Why the desert sky is different
Before electricity, the whole of Rajasthan lived under this sky. Families slept on their roofs from April to September, children learned the stars from their grandparents, and farmers read the season from the rising of certain stars. That is the sky we take guests to find, an hour beyond the lights of Jaisalmer.
Few lights: the western Thar is thinly settled, and beyond the towns the villages are small, so the sky stays truly dark close to the horizon.
- Darkness begins
- About 75 to 90 minutes after sunset
- Winter nights
- Can fall close to freezing
- Monsoon
- July to September, often cloudy
- Nearest airport
- Jaisalmer, or Jodhpur for Manvar
- Dry air: in the cool months the desert air is dry and clear, and the stars sit sharp rather than blurred by haze or humidity.
- A low horizon: dunes and flat scrubland give you sky right down to the ground in every direction, which hills and forests never do.
- Clear months: from October to March most nights are cloudless, and many evenings in a row can be perfect for the telescope.
- Latitude: Rajasthan lies around 25 to 27 degrees north, far enough south to see Canopus, the second-brightest star, low over the southern horizon in winter.
Where we arrange it
Khuri, the quiet dunes
Why we like it: Khuri, about an hour south-west of Jaisalmer, has far fewer camps than Sam, and after dark the village lights are faint.
- How we do it: a private setup on a dune away from any camp, with rugs, bolsters, a fire, hot drinks and a telescope with a guide who can name what you see.
- For more comfort: a private camp on the dunes for one night, with proper beds and a bathroom tent.
Sam, beyond the first ridge
The catch: the camps closest to the road at Sam are loud and bright until late.
- The fix: we walk or drive you beyond the main ridge to a quiet dune, or set up a private dinner well away from the camp strip.
- Moonless or moonlit: on a moonless night the Milky Way rises over the dunes. On a full moon the sand glows silver, bright enough to walk without a torch.
The Serai and Suryagarh, near Jaisalmer
The Serai: SUJAN's tented camp sits on private desert scrub off the Jodhpur road, around forty minutes from town, and the land around it is wonderfully dark and quiet.
- Suryagarh: a fort-style hotel on the Sam road, about thirteen kilometres from town. We drive guests out to a dark dune and bring them back to a warm bed.
- Good for: travellers who want the sky without a night under canvas.
Manvar, halfway to Jaisalmer
Where: Manvar is a family-run group of desert camps about 110 kilometres from Jodhpur, breaking the long drive west.
- The sky: a tent among the dunes, a fire, folk singers and more stars than most guests have seen since childhood.
- Stay: Manvar Desert Camp, with jeep drives to a high dune for sunset first.
Bikaner, Khimsar and Shekhawati
Bikaner: drive a short way out of Bikaner on a clear winter night and the sky opens up, with the Milky Way bright over the sand.
- Khimsar: the dune village near Khimsar Fort has nothing around it but sand, khejri trees and sky.
- Shekhawati roofs: in Alsisar, go up to the roof after dinner. There are few lights for miles across the plain.
Jawai, on the granite
Sundowners: many camps at Jawai set up drinks by a fire on a granite outcrop after the evening drive.
- After dark: on a clear night the stars over the reservoir are extraordinary, but we stay close to camp, because leopards are active at night.
- No spotlights: we never use bright lights here. They disturb wildlife and villages alike.
A stargazing evening, hour by hour
An hour before sunset, out to the dune
- Arrive early: we drive you out across the sand to a dune chosen that afternoon, facing west for the sunset and open to the south.
- Set up: rugs, bolsters, blankets, a low table and a fire laid but not yet lit. The telescope is set up and aligned while there is still light.
Sunset and the blue hour
- Watch the colours: the sand moves from gold to copper to violet in twenty minutes, and the shadow of the earth rises as a blue band in the east.
- First lights: Venus or Jupiter often appear first, then the brightest stars, one by one.
Full darkness, the sky arrives
Let your eyes adjust: it takes about twenty minutes. We keep torches red and low and ask everyone to put phones away.
- The naked-eye tour: your guide traces the constellations with a green laser pointer where it is safe and permitted, and tells their Indian and Greek stories.
- Then the telescope: the craters of the moon if it is up, the rings of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter when they are visible, star clusters and the Andromeda galaxy.
Dinner by the fire
- A desert supper: dal baati, bajra rotis, ker sangri and hot soup cooked on the spot, with a Manganiyar singer if you would like music.
- Lights low: we keep the fire small and the lanterns dim, so the sky stays bright.
Late night and dawn
- Night owls: if you stay out late, new constellations rise in the east as the earth turns, and meteors are more frequent after midnight.
