Jaisalmer

Kuldhara

A village in the Thar Desert near Jaisalmer that its inhabitants abandoned in a single night around 1825 and never returned to. The story goes that the state minister demanded the village headman's daughter, and rather than hand her over the whole community of eighty-four villages walked out in the dark — quietly enough that none of their neighbours noticed them going. On leaving, the brahmins cursed the place: anyone who tried to settle there would not survive the night. The houses have stood empty for almost two centuries since, in the middle of otherwise inhabited land. The stone walls, staircases and doorways are intact — not ruined, simply left, as though the owners had stepped out and never come back.