Caron Rawnsley: The Irishman Helping Save Jodhpur's Stepwells

In the old city of Jodhpur, baoris and jhalras still drop in steep stone flights toward water. These stepwells were not ornaments. Before large canal supplies reached Rajasthan, the city relied on a linked system of lakes, canals, tanks, wells and stepwells. Baoris and jhalras collected and held monsoon rain where it evaporated more slowly, and they stored that water for a desert town.

Many of those working reservoirs fell into disuse after newer supply systems arrived. Some later became dumping grounds. A 2024 Geoheritage survey of about 134 Jodhpur stepwells found that most remained in poor condition. Cleaning a handful of sites does not mean the city's water heritage is fixed. It does mean some of these places are being brought back into public notice.

The Irish volunteer who stayed

Caron Rawnsley, an Irish volunteer, has spent years pulling plastic, silt and rubbish out of Jodhpur's old wells. Locals once called him Paagal Saab. He came to the city in the latter half of 2014, looking for places linked to his mother's past in India, and stayed. Shocked by the condition of the water structures, and finding little response when he appealed to municipal bodies, he began to clean them himself.

His methods have been practical rather than ceremonial: lowering water with pumps, removing debris by hand, returning to the same sites, and asking neighbours to stop treating them as latrines or dumps. By July 2026, he was about eighty, living in a modest old-city guesthouse and still going out with a wooden stick after a leg fracture.

Cleaning is not the same as architectural restoration

It helps to keep two kinds of work apart.

Rawnsley's work has been citizen cleaning and maintenance: clearing waste, desilting where possible, improving access to steps, and pushing for regular care. Mehrangarh Museum Trust and INTACH's Jodhpur chapter later gave labour, pumps and organised cleanup drives. Local volunteers joined at different times. By July 2026, much of the remaining day-to-day cleaning depended on volunteers, many of them women, after Rawnsley's earlier full-time helpers retired during his medical treatment.

That is different from a financed architectural conservation project. The best known example in the old city is Toorji Ka Jhalra. Around 2017 the RAAS hotel founders, with help from Jodhpur's maharajah, purified the pool and restored the carved steps. Visitors looking for Rawnsley are often pointed toward those steps, where he is sometimes found. Presence is not the same as authorship of that hotel-led restoration.

The cover photograph on this article shows Toorji Ka Jhalra itself. Read it as an image of Jodhpur's stepwell architecture, not as proof that Rawnsley restored that particular well.

What the cleanup has reached

Rawnsley has helped revive about ten historic waterbodies. Named sites include:

• Mayla Bagh ka Jhalra, also written Mahila Bagh: an early focus around 2015, with later restoration work continued by the Scwedia Foundation
• Ram Bawari
• Govinda Bawari
• Mahamandir Bawari
• Chandpol Bawari
• Kriya Jhalara
• Tapi Bawari
• Gulab Sagar

Cleaning litter at a well that travellers already visit is not the same as leading its architectural revival, and not every named well should be treated as fully restored or permanently protected. After initial work, some sites were defaced again. Plastic returns with monsoon runoff, and institutional funding for masonry repair has been thin. Around July 2026, municipal desilting was underway at Gulab Sagar and Sati Sagar. Structural stonework still needs government interest and money that volunteers with sticks cannot supply.

The work has always been collaborative. Credit belongs with Rawnsley for persistence and public attention; with residents and volunteers who joined cleanups and later maintenance; with Mehrangarh Museum Trust and INTACH Jodhpur for labour, logistics and outreach; with later site-specific partners such as Scwedia Foundation at Mayla Bagh; and with civic teams when Nagar Nigam or other agencies actually desilt or repair a site.

Visiting Jodhpur's stepwells

A walk through the old city is the simplest way to see this water architecture in place. Mehrangarh Fort stands above the lanes, and Clock Tower and Sardar Market sit in the same neighbourhood. The stepwells belong to that lived landscape, not apart from it.

Start with Toorji Ka Jhalra, the best known stepwell in the old city. Mayla Bagh ka Jhalra, also called Mahila Bagh, was an early cleanup site and later saw further restoration. Gulab Sagar has been part of both volunteer cleaning and later municipal desilting. Other baoris named in the same effort include Ram Bawari, Govinda Bawari, Mahamandir Bawari, Chandpol Bawari, Kriya Jhalara and Tapi Bawari. Do not assume every one is open, safe or maintained. Conditions change, and some sites may be locked, under works or still heavily fouled.

Conditions also vary through the year. Monsoon runoff can wash plastic back into cleaned wells, and civic works may be in progress at different times. Go ready to find a neighbourhood water structure rather than a finished monument.

If you include stepwells on a Jodhpur walk:

• Treat them as fragile public heritage and neighbourhood water infrastructure, not as prop rooms for photographs.
• Do not litter. Do not throw plastic, food waste or ritual leftovers into the water.
• Respect places that are still used for worship.
• Stay off damaged edges and do not climb carved niches for pictures.
• Ask before photographing people working or resting on the steps.
• If you want to support cleanup work, arrange that through local organisations rather than turning up uninvited with a bag of tools.

Rawnsley's work has also included education: getting children and neighbours to value water as a scarce desert resource. Travellers can reinforce that idea simply by leaving less mess than they found.

Caron Rawnsley is an Irish resident of Jodhpur whose decade-plus cleanup work has helped bring attention back to neglected baoris and jhalras. The work so far is collaborative maintenance of a limited set of sites, not a completed restoration of all 134 stepwells. Architectural showpiece projects such as Toorji Ka Jhalra have their own hotel-led history. For visitors, the practical takeaway is modest: look carefully at the city's water architecture, credit the many people keeping it from filling with rubbish again, and travel lightly around whatever still holds water.

Sources

1. The Better India, 18 May 2019: interview on Rawnsley's cleanup work, named wells and Mehrangarh Museum Trust / INTACH support
2. The Print, 24 July 2026: ground report on Rawnsley at about eighty, Mayla Bagh timeline, collaborators and municipal desilting
3. The New York Times T Magazine, 22 March 2017: RAAS-linked restoration of Toorji Ka Jhalra
4. Living Waters Museum, Aquaman of Jodhpur recognition page
5. The Better India, 17 August 2026: short update still describing Rawnsley's Aquaman role

Cover photograph: Toorji Ka Jhalra, Jodhpur by Dr. Raju Kasambe, CC BY-SA 4.0. Architectural restoration of this stepwell is separately credited to the RAAS hotel project, not to Rawnsley's cleanup campaign.