Places to visit in Jaisalmer, and the order to see them

Sonar Qila, the Golden Fort, was built from 1156 by Rawal Jaisal on Trikuta hill, and the yellow sandstone glows gold in the low sun. Thousands of people still live inside its walls, among lanes of shops, cafes and homes. The Fort Palace Museum, the old royal palace, has seven floors of rooms, carved balconies and views over the desert. Seven Jain temples from the 12th to the 15th century are a few lanes away, covered in fine stone carving.

Five mansions in a row, built from 1805 by the trader Guman Chand Patwa for his five sons. Their fronts are covered in carved yellow sandstone, with tiny balconies and screens like lace. Kothari's Patwa Haveli, the first, is a museum of rooms set up as they were, with painted ceilings, mirror work, brass pots and old clothes.

The mansion of Salim Singh, a powerful prime minister of Jaisalmer, built about 1815. Its top floor juts out over the lower ones, and the roof is shaped like a peacock, with 38 carved balconies along the front.

A prime minister's mansion from the 1880s, carved by two brothers: one did the left side and one the right, so the two halves are close but not the same. Look for the stone elephants by the door and the carved horses, bicycle and steam engine on the front.

A rainwater lake dug in 1367 by Rawal Gadsi Singh, which once gave the whole town its water. Small temples and chhatris (domed pavilions) stand on the banks and in the water, and you walk in through Tilon ki Pol, a carved gate said to have been built by a court dancer.

A hillside of golden sandstone chhatris, memorials of the town's Brahmin families, named after the sage Ved Vyas. It looks straight across at the fort, which is why it is Jaisalmer's favourite sunset spot.

The royal cenotaphs of Jaisalmer's rulers, a garden of carved chhatris on a low ridge about 6 km north of town, started by Maharawal Jai Singh II in the early 1700s. Wind turbines now line the ridge behind them, an odd and striking picture.

A lake and garden named after Maharawal Amar Singh, who ruled Jaisalmer in the late 1600s, with a small palace on the bank and steps down to the water. The Jain temple beside it is carved as finely as the old ones in the fort. The lake is often dry outside the monsoon.

Lodurva was the capital of the Bhati rulers before Jaisalmer was built in 1156. Little of the old town is left, but the Jain temple to Parshvanath was rebuilt in the 17th century, with a carved stone arch at the gate and a metal tree of life (kalpavriksha) inside.

A Paliwal Brahmin village that was left empty, the story goes, in a single night in the early 1800s, with a curse that no one would ever live there again. Rows of roofless stone houses, a temple and the old lanes are still standing, and a few houses have been rebuilt to show how people lived.

Another Paliwal village left empty with Kuldhara, but bigger and wilder, below a small fort on a hill. From the fort you look over hundreds of ruined houses, and a room inside shows fossils found nearby. Peacocks gather here in the evening.

The best-known dunes of the Thar desert, about 45 km west of Jaisalmer near the edge of the Desert National Park. People come for a camel or jeep ride over the sand at sunset, and the tent camps along the road put on folk music and dance in the evening.

An Army museum about 12 km out on the Jodhpur road, set up in 2015. It tells the story of the 1965 and 1971 wars, the battle of Longewala above all, with tanks, guns and an Indian Air Force Hunter jet outside, and two halls of photos, medals and captured kit inside.