Kuldhara

Kuldhara is an abandoned village about 18 kilometres south-west of Jaisalmer. Paliwal Brahmins who had moved here from Pali settled it by the early 13th century, as two dated memorial inscriptions show, and it prospered for centuries. A history of 1899 names a man called Kadhan as the first settler and the digger of the Udhansar pond. By the early 19th century the village was empty, perhaps because water ran short or after an earthquake; local legend blames the cruelty of the Jaisalmer minister Salim Singh.

The ruins cover a rectangular site of about 861 by 261 metres, laid out around a temple of the mother goddess with three long streets crossed by narrow lanes. Traces of a town wall remain to the north and south, and the dry bed of the Kakni river runs along the east. There are three cremation grounds with memorial stones. Kuldhara's reputation as a haunted place led the state government to develop it for tourism in the 2010s.