The Thar by firelight: a night with the Manganiyar bards

It starts with a drive into the dunes as the heat lifts, the sand going from gold to rose while the jeep finds its ridge. A fire is already burning when you arrive. The musicians settle onto the carpet with the kamaicha and the khartal, instruments most Indians have never seen played live, and begin.

Then the Kalbelia dancers arrive, spinning in black and red until the fire and the skirts become the same blur. There is dinner under more stars than seem structurally possible. Nobody hurries anything. The desert has never once been in a hurry.

Where you wake up

The camp behind all this is SUJÁN The Serai, twenty-one tents built on Jaisalmer stone at the desert's edge. The bards have played for the owning family since the 1960s. Jaisalmer's living fortress, the only inhabited fort in India, is close enough for a morning walk through its carved havelis before the day warms.