Anagoria, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Jaisalmer Fort
A twelfth-century fort with about two thousand people still living inside it — one of a very small number of inhabited forts anywhere.
A fort somebody lives in
Most forts in Rajasthan are visited. This one is inhabited — houses, shops, Jain temples and lanes that are somebody’s street rather than an exhibit — which changes what walking through it means and is the single reason to give it a morning rather than an hour.
Explore Jaisalmer Fort on the map
City locations, drawn from our published destination data. Attractions, hotels and restaurants are not mapped yet.
Inside the walls
The fort rises out of the town in the same yellow sandstone as everything around it, which is where the golden city comes from. It goes gold properly only in low sun.
The Jain temples
- A connected group within the walls, dating from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, carved in the same sandstone throughout. They are the finest thing inside the fort and the quietest.
The lanes
- Narrow, stepped and residential. They are the experience, and they are also somebody’s route home — which is worth remembering with a camera.
The ramparts
- The bastions look out over the town on one side and the Thar on the other, and the transition from roofs to open desert is abrupt.
The havelis below
- Patwon ki Haveli and Salim Singh ki Haveli sit in the town beneath the fort. They are merchant houses rather than royal ones, and the carving on them is the reason they are on every itinerary.
Getting there
The fort is the town centre rather than a site outside it.
On foot
- From most of the old town it is a walk uphill through the gates. That is the way to arrive — the approach through the successive gateways is part of it.
By road
- Vehicles reach the lower gate and go no further in any useful way. The lanes inside are for walking.
From elsewhere in Rajasthan
- Jodhpur is around five hours east and Bikaner around six north-east. Jaisalmer sits at the far western end of every Rajasthan itinerary for that reason.
When to go
This is the desert, and both the season and the hour are decided by heat and light.
Season
- November to February. March warms quickly and by May the middle of the day in the Thar is genuinely punishing.
Hour
- Early morning inside the walls, when the lanes belong to the people who live there and the stone is warm rather than bleached. Late afternoon for the fort seen from outside.
The desert night
- Most itineraries pair the fort with a night at the dunes beyond Sam. Doing the fort on the morning of that day works better than the afternoon.
Worth knowing
One of these is about the building’s future rather than your visit, and it belongs here.
It is a fragile structure
- The fort has a long-documented drainage problem: modern water use inside walls built for a dry hill has caused subsidence and bastion collapses. Conservation is ongoing, and it is a reason to tread lightly rather than a reason to stay away.
Shopping and pressure
- The lanes are commercial and the approach can be persistent. A flat, friendly no works; walking faster does not.
Footwear
- Stepped, uneven and polished stone. Not the day for smooth soles, and shoes come off at the Jain temples.
Photography
- People live here. Ask before photographing doorways, courtyards and children, which is the difference between a portrait and a trespass.
Nearby
The rest of the golden city.
Frequently asked
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