Need to Know the Facts of Jaisalmer
Health & Safety
Health
India Travel Packages - Stroke and sunburn are common ailments, especially for those who come from more temperate climes. But fortunately, ensuring a regular intake of fluids, using strong sunscreens and wearing a shady hat and sunglasses easily minimise the risks from the hot desert sun. A sunscreen with minimum SPF 20 to escape sunburn is essential - Travel Packages of India.
Indin Travel Packages - The major risks to your health from the armies of mosquitoes are malaria, encephalitis, kala azar and dengue. Cover your arms and legs; be liberal with the repellent and in problem areas sleep under a mosquito net. Traveller’s diarrhoea is another running problem and year after year traveller after traveller gets the ‘loosies’. Ensure it’s nothing nastier by avoiding green salads, uncooked food, and water that you haven’t sanitised by dropping an iodine pill into. Slightly more serious is the risk of contacting AIDS, Hepatitis B and other sexually transmitted diseases. For your sake and the sake of the people you’re visiting always use a condom. Have safe responsible sex - Indian Travel Packages Asia.
Travel Packages to Jaisalmer - The quality of health services is not really adequate in Jaisalmer with few hospitals and nursing homes except for the government hospital and the odd private clinic. Jodhpur is the closest centre with adequate facilities for diagnosis and treatment. But there are a sufficient number of well-stocked chemists/ pharmaceutical shops, where medicines are fairly cheap but it is always a good idea to take along prescription drugs. Travellers from yellow fever areas are required to have an inoculation certificate. Prior inoculation for poliomyelitis is recommended - Jaisalmer Travel Packages.
Safety
Travel Packages of Jaisalmer - Jaisalmer is a safe destination only for travellers who follow the rules and play safe. The desert demands respect and should always be treated with due caution. Travellers are advised not to traipse off into the wilderness unless accompanied by experienced local drivers and/or accredited guides. So make sure you deal with accredited or licensed travel agents, guides and tour operators only. Be extremely alert after sunset and try your best to be in a busy area when it gets dark. Political disturbances and riots are rare and when they do happen, everyone’s aware well in advance of potential troubled days ahead. Cases of mugging, theft and pick pocketing often happen and tourists are the favourite target of touts and scamsters though by and large serious crimes against travellers are rare. Women travelling alone, particularly need to be extra cautious, as the state is notoriously chauvinistic in its attitude to lone women, often considered fair game.
Basic precautions:
Keep your money and travel documents close to your body (perhaps in a pouch slung around your neck, tucked out of sight under your shirt),
Keep several photocopies of your passport, insurance, travellers’ cheques etc. scattered through your luggage,
Do not use a waist pouch, it may as well be a transparent plastic bag: it’s that fragile and that obvious!
Do not put all your money in one place,
Many women travellers wear the long tunic and loose pyjama dress of Indian women called the salwar-kameez and find that it substantially dissuades unwanted male attention.
If you are travelling alone, do not advertise it.
If you lose your passport lodge, a First Information Report at the local police station and contact your embassy.
Weights and Measures
India uses the metric system where 100cm=1meter; 1000meters=1km, liquids are measured in litres and solids in kilograms.
Electricity
220volts/ 50 hertz is the frequency at which electricity is available WHEN it is! Power cuts and ‘load shedding’ is a regular feature all over the country except Mumbai. The state capital has an efficient privatised power supply that has no power cuts or shortages unlike the nationalized power companies. If your electric razor has flat-pin plug then carry a combination plug that will feed into a round-pin socket: across the sub continent plug point sockets are round rather than flat.
Customs & Duties
If you are above 17 years you may import the following in without attracting duty:
200 cigarettes or 50 cigars or 250 grams of tobacco, a litre of alcoholic drink, 250 ml perfume, gifts up to a value of Rupees 750 (foreign passport holders), gifts up to a value of Rupees 6000 (Indian passport holders) and articles of personal use.
It is illegal to bring in drugs, gold and silver bullion, plants and coins that have gone out of use.
Post & Communications
Postal services in India are quite efficient. Letters overseas must be marked "Air Mail" or "Par Avion". It takes a week to 10 days for letters to reach the U.K. and the U.S from Jaisalmer. Have letters for you (surname first) addressed to the GPO (General Post Office) near Amar Singh Pol, ‘Poste Restante’. The GPO will hold letters for 30 days, and you have to show your passport for identification. Parcels are a bit tedious to send or receive and often when they do finally arrive, they’ve been tampered with. Courier services are widely available in the cities and small towns.
"Cyber cafes" are not at all common in Jaisalmer. But at the one or two cyber centres in the city, you can check your mail and surf the net for an affordable sum. Fortunately telephone booths are aplenty. In loopy lanes, beneath shady peepul trees, in busy markets..... little yellow boards spill out of little kiosks with the cryptic letters "PCO-STD-ISD" (.....huh?). 15 years ago the telecommunications miracle swept India and today, proud bearers of that legacy, ‘Public Call Offices’ bring to the streets the services of ‘Subscribers’ Trunk Dialling’ and ‘International Standard Dialling’. Most offer fax services, and more and more now, Internet facilities too.
Country code for India: 0091. Codes for the metros: Delhi-011, Mumbai-022, Calcutta-033 and Chennai-044. When calling from overseas omit the zero in the city code.
Tipping
It is customary to tip 10% of the bill at restaurants, but you may tip less if service charges have been included in the bill. If you are happy with the service, tip 10 bucks to the bellhop, the same to the doorman ‘durban’; if the service is particularly good, substantially more to the concierge and housekeeping in your hotel. Tourist cab drivers don’t expect to be tipped, but welcome a gratuity if you have hired the cab for a long period. You’ll find some of the most friendly and colourful service at tiny nondescript roadside stalls called ‘dhabas’. A small tip, even if it is only loose change, will be appreciated tremendously.
English Language Media
No matter where you are in India it is never going to be difficult to find an English language newspaper. All the major dailies, and there are many in this country where the fourth estate is startlingly independent and strong, have local editions with at least one from every region and one on the net. Local editions of national dailies published from Jaipur and metro editions of English newspapers are available at newsstands and vendors who also sell weekly newsmagazines, filmzines, women’s magazines and even international fashion glossies that now have an edition coming out of India.
Cable TV has reaped a rich harvest even in this border town in the Thar Desert and the skyline blooms with endless numbers of dish antennae and these are only going to proliferate further. BBC World Service and CNN beam the latest news; ESPN and Star Sports keep you up to date with how your club is (or is not) thrashing its rivals in UEFA; and Star (elsewhere known as Sky) beams an entire stable of entertainment channels.
The widely accessible national channel too has some English programmes, and a daily English news segment. BBC World Service and Voice of America are on the MHz bandwidth but the frequency is variable.
Recommended Reading
In Rajasthan by Royina Grewal
Thar: The Great Indian Desert by R C Sharma
The Royal Palaces of India by George Michell & Antonio Martinell
India: A Mosaic by Ian Buruma
Jaisalmer: Folklore, History and Architecture by L N Khatri.
