Story of Kuldhara - the abandoned 'Chudail' village of Rajasthan!

Chudail Trail or Witch Trail at Kuldhara village can be done just by yourself in the day. However, if you want to experience the real thrills of walking through the haunted lanes of Kuldhara village, you must try it out with Suryagarh hotel. Its certainly an experience of a lifetime.

But before we go ahead, what exactly is a Chudail?

A chudail is actually a Hindi word for a witch, and the term is often used in all the countries of South Asia. A chudail is an ugly female form, but she can transform herself into a beautiful girl, usually to entice young and attractive men. Once she entices the men, they suck out all their energy - their blood, semen and everything else.

The legendary house from the terrace...

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It was getting dark and an eerie silence was falling over the village. The elders had just come back after a day-long session under the beloved neem tree near the temple. Usually women took little interest in what they discussed, but today Nandini's mother ran out to meet her husband as he walked towards the house, head held low and teary-eyed. Nandidni took no notice and kept combing her hair while humming a local wedding song. Her mother's sudden and blood curling wail made her heart skip a beat. She immediately knew there was something wrong, terribly wrong.

As she walked out of her room looking for her younger sisters, she could sense an imminent sense of doom. The house was already empty and all she saw was the maid ferrying her youngest sister, Paro, on her shoulders even as she fought insistently to free herself. Nandini too ran after her but just before she could step out of the house the wooden door was closed shut on her face. The last she saw of her family was her father sitting on the floor and crying inconsolably. She didn't understand anything at all - she was her father's favourite and all her life he had only loved and cared for her. This sudden change of heart was inexplicable.

However, the decision was already made on her behalf at the meeting of the elders. Surya Pratap Singh (a different caste and very powerful leader and king's right hand) had threatened to kidnap and marry her at the break of dawn and the only way to save their honour was to let her burn to death - an honour akin to jauhar and sati. Just before the entire village emptied out (along with eighty four other villages with the same community members as theirs), the father was asked to lit his favourite daughter's pyre even as she shrieked from inside the house behind the locked doors. The house was first doused in ghee collected from all the house and prayed upon by the temple priest.

Even before she stopped shrieking, the village had started emptying out. The mother had already fainted and had to carried off in a bullock cart as the village caravan moved out of their ancestral land and towards Varanasi to escape Surya Pratap Singh's wrath. 

No one really knows what exactly happened to the villagers after they escaped. Some say they escaped and reached the Ganges planes, other versions claim that they were all hunted down and their souls could never escape due to the collective guilt of burning Nandini alive.

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This is completely fictional account of what could have happened at the village of Kuldhara which now converted it into a ghost town and a haunted place, especially at the night. As an amateur fiction writer I took a few liberties here with the legend :)

We spent about an hour around midnight there hoping to catch a glimpse of a wandering soul, or at feel its presence. We got lost quite number of times in our attempts to reach the village in the dark  by jumping over the wall. Nothing happened, though the locals claim to have personally witnessed many such paranormal experiences. Perhaps going alone would help. Perhaps next time.

The walk through the village is called Chudail Trail (or the Witch Trail) and takes one through the house where Nandini (fictional) was killed (as per one version of events). Six hundred years after the incident, its difficult to place the event correctly and chronologically. However, the truth remains that a total of eighty four villages belonging to the Paliwal community were emptied out one fateful night and have remind abandoned ever since. The remains can be seen all around in the areas around Jaisalmer in the Thar.

Here are some images from Nandini's house.

Front facade of the house...

A bullock cart left behind...

And finally Kuldhara in the late afternoon...