The Patwa family and the caravan fortune
We like to tell our guests that this is a story about ambition. The Patwas were not royalty, and in Jaisalmer the palace was supposed to be the finest building in town. These houses come close to outshining it. Walk from here to the fort and back and decide for yourself who won.
A town on the road: camel caravans carrying silk, spices, dried fruit, indigo and opium crossed the Thar between Sindh and northern India, and stopped here to water animals, pay taxes and trade.
The merchants: families, many of them Jain, settled below the fort and served the caravans as bankers, brokers and suppliers.
- Built
- From 1805, over about fifty years
- Built by
- Guman Chand Patwa, for his five sons
- Open
- The lane is open; which rooms open varies by house
- Allow
- An hour, or two with the museum rooms
- Best time
- Early morning, before the lane fills
- Photography
- Usually allowed in the lane; ask inside
- Getting there
- On foot, about 10 minutes from the fort
- The Patwa trade: brocade, fine gold and silver thread, and jewellery, and their business grew far beyond the desert.
- 1805: Guman Chand Patwa began a new house in the lane that now carries his family's name, the first great haveli of its kind in Jaisalmer and still the largest.
- Five sons, five houses: he then built, or began, a house for each son. The five stand in a row, carved fronts facing the street.
- Fifty years of work: the youngest houses were finished by the next generation, and you can see the style shift as one generation of carvers gives way to the next.
- The fortune fades: in the nineteenth century sea trade through Bombay drew business from the desert roads, and many merchant families moved to the port cities.
- Left behind: the havelis stayed in the care of relatives and servants, and some fell into disrepair.
- 1974: the Archaeological Survey of India took over and restored part of the complex.
- Today: the five houses are divided among several owners, with museum rooms, craft shops and private homes.
- Which doors are open: our guides know on which days, and that matters, because the arrangement changes.
The lane and the five facades
Look along the lane: five houses in a line, each several storeys high, each covered in jharokhas, the projecting balconies of Rajasthani houses.
Jaalis: fretted stone screens in place of glass.
Between the balconies: carved brackets, little arched niches, rows of tiny pillars and bands of flowers and creepers.
- Head back: the lane is so narrow you tip your head right back to see the top, which was partly the point.
- Why narrow: a narrow street stays in shade, catches every breeze and makes a facade feel enormous.
- No repeats: the carving is not one pattern repeated. Each balcony has its own design.
- Screens: some cut into tiny diamonds, others into stars or flowers.
- Brackets: look for parrots, elephants or small human figures.
- Our challenge: find two balconies exactly the same. We have played this game for years and no one has won it yet.
The first house, Kothari's Patwa Haveli
The largest: the house Guman Chand built for himself.
- A museum: part is a private museum, often called Kothari's Patwa Haveli, furnished to show how a wealthy merchant family lived in the nineteenth century.
- If you have time for one: go inside this one.
The houses restored by the state
- Who cares for them: the Archaeological Survey of India and the state heritage authorities.
- Emptier rooms: easier to see the architecture itself, the thickness of the walls, the light through the jaalis and the clever arrangement of stairs and landings.
The houses still lived in
Homes and shops: some of the remaining rooms are both.
- Please don't wander in: an open doorway is not an invitation.
- The painted ceiling offer: if someone asks you in, they will very likely ask you to buy something. That's fine if you want to. If not, say thank you and step back into the lane.
Inside a merchant's house, room by room
- Ground floor
- Storerooms and the counting room
- First floor
- The baithak, for male guests
- Upper floors
- The zenana, women's rooms
- Roof
- The family's summer bedroom
The entrance and the courtyard
A turning passage: the front door opens onto a short passage that turns before the courtyard, so a visitor at the door could not see into the house.
- The centre of family life: rooms on every floor look down into the courtyard.
- In the old days: grain was cleaned there, children played, and the women worked in the cool of the morning.
The storerooms and the counting room
Business below: the ground floor held it.
- Look for: small, thick-walled rooms with heavy doors for goods and valuables, and the room where the merchant met traders and kept his books.
- A trader's script: Jaisalmer's merchants wrote in their own, a form of the trading shorthand used across western India.
- In the museum: old ledgers are sometimes shown, with the iron chests that held them.
The baithak, where guests were received
Where: on the first floor, the sitting room for male guests, with cushions, bolsters and low tables.
- Its windows: face the street through carved screens, so the master could watch the lane.
- A display: visitors could see from the decoration exactly how rich he was.
The zenana, the women's rooms
Higher up: the women's quarters.
- Watching unseen: the jharokhas let the women of the family watch the street, the processions and the festivals without being seen.
- Our grandmother's view: the women of a Jaisalmer haveli knew everything that happened in the lane long before the men did. We suspect she was right.
