Dhani, the Ragasthan village

The team spent all day at the site.

The dunes are fine, they report. Soft, golden and pristine. Untouched for miles.

But other things at the site have gone wrong.

The lower lying flat ground where many of the activities and some of the camps were planned now has a farm on it. It’s a small farm. But there it is. A patch of bright green in the desert. All around it, the barren ground has been tilled. It is rough and undulating.

It’s going to be difficult to construct anything here.

But that’s where it has to be. There’s no other way. It’s difficult to construct anything on the dunes – the sand keeps giving way – but that was always part of the plan as well.

It’s almost like this entire thing was thought up on a dare.

Take this, for example.

They’re putting up 200 Swiss Luxury Tents in the middle of the desert. But it’s not just the tents. The plumbing needs to be done for each tent so they are connected to sewage systems and water reservoirs. Electrical lines have to be laid for each tent. Pathways need to be created.

Did I say all this is happening miles away from the nearest civilisation?

That’s not a camp-site – that’s a little village!

That's just two. Imagine 200!

And have you seen a Swiss Tent? It’s like a hotel room. Certainly a damned size larger than my last apartment. Furnished better too. They tell me it takes four days to put up one such tent working without sleep.

We’re going to put up 200 in fifteen days.

They’ll stay up for only three days at the festival. And then it will take another fifteen days to dismantle them. All this, at a time when labour is in short supply and costs skyrocket.

The festival begins two days after Diwali and ends two days before Pushkar. This is when the highest density of tourists hit Jaisalmer. Locals tell us that at least 5000 tents are put up at Pushkar each year. Prices hit the roof. The people who are supplying us the tents could have made a killing. They have come into this knowing that they are giving up a sure thing.

They just really like the idea.

Can’t blame them.