Rajasthan road conditions and night riding: why the day ends at sunset

Better tarmac than you expect, and a worse number than you expect

The loop lulls you. Jaipur to Kishangarh is a 90 km six-lane toll expressway on NH 48, open since 2005. Beawar to Pali to Pindwara has been a continuous 244 km four-lane road since 2015. Jodhpur to Jaisalmer is NH 125 through Pokaran, 282 km. Most of the loop is sealed, and the tour page says so: mostly sealed highway, some sand and village roads.

Here is the number underneath. In 2024 Rajasthan recorded 24,838 road accidents and 11,790 deaths, by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways' count. That is 47.5 deaths per 100 accidents. The national figure is 36.3. The same report puts 70.74 per cent of India's accidents down to over-speeding and 54.8 per cent of deaths in open areas, places with no human activity nearby. Good tarmac and an empty horizon are where both of those happen.

Sand on the tarmac

Sand does not stay on the dunes. In May 2025 Rajasthan Patrika reported asphalt roads around Mohangarh, in the canal area north of Jaisalmer, disappearing under windblown sand after a run of storms, with small vehicles stuck in it. By November the storms are gone. The sand is not. It lies in fans across the carriageway wherever a dune or a cutting sits upwind of the road, and from the saddle it reads as a change in tarmac colour until you are on it.

Ride it like any loose surface: speed off before it, not on it, throttle steady, grip light, weight back, eyes on the far end. Do not brake in it. A patch 20 m long is nothing at 60 km/h and a crash at 100. At night you do not see it at all. That is the first reason the clock matters.

What the night riding numbers say, and what they leave out

The ministry publishes accidents by three-hour band. In 2024 the 6 pm to 9 pm band recorded 1,02,897 accidents, 21.1 per cent of the national total and the highest of the eight bands, the same pattern every year since 2020. Add the three bands after it and 42.5 per cent of India's accidents happened between 6 pm and 6 am. That is my arithmetic from the ministry's Table 7.3; the report labels those bands Night itself.

Rajasthan's curve is the same shape. The National Crime Records Bureau's 2024 state table puts 10,111 of Rajasthan's 24,119 road accidents, 41.9 per cent, between 6 pm and 6 am. NCRB's Rajasthan total is 24,119 and the ministry's is 24,838; they compile differently and I am not reconciling them. And neither source publishes deaths by time of day, only accidents, so nobody in India can tell you from official data how much deadlier a night crash is. The nearest thing I found is a 2007 US NHTSA note: the fatality rate per mile about three times higher at night.

Camels, cattle and 100 km with no lights

The Jaisalmer to Pokaran national highway is 110 km long. About 100 km of it has no street lighting, per Rajasthan Patrika in August 2026, which named the zones along it, Chacha, Khetolai, Dholiya, Gangaram ki Dhani, Lathi and Chandan, where camels, nilgai and loose cattle walk onto the road after dark. A camel standing side-on is a grey wall at headlight height. Its legs are the only part a dipped beam reaches.

On 7 November 2025 the Supreme Court, extending a Rajasthan High Court order to the whole country, wrote that stray animals on national and state highways are a serious and avoidable threat, particularly during night-time or in high-speed zones, and directed PWDs and NHAI to remove them and patrol. The High Court's own order of 31 July 2025 records that Rajasthan's last consolidated figure is from 2018, more than 185 deaths from stray animals, with nothing published since. A Union ministry table reported in November 2019 gives a different 2018 figure for the state: 659 accidents and 338 deaths. Two government numbers, 185 and 338, for the same year. They disagree and I am leaving them that way.

The incidents are not abstract. In January 2021 a long-distance rider from Bengaluru died in Fatehgarh sub-division of Jaisalmer district when, in the police account, a camel suddenly appeared in front of his bike at night. In July 2026 an Army major died the same way, 6 km from Jaisalmer, in an SUV.

The things ahead of you with no tail light

Animals are the obvious hazard. The one that kills more people is the thing parked in your lane. On the evening of 2 November 2025 a Tempo Traveller rammed a trailer parked in front of a roadside eatery on the Bharatmala highway near Matoda, 80 km from Jodhpur. Fifteen people died. The Supreme Court took the case up on its own motion eight days later, on the point that unauthorised dhabas put trucks on the shoulder. Hit from back is the largest collision type in the ministry's 2024 report, 23.4 per cent of all accidents.

Then the slow traffic. In May 2022 the Rajasthan High Court, ruling on a camel cart hit from behind by a bus at 3 am near Bikaner, said reflectors would have avoided the crash and directed the state to require them on animal carts and tractor trolleys. In July 2026, after a bus hit a truck and burned on the Dausa expressway, the Chief Secretary ordered a statewide drive to challan heavy vehicles without reflective tape, a standard notified in 2008. The drives tell you how well it has been enforced.

Fog is the winter version of the same problem

You will ride Rajasthan in winter, and winter brings the one visibility problem that does not wait for dark. West Rajasthan averages about 3.5 fog days a season against 7 to 10 in December alone on the Indo-Gangetic plain, by IMD's climatology. On 16 December 2025 IMD's morning bulletin logged 100 m visibility at Bikaner and 50 m at Sri Ganganagar. On 2 January 2026 four people died in a fog chain collision on the Bharatmala highway between Deshnok and Naurangdesar, south of Bikaner, a trailer arriving at speed into vehicles already stopped.

So the rule has a morning edge. On the Bikaner and Shekhawati legs in December and January, you do not leave until you can see 200 m down the road, whatever the itinerary says.

Build the day around sunset, not around the distance

The longest day on our Rajasthan itinerary is Jaisalmer to Bikaner, 330 km, listed at 6 to 7 hours of riding. Start at 9 after a hotel breakfast, add fuel, lunch and one photo stop, and in December you arrive in the last hour of light with no slack for a puncture or a herd. Start at 7:30 and the same day ends at 3. The distance did not change. The arrival time did.

The rule I would give any rider here: off the highway an hour before sunset, every day, no exception for a good road. And the questions for whoever is running your ride, including us: what time do wheels roll, what is the planned arrival, and what happens when a day runs late. If the answer to the last one is that you push on, you have learned something.