The Thar,
by subtraction.

A fort being dissolved by its own taps. Jaisalmer Fort was begun in 1156, has ninety-nine bastions, and is one of the few forts anywhere that people still live inside — several thousand of them. It survived eight centuries of siege and sandstorm because the desert kept it dry.

Then piped water arrived, without drainage to match. Water and sewage went into the ground beneath yellow sandstone that was never built to be wet, and the fort began to sink into itself: eighty-seven of its four hundred and sixty-nine structures have collapsed. In 1999 two bastions and a section of wall came down in heavy rain. Conservation work has been going on since the nineties and it is a race. You are looking at one of the last generations to see it standing as it is.

Royal cenotaphs inside a wind farm. At Bada Bagh, just outside town, the rulers of Jaisalmer are commemorated by a hillside of chhatris — domed, tiered, honey-coloured, looking out over the desert they took their revenue from.

They now stand in the middle of one of India's largest wind installations. Turbines on every ridge behind them, turning. It is either the most tasteless juxtaposition in Rajasthan or the single most honest image of what this century is doing to this landscape, and I've never decided which. Go at the end of the day and make up your own mind.

A bird down to about a hundred and fifty, and the thing killing it is green energy. The Great Indian Bustard — godawan locally, and Rajasthan's state bird — is critically endangered. Something like a hundred and fifty survive nationally, and around a hundred and twenty of those are in Jaisalmer district. This is its last real ground.

It is a heavy, low-flying bird with poor forward vision, and the desert is now strung with high-tension lines carrying solar and wind power east. Researchers estimate roughly eighteen birds a year are killed flying into them. The Supreme Court has ordered lines put underground across a vast area of habitat and has been tightening those orders since; the build-out continues meanwhile. Renewable energy and a critically endangered species, in direct and unresolved conflict, on the same ground. Nobody's villain, and nobody's solved it.

The way in, used properly rather than skipped. Mehrangarh is one of the great forts of India and deserves a full morning and a second visit, not a coach stop. But the reason to start here is Osian, an hour north: a scatter of Hindu and Jain temples in the sand from the eighth to the twelfth centuries, largely unvisited, which quietly establish that this desert was a rich trading country long before it was a picturesque one.

Ten thousand cranes, fed by a village. This is the thing in the zone I most enjoy watching people discover, because none of them have heard of it. Every winter, demoiselle cranes — kurja — arrive at Khichan in their thousands, and the village feeds them: grain put out daily in a walled enclosure, an arrangement the community organised itself and has kept up for decades.

At feeding time the sky over a small Rajasthani village fills with cranes. It is free, it is village-run, there is no ticket office, and it is one of the great wildlife spectacles in India. Go at dawn, stand at the back, and don't talk.

A living fort, three nights, and a proper look at the havelis. The fort needs early mornings — six o'clock, when it is a town going to work rather than a monument, and the shopkeepers haven't opened. The Jain temples inside it are twelfth to fifteenth century and extraordinary. Patwon ki Haveli is five merchant mansions built by one Jain trading family and is worth a slow hour for the stone screens alone.

Outside town: Bada Bagh under its turbines, the Gadisar tank, and Kuldhara — a village abandoned around two centuries ago and now sold to day-trippers as haunted. The ghost story is a marketing invention of fairly recent vintage. The real story is water, revenue and a community deciding to leave, which is both true and considerably more interesting. I'd rather you got that version.

Where the godawan still is, and where the argument lives. Not a safari park and nothing like a tiger reserve — flat, thorny, immense, and mostly empty of visitors. Chinkara, desert fox, spiny-tailed lizard, harriers and eagles through the winter, and if the morning is generous, a bustard: a bird nearly a metre tall walking away from you across open ground.

Dawn, with someone who works on this. The bird is the draw; the transmission towers on the skyline are the education.

Past the last light, on the right night. Two nights, properly out — not the dune car park at Sam, and not a resort with a generator and a floodlit dance floor. Far enough that the horizon is unlit in every direction, on canvas, with nothing running.

Cold, once the sun goes: December nights here get close to freezing and people are never prepared for it. I will have you prepared for it. The sky on a moonless night in the Thar is the second-darkest I know in India — Hanle is darker, and Hanle is at four thousand metres and much harder work.

The two edges, for cloth and for camels. South towards Barmer and Balotra is block-printing country: ajrakh and its local relatives, resist-printed by hand in indigo and madder over many days and many washes. You can spend a day with a printing family with your hands in the dye, which is the best souvenir this zone produces.

North, Bikaner is camel country and adds three or four nights: Junagarh, a fort that was never taken, the Rampuria havelis, the national camel research station, and the temple at Deshnoke where the rats are the point. Optional, and the first thing I cut when days are short.

Manganiyar musicians, in a village, for ourselves. The Manganiyars are hereditary professional musicians of this desert, Muslim, playing for Rajput and merchant patrons for generations — the great living music tradition of western India, and the reason to come here at all if you care about sound. What you get in a hotel lobby is forty minutes of the greatest hits. What I want is eight or ten of us in a courtyard, a kamaicha, and no schedule. Name the family or the village you actually work with — this is the single most important credit on the page.

Khichan at feeding time. Be in position before the light. Thousands of demoiselle cranes coming in over a village that has chosen to feed them. Twenty minutes in, most people stop taking photographs, which is how I know it's working.

The fort before it opens, with someone who is trying to save it. Inside the walls at six, while it is still a town — and then the water story, the collapsed bastions and the drainage argument, told by the conservation architect or INTACH contact you use. You will never look at a heritage site the same way again.

Godawan, with a naturalist. Out into the Desert National Park in the dark, sitting still after first light. There are around a hundred and twenty of these birds in this district and no guarantee at all, which is the honest part. Whether or not one walks past, you'll leave understanding why the skyline matters.

Three hours past the last light, with nothing running. No generator, no lamp, no engine. The point at which people stop talking is usually about four minutes in. This is the hour the entire trip is timed around, and it is the reason I asked you to move your dates.

Indigo, up to the elbows. A day with a block-printing family towards Barmer — carving, resist, the dye, the washes, the waiting. It is slow, and being made to wait for something is a good last day in a desert. Name the printers.

Into Jodhpur. Mehrangarh on the first full morning and again briefly on the second, because nobody takes it in once. An afternoon at Osian among the temples. Nothing strenuous — this is the zone's civilised end and it's the right way to arrive.

West and north. The courtyard evening with the Manganiyars on night four. Then out to Khichan for the cranes at dawn, with a night either side so we aren't driving in the dark to make it.

Jaisalmer, three nights. The fort at six on the first morning, with the conservation walk. Havelis and the Jain temples. Bada Bagh at the end of a day. Kuldhara without the ghost. Dawn in the Desert National Park on day nine. One free afternoon, which will get used for sleeping.

Out into the desert, on canvas, for two nights timed to the new moon. One of the two days has nothing in it at all. This is the middle of the trip in every sense except the calendar.

Back east via the printers for the indigo day, and a last night somewhere comfortable with a proper bath. Out from Jaisalmer, or on to Bikaner if you've bought the extra days.

Bikaner goes on the end — Junagarh, the havelis, the camels, Deshnoke — and the desert stretch gets a third night, which is the better of the two upgrades. Confirm whether you run the Bikaner extension.