Rajastan is amazing to visit, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Jaisalmer, you name it. The last one is a proper desert city near borders with Pakistan, you can have dune safaris with sleeping on dunes and watching various critters roam around. The food there is one notch more spicy above usual Indian already crazy level. They have these various family workshops - jewellery, daggers etc using old family traditions, you can see also workshop or kiln just behind shop. Similar to shopping around for quality nepalese kukri around Kathmandu.
But heat can be brutal out there - one day just sitting on camel around Jaisalmer, I've drunk 6l of water (literally 1l bottles one after another). No pee at all coming out, and even almost had a heat stroke.
India's diversity is stunning, its not just 1 huge country but rather a continent on its own composed out of... 1000 various tribes IIRC? To me, by far the most exotic country (as in different to environment I normally inhabit) globally. Not sure how much of that slowly evaporated in past decade with phones everywhere, I've spent some time there 15 years ago.
Best advice I can offer for dealing with the real and serious heat in parts of Pakistan and northwest India is to ensure that you're getting plenty of salts and minerals in your water intake. With a large intake of water, you will notice at the end of the day that your hat or shirt collar is literally encrusted in salt and dust.
Bring oral rehydration salts for the inevitable less-than-optimal digestion experience. You may not feel like you need it, but mixing oral rehydration salts into your water intake after an episode of bad digestion will help you a lot. ORS are cheap and scientifically simple and well proven.
Yes had those apart from tons of other medicine. I was so paranoid about hand hygiene that in 3 months mostly eating in dirtiest cheapest dhabas I didn't get a single stomach infection. Sight of a couple with hand sanitizing gels 12 years before covid. Second 3-month stint I got one in Rishikesh, 24h of pure hell.
It was some tiny slip up I didn't even notice, generally we were using disinfection but not as paranoid as first time. Ie catch some rail in the bus and then eat chapati with that hand, or maybe we hit some dhaba/restaurant that didn't have everything freshly cooked. Mental fatigue over time gets you, especially when in challenging environment.
Don't take it as negative comment overall, I can't express with words how much that backpacking experience there meant to me. I came back as different, dare to say a better person but listing reasons would take tons of time.
Love the culture, history, various coexisting religions, common people were always very kind and helpful, and overall intensity, even with few negative aspects. Learning to haggle a bit was very hard but it paid back itself later in life tremendously, ie managed to haggle down 60k $ from the price of apartment we bought from one CFO of major insurance company where I live now. Wouldn't have balls to do it without that experience. But whole list is massive and many things I don't even realize myself and never will.
I did the camel trek into the dunes from Jaisalmer, it was pretty spectacular seeing the juxtaposition of wind turbines and very rural desert communities.
Got completely soaked at night though because it was the one day in the year where they got a torrential downpour.
If you go, make sure to visit The Bhang Shop for a bhang mango lassi!
Ah special lassis, that was a different experience every time. Apart from that one time south of Agra where they only put some dried fruits in, and I kept waiting for magic that never came. Not the kind of special I was looking for :)
But heat can be brutal out there - one day just sitting on camel around Jaisalmer, I've drunk 6l of water (literally 1l bottles one after another). No pee at all coming out, and even almost had a heat stroke.
India's diversity is stunning, its not just 1 huge country but rather a continent on its own composed out of... 1000 various tribes IIRC? To me, by far the most exotic country (as in different to environment I normally inhabit) globally. Not sure how much of that slowly evaporated in past decade with phones everywhere, I've spent some time there 15 years ago.