Bikaner District.<\/p>\n Before mid 15th century, the region that we were now visiting was a barren wilderness called Jangladesh<\/a>. In 1488 Rao Bika<\/a>, second son of Rao Jodha<\/a>, the founder of Jodhpur, established the city of Bikaner<\/a>. According to James Tod<\/a>, the place which Bika selected as his capital was the birthright of a Nehra<\/a> Jat, who agreed to have a city built only under the condition that their name would be linked with it perpetually. By adding Naira, or Nera to his own name, Rao Bika named his new capital, and the region Bikaner. Though it was in the Thar desert, Bikaner was considered an oasis on the trade route between Central Asia and the Gujara<\/a>t coast as it had plenty of spring water to sustain the entire city. Bika built a fort in 1478, which is now in ruins and a hundred years later, under the successful reign of the sixth Raja Rai Singhji<\/a> (1571-1611) a new fort was built about 1.5 km from the city center, known as Junagarh Fort<\/a>.<\/p>\n Under the Mughal Empire<\/a>, Raj Singh<\/a> accepted the suzerainty of the Mughals and became a high ranking army general at the court of the Emperor Akbar<\/a> and his son Jahangir<\/a>. Rai Singh’s successful military campaigns which includes gaining half of Mewar kingdom<\/a> for the Empire, won him accolades and rewards from the Mughal kings. He was given the jagirs<\/a> (lands) of Gujarat and Burhanpur<\/a> and with large revenues earned from those jagirs, the state’s fortunes flourished and he built a monumental Junagarh fort. However, the decline of Mughals in the 18th century brought the decline of Bikaner as well.<\/p>\n During the 18th century, there was internecine war with another Rathore <\/a>ruling house, Jodhpur and other thakurs<\/a> over who had the right to keep the family heirlooms, which was put down by British troops. Bikaner signed\u00a0a treaty with British Raj<\/a> in 1818 and after that\u00a0the area was markedly backward, but managed to benefit from British-Afghan war<\/a> by hiring out camels to the Brits. Currently, Bikaner is a small vibrant town with very few tourists but some interesting sights to see and Camel Festival is one of them.<\/p>\n![\"1\"](\"http:\/\/svetanyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/12-814x1024.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"IMG_8168\"](\"http:\/\/svetanyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_8168-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n