About us
We grew up in this DESERT. The camp came later.
Wonbin Safari has been taking travellers into the Thar since 2016, and the man who runs it was guiding people across these dunes long before that. This page is who we are, how we run a night out here, and the things we will not pretend to be.
- Founded
- 2016, in Jaisalmer
- Where we are
- Fort Road, Dhibba Para
- On Google
- 4.8 at the camp
- We answer in
- English, Hindi, Korean, Spanish
The name
Why a camp in Rajasthan is named after a Korean actor.
It is the thing people ask about after the price, and the answer happens to be the shortest way to explain where this business came from.
원빈
Wonbin
won·bin — the name a film crew
gave a ten-year-old guide.
It outlived the film.
Talab Khan grew up in the Thar and started guiding travellers across it at ten years old. A Korean documentary crew filmed him out on the dunes, and somewhere in the making of it they began calling him Wonbin, after the South Korean actor. The name followed him home and never left.
Two years later a Korean couple he had guided gave him a camel of his own. He called it Magic, and the two of them started taking guests into the desert together. Every language he speaks — Hindi, English, Korean, Spanish — he picked up from the people he was walking beside. He has never sat in a classroom.
In 2016, after more than a decade of guiding for other people, he opened his own agency and gave it the name the film crew had given him.
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Age ten
Already guiding travellers through the dunes outside Jaisalmer, before he could have told you what a business was.
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The film
A Korean documentary crew films him. His smile gets him named after Wonbin, the actor. It sticks.
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Age twelve
A Korean couple give him his first camel. He calls it Magic, and the pair of them start hosting travellers together.
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No classroom
Four languages, all of them learned from guests on the sand rather than at a desk.
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2016
Wonbin Safari opens. One office, and more than ten years of guiding behind it.
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Then
A hostel, because the travellers he was taking out kept asking where to sleep.
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Today
A small hotel on Fort Road where guests wash and leave their bags, and the camps out at Damia and Siala where the nights actually happen.
Who takes you out
The person who answers your message is the one who meets your train.
He was guiding people across these dunes before he was old enough to be paid for it. That is the whole difference between a camp that is run and a camp that is resold.
There is no call centre here and no agent taking a cut in the middle. Talab Khan still meets most guests himself and still answers the WhatsApp, which is why the reply usually arrives in minutes and why, if your dates are wrong for your group, someone will actually say so instead of taking the booking.
- English
- हिन्दी Hindi
- 한국어 Korean
- Español Spanish
How we run it
The standards we hold out on the dunes.
None of this is remarkable. It is written down because in this market it is not a given.
- Where we camp
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Off the Sam strip
Sam Sand Dunes is where most Jaisalmer safaris end up, within earshot of each other's generators. We use Damia, Laxmna and Siala instead — about 40 km out, and quiet enough that the loudest thing after dark is your own fire.
- The food
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Cooked at camp, not carried out
A Rajasthani buffet made fresh over open flame, vegetarian, with bottled drinking water. The kitchen is FSSAI-registered.
- The night
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Warm, lit, and watched
Desert nights fall to around 5°C in the cold months. You get heavy quilts and thick woollen blankets, a fire kept lit until morning, lit pathways, and staff on duty through the night.
- The price
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One number, itemised
The jeep, the camel, the cultural programme, dinner, breakfast, bedding and taxes are inside the figure we quote, and nobody asks you for more once you are at the camp. The bill is published line by line before you book — see it here.
Base in town
The desert night starts and ends on Fort Road.
Nobody goes straight from a train to a dune. There is a building in the middle, and it matters more than it sounds like it should.
It is a small hotel, and on a camp booking it is your base rather than your bed. We collect you here off the train or the bus, you get a room to shower and change before the afternoon departure, and your luggage stays here rather than in a jeep while you are out on the sand. The same shower is waiting when you get back the next morning.
The roof is the part guests tend to remember. It is a cafe with the golden fort straight ahead of it, and the kitchen cooks Italian alongside Rajasthani and Indian home cooking — an odd pairing on paper, less so once you are sitting up there with the fort going orange. Most people eat on the roof before they leave for the desert, and again when they come back.
Being straight with you
What we don't do.
Every camp in Jaisalmer will tell you what it offers. This is the other half of it, and it is the part worth reading before you book anything, here or anywhere.
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We don't run the Sam Sand Dunes strip.
If what you want is the big lit camp with a stage, a buffet queue and three hundred people, we are the wrong booking. Ours are small and a long way from that, and some travellers would genuinely rather have the big one.
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The Siala night is not a resort.
There is no tent and no washroom on that one. A bed, a mattress, a turban and heavy blankets go down on the sand beside the fire, and you shower back at our hotel the next day. Some people love it. Some people should book the Swiss tent instead, and we will tell you which we think you are.
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We don't arrange your transport to the meeting point on the Damia special package.
That one starts 40 km out of town. We send directions and a guide is waiting at the other end, but getting yourself to the start is yours to organise. Every other camp package includes free pickup from the station, the bus stand or your hotel.
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We don't take groups who come out to drink and shout.
This is a family camp, and groups who turn up for that get sent away. It costs us bookings. It is also most of the reason solo travellers, women travelling alone and families with small children keep choosing us.
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We don't quote low and add to it later.
The bill that grows once you are out on the sand is the thing this market is known for. Ours is itemised before you commit, and nobody asks you for more once you are at the camp.
Check us
Everything above, somewhere you can verify it.
We would much rather you looked us up than took our word for any of this.
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Google
4.8
39 of 43 guests gave the camp five stars. The hotel and tour desk on Fort Road is a separate listing, at 4.7 from 3,767.
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Tripadvisor
Listed and reviewed there too, as Wonbin Safari, Jaisalmer — including the reviews we would rather you did not read.
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A door you can walk into
Fort Road, Dhibba Para,
Jaisalmer, Rajasthan 345001 -
A number a person answers
+91 86199 05664. Not an IVR, and not a reservations desk in another city.
Still deciding?
Ask us the awkward questions.
What it actually costs, whether it suits your parents, what happens if the weather turns. We would far rather answer those now than have you work them out on a dune at midnight.