Sand Dunes Festival – Jaisalmer, Rajasthan

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Before sunrise in Jaisalmer a roadside vendor makes chai.

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Later, a delivery of milk. Across rural India milk comes fresh every morning and is always boiled before serving.

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Jaisalmer is 600 kilometers west of Jaipur and less than an hour from the Pakistan border. It is a small desert city with an ancient fort that sits atop a plateau of sand dunes.

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The above photo shows just a small section of the fort, but it is truly massive and one of the only inhabited forts in Rajasthan. (Most other cities — Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Udaipur — have forts as well but people no longer live in them.) On the periphery of Jaisalmer most people live in stone and mud shacks sheltered with tarps.

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From the city, the annual sand dunes festival is set up an hour’s drive into the desert towards the southwest.

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Indians come from all over the country for this very popular three-day festival. There are camel rides and races, wrestling matches, beauty contests (including one for best mustache), and traditional singing and dance performances.

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There were rumors of an elephant polo match, but I didn’t see it. The cooking in Jaisalmer and at the festival was very basic and good: some highlights were kachories, a chickpea- or corn-flour bread stuffed with a spicy chickpea and onion mixture, deep fried, and served topped with a sweet mint chutney and plain yogurt. Men congregate around a kachory stall early one morning.

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The most common vegetable dish is spicy kachri curry. Kachri is a bittersweet gourd grown in Rajasthan; it requires very little water, making it ideal for the desert climate. Rajasthanis also use kachri to make a tangy chutney. Below, a cook peels kachri.

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For a basic Rajasthani dal, this cook used two varieties of yellow lentils and boiled them for an hour with ample water. To season the lentils, in a separate pot heat a generous amount oil until very hot and add a half-handful of cumin seeds so they pop. After ten seconds, add one ladle of fresh garlic-chili paste (garlic and green chilies mashed together into a paste) and fry, stirring constantly for a few minutes. For dry spices, add one spoon of turmeric, two of chili powder, and three of coriander powder. Then salt and a few ladles of water from the lentils. Stir well for one minute and then add the full pot of lentils.

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