‘Snowscape’ in the heart of Rajasthan

Mounds of marble slurry in Kishangarh, about 90km from Jaipur, are a favourite destination for wedding shoots and now, films too.

- Shoebkhan

Ajmer: Amodel stands beside a clear blue pool on a snow bed. It could be a scene from somewhere in the Alps, or Ladakh, but for the scraggy vegetation and the dry hills around. Over the past eight years, this ‘phenomenon’ has become Kishangarh’s biggest draw.

Kishangarh, if you haven’t heard of it, is an old town in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district, about 90km from Jaipur on the Delhi-Mumbai highway. It used to be the capital of a 400-year-old kingdom — an offshoot of Jodhpur — and was mainly known for the school of miniature painting its kings nurtured.

And marble, of course, because Kishangarh is the largest supplier of marble in Asia. The famous quarries of Makrana that sent “translucent marble” for the Taj Mahal are just 50km away in neighbouring Nagaur district.

For all the finished marble it ships out year after year, Kishangarh has to deal with mountains of marble slurry. In 2008, the state government allotted a large ground to the Kishangarh Marble Association (KMA) to dump the slurry, and for the next few years it was just that – a wasteland. In the rainy season, pits and craters on the white bed filled up with rainwater and became a hazard. For years, nobody saw any value in it.