What a peaceful and calm night it was. Hundreds of kilometres away from the bustling city we were in the middle of the Thar desert in a tiny village of Ramgarh . Our journey started from Jaisalmer and today’s plan was to visit Tanot Mata Temple and Longewala border post on our motorcycle and finally return to Jaisalmer.

Woke up at 5 in the morning, finished with morning chores, left Ramgarh at 6 AM. From the village of Ramgarh, we had two choices. One road goes to Longewala border post and straighter one goes to Tanot. We took the straight one and proceeded to Tanot Mandir.

Ramgarh to Tanot Mata Temple

The distance between Ramgarh to Tanot is 75 KM. Road was extremely fantastic. Very nicely maintained by Border Roads Organisation. Riding on the road over rolling hills of sand is no less than a sense of absolute Freedom.

The road appears straight and endless, literally. No sign of life except some military trucks and wild desert for 75km.

This area is the core region of Desert National Park. It was something that I had listened for the first time. Can there be a national park in the desert. Yes! And we saw some Chinkaras and Peacock. Chinkaras were extremely shy of our presence and they would run with the first sight of ours.

Tea with Maratha regiment soldiers

We were posing for photos just before the Ranau village, also the last village before the Indo-Pak border in Jaisalmer.  Two joggers in half pant coming from behind heard us talking something in Marathi. They stopped and asked us if we were from Maharashtra.
They were Indian Army soldiers and were on a morning PT. They were happy to listen that we were from Maharashtra, their home state.

In a far distant place, they were excited to meet someone from their land. They invited us to Tea. We shared wonderful time talking to someone on the frontier. And they were happy explaining to us how the things work at the border. They handled sophisticated satellite and voice channel tracker across borders.

They called almost everybody from the barrack to show, that they have someone from their land as a guest. Our hearts were filled up with their gesture.  Thanked them and everybody there and left the place.

Tanot Mata Temple

In some time we reached Tanot. AFAIK it is the only temple in our country where live bombs are placed next to Devi statue. These live bombs were dropped in the temple premises during 1965 Indo-Pak war but none of the bombs exploded. For more information check here

The temple is maintained by BSF. You can see scores of BSF guys walking in and around the temple. They are very particular about the temple and Tanot mata. Also, respect the Victory Pillar erected in the temple premises.

When you go there, do not climb on the Victory Pillar or Vijay Stambh, you may get a nice warm scolding 🙂  We offered a pooja thali to Tanot Mata, prayed for the well being of the place and these guys and moved ahead to Longewala post.

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