The taxi journey to Bikaner takes around five hours. There is no air con so all the windows are fully open all the way and the breeze blasts waves of searing waves of heat through the car. It’s scrub desert all the way interrupted by dry, ploughed furrows of rather barren-looking fields. Every so often we come across shepherds moving flocks across the road and this being India we drive straight through the flocks – there is no question of waiting patiently for them to get out of the way – scattering the sheep as they scuttle out of the way. We stop for a drink at what is obviously a regular stop for coach-loads of tourists and which changes three times the usual price for our drinks. Around lunch we stop at another similar place which is so over-priced that they can offer us a discount of 50% and still be way over the prices in Jaisalmer. So we walk out. The only other place on the road to Bikaner is a local place that isn’t serving food today because everyone has gone on a pilgrimage to attend a festival at a temple several kilometres away.
The Hotel Harisar Haveli has been recommended to us by Jora, the manager at the Shahi Palace in Jaisalmer and turns out to be a very large haveli-style complex of buildings with neat, clean and spacious rooms. For India, it is well maintained and well decorated; the ceilings of all the shared balconies have been painted with colourful murals and there is a pleasant ground floor tented courtyard where food is served. Curiously there is a rusting Ford Prefect and what looks like a 19th century British hansom carriage parked on the forecourt both of which would benefit from sympathetic restoration. Unusually the manager is not interested going through the tedious and bureaucratic registration process that must create mountains of paperwork for both the hotels and the local police who collate all the information that’s collected.