The painted and mirrored rooms
The decoration: wall paintings, gold leaf and small pieces of mirror set into plaster, a style Rajasthan's palaces made famous.
- The scenes: Krishna, flowers, birds, and the caravans and camels that paid for it all.
- In the museum rooms: brass pots, wooden chests, clothes, turbans and the kind of jewellery the family itself traded in.
The kitchen and the roof
The kitchen: usually tucked away on an upper floor, with a hearth, a water store and grain storage.
- Jain rules: in a vegetarian Jain household food was prepared with great care and strict rules.
- The roof: the family's summer bedroom.
- Climb up: the view along the lane, across the town and up to the fort is worth the stairs.
How the stone was carved
The stone: a fine-grained sandstone, soft fresh from the quarry and hardening as it weathers, ideal for this work.
Carved on the ground: the silawats cut large blocks into balconies, brackets and screens, often before raising them into place.
Little mortar: the pieces were fitted together with very little.
- Single slabs: many jaalis are carved from one piece. Look at a screen's edge to see how thin the stone is, and how cleanly the holes were drilled and filed.
- A shared language: flowers and creepers stand for abundance, and elephants and parrots for good fortune.
- The chhajja: the deep stone eave above many windows shades the wall below and keeps rain off the carving.
- Tiny temples: even the small pillars on the balconies have bases and capitals.
- Read the details: our page on Rajasthani architecture and our journal note on what a haveli is.
- A living craft: silawat families still carve screens, panels and small pieces for new hotels and houses, and you can hear chisels in the stone yards on the edge of town.
- A workshop visit: we can arrange one, far more interesting than any shop, and you buy from the makers. See our page on crafts of Rajasthan.
The merchant world behind the walls
Jain families: most of Jaisalmer's great merchants followed a faith with non-violence at its centre.
Why trade: Jain traders could not farm, since ploughing kills small creatures, so many turned to trade, banking and money-lending.
Their reputation: across western India they were famous for honesty and careful accounts.
- In Jaisalmer: they financed the caravans, lent money to the court and paid for the seven temples inside the fort.
- Wealth and faith: a merchant might spend a fortune on a temple ceiling, then eat a simple meal before sunset, as Jain custom asks.
- A family statement: sons brought their wives home, and three generations might live around one courtyard.
- Who ran the house: the eldest woman, in charge of the kitchen and the household stores.
- A dynasty: five houses for five sons was planning for a dynasty, not a home.
- Celebrations: weddings, births and festivals in the courtyards and on the roofs, with musicians from the desert villages and doors thrown open to the whole lane.
- The court's shadow: in the early nineteenth century the prime minister, Salim Singh, became notorious for the taxes he squeezed from traders.
- Families who left: many are said to have left the state because of him, in exactly the decades the Patwas were building.
- Two sides of one story: walk from this lane to Salim Singh ki Haveli, from the merchants who made the money to the minister who took it.
Who will love it, and who won't
You will love it if: you enjoy detail, like to stand in front of something for a long time, and are curious about how people lived.
Photographers: love the lane in the morning.
- Architects and designers: often find it the highlight of Jaisalmer.
- Children: enjoy it more than you might expect, if you turn the carving into a treasure hunt for elephants, parrots and peacocks.
- Less rewarding if: you have already seen many havelis elsewhere in Rajasthan, museums leave you cold, or you come at noon in a crowd.
- Then: see the facades from the lane, skip the interiors, and spend your time at the fort or on the dunes.
- Either way: a visit takes only an hour or so, on the natural walking route between the fort and the rest of the old town. Our things to do in Jaisalmer guide lays it out.
The best hour and season
Early: time in the lane before the groups arrive. The carving reads best in soft, even light, and the morning is cool enough to stand and look.
Late afternoon: warm light, and the crowds thin again.
- Best hour
- As early as the havelis allow
- Second best
- Late afternoon
- Worst
- Midday, flat light and hot stone
- Season
- October to March
- Midday: flat light and hot stone, the worst time.
- October to March: the comfortable season, with warm days and cool nights. Winter mornings can be chilly, so bring a layer.
- From April: the heat makes the town tiring by late morning. In summer, visit very early and rest through the afternoon.
- The Desert Festival: in February the old town is lively and crowded, and the lanes are best before breakfast. Read about the Desert Festival.
- Month by month: our best time to visit Jaisalmer guide.
How to visit Patwon ki Haveli
Walk: the haveli lane is in the old town below the fort, and the streets are too narrow for cars. Your driver can drop you nearby, and from the fort it is about ten minutes on foot.
Bring a guide: one who knows the families and the arrangement of the houses. Ownership is divided, and which rooms are open varies.
