India's largest state,  Rajasthan, emerged after Partition from a mosaic of eighteen feudal kingdoms, known in the British era as Rajputana, "Land of Kings". Running northeast from Mount Abu, near the border with Gujarat, to within a stone's throw of the ruins of ancient Delhi, its backbone is formed by the bare brown hills of the Aravalli Range, which divide the fertile Dhundar basin from the shifting sands and khejri -covered flats of the mighty Thar Desert, one of the driest places on earth. As the site of India's recent nuclear tests, this western flank of the country, forming the sensitive border with Pakistan, has become one of the world's most notorious geopolitical hotspots. However, the flat terrain, combined with the lure of the lucrative trans-Thar trade routes, rendered it vulnerable to invasion long before Partition. By taxing the movement of silk, spices and precious stones across their territories, successive rulers - from the Hindu Rajputs to their medieval Muslim overlords, the Moghuls - amassed vast fortunes, which they poured into ever more ambitious building projects.

Rajasthan's extravagant palaces, forts and finely carved temples today comprise one of the country's richest crop of historic monuments, visited in greater numbers than any other apart from Agra. But these exotic buildings are far from the only legacy of the region's prosperous and militaristic past. Centuries of Rajput rule created a hierarchy of rigid caste distinctions as monolithic as any in the country, bound by codes of chivalry and honor powerful enough to have driven the female population of whole cities to mass suicide, or johar . The Rajputs remain the landowners, dominating the state's political and economic life, while the lot of the lower castes has altered little since feudal times.

For visitors, however, Rajasthan's strong adherence to the traditions of the past is precisely what makes it a compelling place to travel. Swaggering moustaches, heavy silver anklets, bulky red, yellow or orange turbans, pleated veils and mirror-inlaid saris may be part of the complex language of caste, but to most outsiders they epitomize India at its most exotic. Nowhere is this traditional flamboyance more vividly expressed than at the annual camel fair at Pushkar , when hundreds of thousands of villagers converge on a sacred lake in the Aravalli Hills to buy and sell livestock, their almost luminous costumes striking against the muted hues of the desert.

Color also distinguishes Rajasthan's most important tourist cities. Because of the reddish color wash applied to its ornate facades and palaces in the nineteenth century, Jaipur, is known as the "Pink City". One day's journey to the southwest, Jodhpur 's labyrinthine old walled town, whose sky-blue painted mass of cubic houses is overlooked by India's most imposing hilltop fort, is called the "Blue City".  more..
 

Rajasthan | Brief history | Visiting Rajasthan | Transportation and
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