Kuldhara - The mystery

Our vibrant land of Rajasthan is rich not only in culture and tradition but also in folklore, tales and stories. Many of these stories are of courage and valour, of sacrifices, of victories and defeats, of love and devotion and some of fear and unusual occurrences. Bhangarh tops the list of the stories that bring intrigue to the fore with Kuldhara a close second. Kuldhara was once a prosperous village and is said to be abandoned in the early 19th century. Let us unravel the mystery that Kuldhara is……

Kuldhara - First Glimpse

First the story

Visualise a peaceful quaint village from the Era when there were no telephones, no electricity, no running water, no machines and life was very easy and simple. The world was as big as one’s village. Days were spent doing respective assigned tasks and evenings were spent chatting around, bed time came pretty early; and so did the morning, people would wake up before the sunrise, would tend to their cattle and horses and again would go about with their respective routines. This was Kuldhara, village of the Paliwal Brahmins. In this peaceful village of traders and businessmen, came a little trouble in the name of Saalim Singh. He was the Prime Minister to the King of the Kingdom this village came under. A tyrant of a Prime Minister who would trouble the peace-loving Brahmin folk of this village and neighbouring villages and extort more money from them in the name of unjustified taxes. The ruthless Saalim Singh also harassed the women folk. People were somehow being tolerant and would ignore his misdeeds. But the catastrophe descended on the happy people when Saalim Singh set his eyes upon one of the village belles. Known to have many wives and concubines and having a reputation of ill-treating women, his wish of marrying her was declined by the villagers, which infuriated the already angry Saalim Singh. He did not take this insult too well and his wrath came upon the village in more extortions and more troubles, more cruelties and more harassment. Fed up with this menace, the villagers decided to quietly move away from their much-loved motherland. Not just one or two families but the whole village - lock, stock and barrel!

Village Square

Next morning dawned on an abandoned village. A village where there were cooked meals on stoves, food in plates, warm glasses of milk to be gulped, washed clothes lying squeezed to be put out for drying, fodder in animals’ troughs and warmth on the kitchen floor from the heat of the dying ambers of the stoves. The flowers offered to the deities in the Village Temple were still fresh when Saalim Singh’s men came to again unleash their terror on the simple-life-leading villagers. But alas! There was not a single soul to be seen in whole of Kuldhara - no human and no animal. Only an eerie silence prevailed over the whole village. This is the legend behind the abandonment of the ancient village of Paliwal Brahmins who left Kuldhara and migrated to Marwar where they were given protection, assistance to re-establish their businesses and land for settling down. Thus came Pali into existence. 

“The story gives me goosebumps each time I narrate, hear or read it. But the solidarity of the community leaves me with a very happy feeling and a sense of pride too”, says our guide, one of the locals who has been showing Kuldhara to tourists for many years now. 

Other theories to the abandonment are of dwindling water supply and a possible earthquake but the most popular and convincible one is the persecution by Saalim Singh.

Now The village

Ruins of Kuldhara

Kuldhara is around 35 km from Jaisalmer and is a day excursion kind of a place. You can visit Kuldhara even on your way out of Jaisalmer while continuing with your tour. The visit does not take more than an hour unless you are a photography enthusiast or a writer because then you will have a million spots in the ruins to let your creativity go unbridled. As you approach the village, a sense of pall and gloom takes over. The ASI has tried to conserve the ruins well and the village is enclosed by a wall protecting the ruins. There is a large gate that lets you into the village. Just as you enter the gate, on the right is a park dedicated to various types of Cacti that thrive in the arid desert of Jaisalmer. This can be visited later, first you must let your curiosity get quenched by visiting Kuldhara. The vehicle will take you right upto the entrance to the village. We were greeted by some very friendly and enthusiastic Indie dogs when we reached there. 

The village

You ascend a few steps and reach a raised platform where the village once thrived. In olden days it was a common practice to make villages over raised platforms to prevent flooding in rainy season and also for safety and security purposes. The Village Temple would always be made at the highest level for the respect to the deity. As you cross over to the inside of the enclosure, you come to a kind of crossroads with lanes going in all four directions. The neatly laid out village plan tells a lot about the people of yore and their vision. We chose to move towards what seemed the most treaded path. This path led us through rows of dilapidated mud houses with the Village Temple on the left and significantly raised above the village homes with some twenty steps to ascend to reach the sanctum sanctorum. We moved ahead to where the lane culminated into a row of houses, all completely crumbled except one which we were told was restored by the ASI to give a glimpse into the real Kuldhara homes. 