- The stairs: steep, narrow and often without handrails.
- Step-free: guests who find stairs difficult can still enjoy the facades from the lane, which is flat.
- Photography: usually allowed in the lane. Inside, rules vary from house to house, so ask first.
- Shopkeepers: expect invitations. A polite no is enough, and our guides steer you away from commission shopping.
- Handwork or machine: our shopping guide explains how to tell.
- Look up, then look again: most of the best carving is above the first floor.
How long to allow, and how to plan it
A quick look: twenty minutes in the lane, walking the five facades end to end and looking up. Enough if you have seen many havelis elsewhere.
The usual visit: about an hour, with the lane and the first and largest house, Kothari's Patwa Haveli, including its roof.
- Facades only
- About 20 minutes in the lane
- Lane and one house
- About an hour
- With the museum rooms
- Up to two hours
- The full haveli walk
- A morning, with Nathmal and Salim Singh
- For the curious: up to two hours, adding the emptier rooms cared for by the state, where the architecture shows most clearly.
- A haveli morning: start at the fort gate at seven, then add Nathmal ki Haveli and Salim Singh ki Haveli, and be back at your hotel before the heat.
- Pair it with the fort: the walk between them takes about ten minutes, so both fit into one long morning.
- Leave the middle of the day: the lane is busiest and hottest then, and the light is flat for the carving.
What most visitors miss
The changing style along the row
Walk the row slowly: from one end to the other.
- Dense, then lighter: the earliest carving is dense and confident, and some later work is lighter and more ornamental.
- Fashion in stone: you are watching fifty years of taste change.
The underside of the balconies
- Look straight up: from beneath a jharokha.
- Finished underneath: the carvers worked the undersides as carefully as the fronts, with lotus flowers and spirals that most visitors never see.
The view from the fort
- From the ramparts: you can pick out the Patwa lane and see the havelis as a group, roofs and terraces rising above the town.
- The scale: it puts the merchants' ambition into perspective.
The doors
Built to be barred: great wooden doors studded with iron, sometimes carved with small figures, shut at night.
- Why: in a town full of money, security mattered.
- The wicket: look for the small door set into the large one.
Nearby sights to pair with it
Nathmal ki Haveli
Whose: Diwan Mohata Nathmal, a minister of the state, built around 1885, a few minutes' walk away.
- At the door: two stone elephants.
- The brothers: every guide tells how two brothers carved it, one taking each half, so the sides match in outline but differ in detail.
- Still lived in: part of the house.
Salim Singh ki Haveli
- The most dramatic: the prime minister's house near the foot of the fort, its upper storey bursting out into carved balconies.
- Its story: the darkest in Jaisalmer.
Jaisalmer Fort
- Walk up: compare the merchants' houses with the royal palace and the Jain temples, which the same merchant families paid for.
Painted havelis across Rajasthan
- The next chapter: the painted havelis of Shekhawati, built by merchant families from the same trading world.
- Read more: our guide to painted havelis or the heritage havelis trail.
A haveli morning, the way we walk it
- 7 am
- Meet below the fort
- 7.30 am
- The Patwa lane, outside
- 9 am
- Inside the first house
- 10 am
- Nathmal and Salim Singh
Seven o'clock, the fort gate
- Meet your guide: below the fort, and walk into the old town as the tea stalls open.
- On the way: a carved doorway, a cow being fed a chapati, a shrine freshly smeared with vermilion.
Half past seven, the Patwa lane
- Before the shops: spend twenty minutes outside, looking.
- The full row: walk all five facades, then go back to the first house and wait for the museum to open.
Nine o'clock, inside a house
- The first and largest house: climb to the roof and look out over the town to the fort.
- The painted rooms: take your time, then step back into a lane that will by now be busy.
Ten o'clock, Nathmal and Salim Singh
Spot the difference: at Nathmal ki Haveli, between the brothers' two halves.
- Then: Salim Singh ki Haveli for its extraordinary top storey.
- Finish: with a cold lassi or a glass of sweet chai, back at your hotel before the heat. Our Jaisalmer itinerary shows how it fits a longer stay.
Where to stay close by
Suryagarh: for most guests, Suryagarh, a modern fortress in Jaisalmer stone about thirteen kilometres out on the Sam road, with a pool, a spa and room to breathe.
- The Serai: couples who want the desert itself go to The Serai, SUJAN's tented camp on private land off the Jodhpur road.
- Walk to the havelis: well-run heritage hotels in converted havelis and palaces in the town itself, described in our guide to luxury hotels in Jaisalmer.
- Elsewhere in Rajasthan: for a stay in a haveli, see our heritage havelis collection.
