You arrive in the mid-morning and the site is entirely empty.

No ticket window. No other visitors. No interpretive boards telling you what you're looking at. Just the five surviving temple ruins, thorny desert scrub, carved sandstone eroded by eight centuries of Thar wind, and total silence except for that wind.

A local man in a white turban appears from somewhere in the scrub and offers to tell you the story. His gaunt features and slow walk, in the bright noon desert light, would be almost frightening if you arrived at dusk instead.

You spend longer here than you planned. Every stone you pick up to examine has carving on it. Every wall that still stands carries something elaborate — scenes from epics you half-recognise, creatures you don't recognise at all, figures frozen in positions that are immediately clear and several centuries old.

You leave well before sunset, the way everyone who visits this place leaves. You think about it for days afterward.