- Dawn: if you are sleeping in a camp, wake before sunrise for the morning star and the light coming over the dunes.
What you will see, season by season
October and November
The Milky Way: its bright centre, in Sagittarius and Scorpius, still hangs low in the south-west after dusk early in the season.
- Autumn stars: the great square of Pegasus overhead and the Andromeda galaxy, a faint smudge to the naked eye under a dark sky.
- Comfort: warm evenings and pleasant nights. The best season for long hours outside.
December and January
Winter jewels: Orion, the Pleiades, Taurus, Gemini and Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, rising in the east.
- Canopus: look low in the south for the second-brightest star, which never rises at all from much of Europe and North America.
- Cold and clear: the sharpest skies of the year, but nights can be close to freezing. A fire and a down jacket are essential.
February and March
Our favourite: mild nights, clear air and the winter stars still high in the evening.
- Zodiacal light: on the darkest nights, a faint cone of light rises in the west after dusk, sunlight scattered by dust in the solar system.
- Milky Way core: begins to rise before dawn, a treat for early risers at camp.
April to June
- Warm nights: the Milky Way's core rises in the evening, but dust and haze often dull the sky before the monsoon.
- Rooftop season: the old way to see the stars, sleeping on a roof, makes sense again. Most desert camps are closed.
July to September
- Monsoon clouds: the rains bring cloudy nights, and stargazing is a matter of luck between storms.
- After the rains: late September and early October can bring washed, brilliant skies as the clouds clear.
The Indian sky: Saptarishi, Dhruva and the nakshatras
Saptarishi: the seven bright stars of the Big Dipper are the seven sages of Hindu tradition, circling the north through the night.
Vashishtha and Arundhati: the middle star of the handle is the sage Vashishtha, and its faint companion is his wife Arundhati. At many Hindu weddings the couple is shown Arundhati as a model of faithful marriage.
- Big Dipper
- Saptarishi, the seven sages
- Pole Star
- Dhruva tara
- Pleiades
- Krittika
- Canopus
- Agastya
- Lunar mansions
- Twenty-seven nakshatras
- Dhruva tara: the Pole Star is Dhruva, the boy whose devotion earned him a fixed place in the sky while every other star turns around him.
- Krittika: the Pleiades are the six Krittikas, the foster mothers of Kartikeya, the god of war, and the month of Kartik takes its name from them.
- Agastya: Canopus, low in the south, carries the name of the sage Agastya, who is said to have travelled south across India.
- The nakshatras: Indian astronomy divides the moon's path into twenty-seven lunar mansions, the nakshatras. Families still choose wedding dates and children's names by them.
- Rohini and Ardra: the red star Aldebaran in Taurus is Rohini, and Betelgeuse in Orion is linked with Ardra, both nakshatras that every astrologer knows.
Choosing your nights: the moon and the meteors
Dark nights: the darkest skies come in the week either side of the new moon, called amavasya. This is when the Milky Way is brightest.
Diwali: falls on the new moon of Kartik, usually in October or November. The sky is dark, but the villages are lit with lamps and fireworks, a different kind of beauty.
- Orionids
- Peak around 21 October
- Leonids
- Peak in mid-November
- Geminids
- Peak around 13 to 14 December, the best of the year
- Quadrantids
- Peak in early January
- Perseids
- Mid-August, usually lost to monsoon cloud
- Full moon nights: the dunes glow silver and the shadows are sharp. Fewer stars, but a deeply romantic night, and the moon itself is wonderful in a telescope.
- Festivals on the full moon: the Desert Festival in Jaisalmer ends around the full moon of Magh, and the Pushkar fair around the full moon of Kartik. Wonderful, but not for the Milky Way.
- Half moon: a quarter moon is the best of both, with craters to see in the telescope early and a darker sky after it sets.
- Meteor showers: the Geminids in mid-December are the most reliable shower of the year and fall in the Thar's clearest season.
The planets, the grahas of the old astrologers
Shukra, Venus: the brightest point in the sky after the moon, seen low in the west after sunset or in the east before dawn, depending on the season.
Brihaspati, Jupiter: also called Guru, the teacher. In a telescope you see its cloud bands and up to four of its moons in a line beside it.
- Shani, Saturn: the slow planet, much feared by astrologers. Its rings in a telescope make every guest gasp, whatever their age.
- Mangal, Mars: the red planet, linked with courage and with the Tuesday prayers at Hanuman temples across Rajasthan.
- Chandra, the moon: a half moon in a telescope shows mountains and craters along the line between light and dark, sharper than any photograph.
- What is up when: the planets move against the stars from year to year, so we check which are visible on your nights and plan the telescope tour around them.
