Kuldhara and Khaba, the abandoned Paliwal villages, told honestly

A town laid out with a ruler and a plan

• The edges: traces of a town wall survive to the north and south. To the east runs the dry bed of the Kakni river, which once gave the village its water and its fields.
• The numbers: researchers have counted around four hundred building ruins in the main village and about two hundred more in a lower township beside it.
• How they were built: walls of local sandstone laid without much mortar, doorways onto the street, stairs up to flat roofs, and small niches for lamps and household gods.
• The house plan: many homes had a front room, a courtyard and storerooms behind.
• The roofs: once stone slabs on wooden beams, and almost all have now fallen in.
• Why it moves people: these were ordinary family homes. You can see where people cooked, where they slept on hot nights and where they stored their grain.

Who the Paliwal Brahmins were

• Clans and castes: the inscriptions call the residents Brahmins and record their clans and sub-castes. Several give the caste as Kuldhar, which suggests the village took its name from a group within the Paliwal community.
• Named builders: two tablets even name the village's master builders, the sutradhars Dhanmag and Sujo Gopalna.
• Their crops: jowar, wheat and gram, grown along the river and in khadins, shallow depressions where runoff was trapped behind low earth embankments.
• Other water: Kuldhara also had wells, and a stepwell commissioned in the eighteenth century.
• Money and trade: the Paliwal villages lay on the trade routes around Jaisalmer, and their families also lent money and traded grain.
• Their bargain with the state: they paid taxes to Jaisalmer in grain and cash, and for several centuries the arrangement worked.

Why the village emptied

• Eighty-four villages: tradition gives the Paliwals that many around Jaisalmer, but accounts disagree on the number. Treat it as a traditional round figure.
• First, water: most of Kuldhara's wells had dried up by about 1815. By mid-century only the stepwell and two deep wells still worked.
• Taxes that did not fall: as harvests failed, the state's tax demands stayed where they were.
• Second, oppression: Salim Singh, the powerful prime minister of Jaisalmer in the early nineteenth century, is remembered across the region as a ruthless tax collector.
• The legend of the girl: local tradition says he also tried to force a village girl into marriage. True or not, heavy tax in drought years was enough to drive farmers away.
• Third, an earthquake: in 2017 geologists led by A. B. Roy argued in Current Science that damage at Kuldhara and Khaba fits a quake: collapsed roofs, fallen joists, lintels and pillars.
• The final blow: if a quake struck a community already weakened by drought and debt, it may have finished what the dry wells began.
• The three are linked: none of these explanations rules out the others.

The kingdom that taxed Kuldhara

• The trade shifts: in the nineteenth century sea trade through Bombay drew business away from the desert routes, and the old caravan economy faded.
• Tod's record: James Tod's Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, the source of the early count of Kuldhara's households, was published in two volumes in 1829 and 1832.
• The minister's mansion: Salim Singh's haveli in Jaisalmer dates from around 1815, the same years in which Kuldhara's wells were failing.

How the Paliwals farmed a desert

• The soak: over the following weeks the water sank into the soil, carrying silt and nutrients with it.
• The sowing: once the surface dried, farmers sowed wheat or gram in the moist bed, and the stored moisture carried the crop through the dry winter.
• The spillway: surplus water flowed on to the next khadin below.
• Credit where due: the system is widely credited to the Paliwal Brahmins of the Jaisalmer region. It turned land with very little rain into fields that could feed a town.
• Still in use: you can trace old embankments around Kuldhara, and working khadins survive in the district, kept by families who learned the method from their grandparents.
• Every source had a job: drinking water from the deepest wells and household cisterns, washing and animals from the ponds, crops from the khadins.
• When it failed: as the wells began to fail, the whole careful system came under strain. That, more than any curse, is what the empty streets record.
• Still studied: water experts still visit Jaisalmer to learn from these methods.

About the ghost stories

• How legends grow: our journal piece on Bhangarh, the haunted fort looks at the pattern.
• Why we don't do ghost tours: this was a real community, and its descendants are still alive. Telling their story as a thrill sits badly with us.
• No night visits: we don't bring guests here after dark.
• Dusk is enough: in the late afternoon you hear the wind in the doorways, see long shadows on the empty streets and feel the absence of the people who lived here.
• Fragile walls: the ruins are delicate and some walls are unstable.
• A warning from 2011: a film crew shooting at the site was fined after walls were damaged and painted, and had to pay for restoration.
• Treat it gently: no climbing on walls, no graffiti and no stones taken as souvenirs.

Walking Kuldhara with a guide

• A managed site: Kuldhara now has an entry gate and basic facilities, and the state has worked with private partners on its development.
• Entry: arrangements change, so we handle it for you.

Khaba Fort, above another empty village

• The small museum: pottery, tools and household items found in and around the site give a sense of daily life here.
• The peacocks: they gather on the open ground around the fort, especially early and late in the day, and their calls echo across the ruins.
• A small wonder: in a landscape this dry, so many of India's national bird is a surprise.
• Quiet in high season: fewer visitors come here than to Kuldhara, so Khaba is often peaceful even in winter.

What Kuldhara tells us about the desert

• What changed: canal water and deep borewells have transformed farming around Jaisalmer.
• New work: wind and solar power bring jobs and money, and new pressure on groundwater and grasslands.
• A new way of seeing: after Kuldhara, many guests notice the stepwells, the tankas (rainwater cisterns) in village courtyards and the careful use of every drop.
• Read further: our journal piece on Kuldhara, the abandoned village, and how we try to tread lightly in sustainable travel in Rajasthan.

Who will find Kuldhara worth the drive

• Families with older children: often their most memorable desert stop, because children understand houses better than palaces.
• Not for grandeur seekers: the houses are plain and the site is small. Give it an hour on the way to the dunes rather than a whole morning.
• Save your energy for: the Jain temples of Jaisalmer Fort and the havelis of the old town.
• Ghost hunters: we hope you'll leave with something better, the real story of a desert community and a new respect for the people who still farm this land.

Places that complete the story

Planning a visit to Kuldhara and Khaba

• Combine it: with the dunes at Sam or Khuri, or a drive into the Desert National Park.
• What to wear: closed shoes and a hat. The ground is stony and uneven, and there is little shade.
• Carry water: facilities at both sites are basic.
• Where we stay: in or near Jaisalmer, at Suryagarh on the Sam road or at The Serai.
• Everything else nearby: our Jaisalmer guide and our list of things to do in Jaisalmer.

Our afternoon among the ruins

What we tell friends before Kuldhara

• Leave every stone: the ruins are protected, and the site is shrinking as it is.
• Skip night ghost tours: they tell you nothing true and disturb the site and the wildlife.
• Lenses: a wide angle for the streets and a long lens for the peacocks at Khaba.
• Speak with respect: Paliwal families still live across India. Talk about their ancestors as you would your own.
• Pair ruins with people: a living village afterwards, at Khuri or near Sam, completes the picture.