Village layout

The village is a cluster of neat mud coated houses on both sides of narrow but clean and symmetrical lanes. The crossroads have Big trees in the centre (usually Neem, Peepul or Banyan) with a Chabutra (a circular elevated platform around the tree made for the purpose of sitting and relaxing under its shade). These places must have once been bustling with life with village elders sitting and chatting there. 

In a little distance from the cluster of homes you would notice some beautifully carved domes erected on a small hillock. These are the cremation grounds for the village and these domes were erected as a symbol of respect and remembrance to the people who left this mortal world.

The Homes

Facade of a home

The restored house is the model home and mostly all the homes were designed on a similar pattern. There is only one entrance to the home and the main entrance is decorated with hand painted figures of birds and animals. The homes are little higher than the road and hence you need to climb a few steps to get into the ground floor of any house.

Window between guest area and home

The first room as you enter is the “receiving area” where people received goods, groceries, guests and daily needs of those times. The central portion of all homes were left uncovered and served the purpose of letting natural light and fresh air into the home. To the left of the receiving room was a small “guest room”. This room was, in today’s parlance, a drawing room where the guests were made to stay and enjoy meals with the family. The people back then followed Purdah system and the women would never come out of the inner part of the house without covering their faces. The guest room wall which is common with the interiors of the house had a small window - a window so small that only food items could be passed through it by a beautiful henna decorated and bangle wearing hand.

Stairway

Channelising water into the reservoir

The right side of the receiving room is the place for keeping the horses and cattle. Life in those days was totally dependent on animals for day to day activities like tilling the farms, commuting, carrying heavy goods, source of milk etc. Now, from the anteroom, drawing room and animal room we move inwards to the central courtyard. This is a ceiling less courtyard, open to sky and served the very important purpose of ventilation and letting the natural day light into the home. There is a provision for a small stove here which would move back to the kitchen during rainy season. The family usually dined together in the courtyard. Surrounding the courtyard would be a covered passageway. Last rung of rooms in a home like this would be the bedrooms or retiring rooms. There wasn’t much furniture in those days but there was a strong connect between people and mother earth! From the central courtyard rises a stairway that would take us to the roof top. Homes usually were single storied or very rarely with an extra room on the first floor. A very unique observation on the rooftop is that the drains are all directed towards the central courtyard which implied that rain water was made to flow towards the inside of the home. On asking our guide, he corroborated our observation and informed us about rain water harvesting which was a common practice in those days. Each home had a storage tank below the flooring of the central courtyard and stored rain water here for use during the dry spells. 

Garage

As we move out of the house towards the temple, we noticed a room with no doorway towards the outside of the house. This was a garage and carts were parked here. In fact, the ASI has kept one dilapidated cart also here to give an idea of what it looked like in those days.

The Village Temple

The village temple

While the whole village lies in ruins, it is surprising to see The Temple still intact and with deity still being worshipped. Yes, we saw fresh flowers that were offered to the Gods with traces of recently used incense sticks. The Temple was built on a high raised rock platform and was carved out of rock unlike the brick structures of the houses. Maybe that is the reason for the Temple to still be standing and bearing the blows of time. We bowed our heads in respect and entered the temple. A lot of sparrows and squirrels greeted us. 

Goodbye Kuldhara

Still in a trance and our heads busy with assimilating all that information and visualising all that was once a lively village filled with happy people, we moved out of Kuldhara. On our way out we stopped over at the Cacti Museum and thereafter just outside the main gate met another WONDER. A centenarian flautist. A double flute, known as Algoza which is a common musical instrument of Western Rajasthan was melodiously played by this gentleman. Do not mistake him for a beggar because he does not want anything from you, he does it for his own pleasure but then a little appreciation and a few gifts have never done any harm to anyone!

A lot has been said and written about Kuldhara, some even calling it a haunted village but, Kuldhara is not haunted, it is an abandoned village. Abandonment not for a curse or any paranormal occurrence but to escape a tyrant. Very believable, isn’t it? 


We would love to take you to Kuldhara, write to us here and let's plan a trip.

Our Algoza Artist - Sumar Ram Bhil