Jaipur, the city of the astronomer-king
The founder: Sawai Jai Singh II, who founded Jaipur in 1727, was an astronomer who built five observatories, in Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Varanasi and Mathura.
The giant sundial: the Vrihat Samrat Yantra at the Jantar Mantar is about 27 metres tall and reads local time to about two seconds.
- Night work: observers once lay inside the instruments at night, lining up stars against marble scales and writing their positions into tables.
- When to visit: in the middle of a sunny day, when the shadows are sharpest. Then come to the desert and see the same sky at night.
- Read more: our journal on Sawai Jai Singh the astronomer tells his story.
Photographing the desert night
Use a tripod: exposures of fifteen to twenty-five seconds are needed for the stars. Any movement blurs them.
Wide and fast: a wide-angle lens with a large aperture lets in the most light. Focus manually on a bright star.
- Phones: most recent phones have a night mode. Rest the phone on a beanbag or the sand and keep still for the count.
- Foreground: a dune ridge, a khejri tree, a camel or a lit tent gives the sky scale. Our guides know which dunes face the Milky Way.
- Light painting: a dim, warm torch swept briefly over the foreground lights it softly. Ask the group first.
- Cold batteries: winter nights drain them fast. Keep spares in an inside pocket.
- No drones: we never fly them in the desert at night. Our photography tips have more.
What most visitors miss
The colours of stars: look from red Betelgeuse to blue-white Rigel in Orion, or from orange Aldebaran to white Sirius. Once you see the colours, you can't unsee them.
The Andromeda galaxy: a faint oval smudge in autumn and early winter, the most distant thing you can see with your own eyes.
- Satellites: steady points of light sliding across the sky in the first hours after dusk. On a clear night you may count a dozen.
- Earthshine: a thin crescent moon after sunset shows the dark part of its disc lit faintly by light reflected from the earth.
- The southern stars: Canopus and the stars of the far southern sky are low on the horizon. A dune top with an open view south helps.
- Silence: switch off the music, stop talking for five minutes and listen. The desert at night is almost perfectly quiet, apart from a fox or an owl.
What to bring for a night under the stars
Warm layers: a down jacket, hat and gloves from December to February. Desert nights can fall close to freezing.
A red torch: red light keeps your night vision. We supply them, but a head torch with a red setting is useful all journey.
- Binoculars: a pair of 7x50 or 10x50 binoculars shows hundreds of stars in the Milky Way and the moons of Jupiter.
- Closed shoes: the sand gets cold, and in the warm months scorpions and snakes are about at night.
- A sky app: download one before you leave the hotel, and set the screen to red or night mode.
- Patience: give your eyes twenty minutes in the dark before you decide what you can see.
Who will love it
Couples: a private dinner on a dune under the stars is one of the most romantic evenings in India, and a favourite on our honeymoon journeys.
Families: children love the telescope, the shooting stars and the stories. Keep the evening short and the jackets warm.
- Curious minds: an astronomer guide turns a beautiful sky into a lesson that guests remember for years.
- Photographers: the Thar offers some of the easiest Milky Way photography of any classic Indian journey.
- Less suited: travellers who feel the cold badly in midwinter, or who dislike the dark. We can keep the setup close to camp, with heaters and a warm tent a few steps away.
- The journey: our Under the Thar Sky journey builds a week around desert nights like this.
Respecting the dark
Lights low: use red torches, keep phone screens dim and never shine a white light into other people's eyes.
Quiet camps: we choose camps that use acoustic music and switch generators off at night.
- Stay close: never wander off alone in the dunes at night. It is easy to lose your bearings in the dark.
- Leave nothing: take every bottle, wrapper and cigarette end back to camp. Our responsible travel page explains how we work.
- Respect the villages: desert families go to bed early and rise before dawn. Keep voices down near houses.
- Wildlife: foxes, hares and desert cats come out at night. Watch them, but never chase or feed them.
How we arrange your night
We choose the dune: our team scouts the site that afternoon, away from roads and camps, with a clear view south.
We choose the night: we look at the moon phase and the forecast and, where we can, move your desert night to the darkest date.
- Format
- Private setup on a dune, or at your camp
- Includes
- Telescope, guide, blankets, fire and hot drinks
- Dinner
- Optional, cooked on the spot
- Plan ahead
- Book the camp nights early in winter
- We bring the sky to life: an astronomer guide or a naturalist who knows the sky, with a telescope and binoculars.
- We keep you warm: rugs, bolsters, blankets, hot-water bottles in winter, a fire and hot drinks.
- We pay fairly: cooks, drivers and musicians come from the surrounding villages and are paid fairly.
- Pair it with: a jeep safari in the Thar at sunset, a camel safari or a night in one of the desert camps we trust.