The bhataktiatma : Travelogue of a wandering soul

After Kumbhalgarh our next destination was the desert city of jaisalmer also called as the golden city because of the color of the desert. From kumbhalgarh there are two possible routes to jaisalmer, one via Jodhpur which is the usual route for travelers and the other via Barmer, the one less travelled. We decided to take the second route as it would give us a great opportunity to visit remote locations in Rajasthan and we would be able to complete the full circle that way and not travel the same route again. Jaisalmer is about 435 kms from Kumbhalgarh (495 kms via Jodhpur), the state highway descends from Aravali hills to the dusty planes of Ahore and Marble hills of Jalore. The landscape drastically changes once you cross Ranakpur, the variety of plants reduced to thorny bushes and cactuses, the only rise from the ground level is because of the sandstone and marble hills. The area from Jalore to Barmer is famous for its marble production. The desert is source of the rare

Plans for year end road trip were in progress, after exploring almost whole of India on map we finally settled for Gujrat or Rajasthan. Impressed by Mr.Modi’s Gujarat marketing we almost finalized gujrat , the plan circled around Kacch Rann utsav , but after checking the rates we thought it’s not worth its price , besides eating pure vegetarian and sugar coated food for 10 days didn’t seal the deal for Gujrat , Rajasthan was better choice. After playing a lot on Google maps trying to figure out the route which will allow us to cover as much Rajasthan as we can in the stipulated 10 days period, we finalized the route starting from Udaipur and covering kumbhalgarh , jaisalmer and jodhpur. It would take us 2 days to reach kumbhalgarh, covering 650kms on day one and reach Ahmedabad and then 360kms the next day. It took us close to 14 hrs from Pune to Ahmedabad, vikram had travelled this route by car last year and convinced us that we should be able to cover the distance easily as

Like many other treks , planning for this began on the google earth, Our GPS expert Ninad Bartakke found near madhu-makrand fort , our trek encyclopedia , Dhamdhere kaka confirmed that this is "Komd Naal", based on this Ninad sketched out a map and the coordinates. The .gpx file can be then imported in My Tracks tool for the point to point navigation. Post good trekking shoes , google earth , wikimapia and the GPS tools have to be the most useful tools ever created for the trekkers.                           It was decided that few of us would march ahead on saturday afternoon , visit madhu-makrand fort and enquire for the route and guide in the base village Hatlot .The married gang once they get the get pass from home ministry would reach there by sunday morning.                           We started from pune on saturday afternoon and by the time we reached the base village it was dark hence visiting fort was instantly ruled out. No one in the village as well knew about t