Jaisalmer Fort, Jaisalmer

Jaisalmer Fort is the only fort in the world with a living population. 25 percent of Jaisalmers population reside within this fort built in 1156 by the Rajpur ruler Jaisala. The human pressures on fort are evident and the fort has crumbled in small portions before. The drains are clogged, there are hotels and resturants inside the fort, there are temples and priests, not to mention a sizable population of cows and dogs. The fort is on the World Monuments Watch list of 100 endangered sites worldwide. I asked a shopkeeper who had a shop and a house in the fort if he would like to shift elsewhere. He said , ``who would want to leave a place one has lived in all their lives''. Efforts to rehablitate the residents is obviously up against a dead wall. As is evident in the pictures below the Fort now resembles any other congested by lane of any crowded city.