Choosing · decided
Udaipur or Jaisalmer?
The short answer
Udaipur is the easier city and Jaisalmer is the one you will still be describing in ten years. If the trip has room for only one and you want comfort, lakes and good food, take Udaipur. If you can absorb a five-hour desert drive and a night out in the Thar, take Jaisalmer — nothing else in India feels like it, and the gap in memorability is wider than the gap in comfort.
Which one, for you
A short trip where travel time is precious
It is on the main circuit with good flights. Jaisalmer is 285 km past Jodhpur and the leg onward to Udaipur is most of a day — the desert costs you time before it gives you anything.
Udaipur
You want the trip to feel like somewhere else entirely
A living fort in a desert, golden sandstone, and a night under stars with no town in sight. Udaipur is beautiful in a way you can find elsewhere; Jaisalmer is not.
Jaisalmer
Travelling with older parents, or anyone who tires
Flat, short distances, good hospitals, and no obligation to do anything strenuous. Jaisalmer involves heat, a steep fort climb and a camp with basic facilities.
Udaipur
Photography
Golden walls at dawn, havelis carved like textile, and a desert horizon. Udaipur is the more photographed and the less rewarding once you are actually holding a camera.
Jaisalmer
Going between April and September
The Thar runs past 45 °C from April and it is genuinely dangerous rather than merely uncomfortable. Udaipur in summer is unpleasant; Jaisalmer in summer is a bad idea.
Udaipur
One night somewhere you will not forget
A desert camp well beyond the Sam dune strip. Choose on how far the operator is willing to drive, not on the photographs — the difference between a good desert night and a bad one is entirely that.
Jaisalmer
Compared, line by line
Udaipur takes 3, Jaisalmer takes 3, 1 are a wash
Udaipur
The city of lakes
Jaisalmer
The golden fort in the Thar
Getting there
On the circuit. Good flights, five hours from Jodhpur.
285 km past Jodhpur, and the onward leg to Udaipur is around 500 km — worth flying.
The set-piece
The City Palace and Lake Pichola — reliably lovely, monsoon permitting.
A fort from 1156 that thousands of people still live inside.
Cost of entry
City Palace ₹400 flat, no foreign/Indian split; the boat is ₹600, or ₹800 at sunset.
Walking into the fort is free — it is a neighbourhood, not a monument. The havelis ticket separately.
Food
The best restaurant scene in Rajasthan outside Jaipur.
Narrow, and the water and hygiene need more care than anywhere else on the circuit.
Comfort
Excellent hotels at every price, and nothing physically demanding.
Heat, a climb, and a desert night that is part of the point.
How distinctive it is
Lovely in a way you can find in other places.
There is nowhere else like it in India.
Nights needed
Three.
Three — two in town and one in the desert.
A marigold mark means that row goes to that city. Rows where they genuinely tie are left unmarked rather than padded.
Do not sleep inside the Jaisalmer fort
It reads as the romantic choice and it is widely sold that way. The fort is inhabited and its foundations are being damaged by the piped water and drainage that hotels inside it require; bastions have collapsed, and heritage bodies have urged visitors not to stay there. Walk it all day, eat in it, photograph it — and sleep below it. The view of the golden walls at dawn is better from outside anyway.
Or take both
They are far apart and they do not pair naturally — this is a ten-day-trip decision, not a five-day one. If you are doing both, put Jaisalmer in the middle of the route and end on Udaipur, and fly the long leg between them.
VERDICT REVIEWED · AUGUST 2026This is an editorial opinion, held for stated reasons. Disagree and tell us why — we publish corrections.
Keep reading
Take both, properly
The Rajasthan Edition carries every city on the circuit — the stories in acts, the checklist itineraries, Look Closer and the Shot Lists — so you can decide on the ground rather than in advance.
The Rajasthan Edition — $29.99