Amar Sagar is a small man-made lake next to the Amar Singh Palace in Jaisalmer. There wasn’t a drop of water in said lake, in the month of February 2023.
One of the things that disheartened me during my stint in Jaisalmer was the negligence of heritage spots. Jaisalmer is literally littered with heritage sites and it is a shame how most of those spots are utterly uncared for. And those that the Government does attempt to take care of, end up like the village of Kuldhara – ugly fencing and gates that don’t quite prevent anyone from entering and also successfully ruin the aesthetics.
There was an ongoing film shoot in the dried lake bed of Amar Sagar when we visited in February.
From this side of the lake, there is no place to enter the adjoining structure, which led us to believe that it is privately owned. There’s stunning greenery that one can look at but all the doors are either blocked with stone slabs or padlocked.
The stone figures on the walls of the citadel were quite interesting. The steps seem to have sunken inwards toward the citadel walls. Maharawal Akhai Singh built the Amar Sagar Palace in the 17th Century.
Except a very few of the heritage sites, most of them seem weirdly disconnected from each other in terms of chronology and history. Each spot seems independent, but I’m certain there’s a connected, shared history. All the people who built these structures must have known each other and influenced each other. It is possible, that the harsh desert has eroded away the fabric of memory and history and only a few wayward strands remain.
The fourth-last image below is of a well from which water was drawn up using a rope and pulley system. The rope and pulley system have not survived the test of time and the well is also dry.
