Jaisalmer - Part Two

Sorry for the delay in posting Part 2! In Jaipur at the moment until Wednesday morning when we'll be leaving for Delhi.
Here you are:

At 6am on Friday morning, we jumped in a jeep to begin our two day camel safari in the Thar desert - one of the must-do activities in Jaisalmer. We met our camels and camel driver at a small village about a half-hour drive away from town into the desert, and our camel driver Aman and jeep driver cooked us a breakfast of toast and chai over a little fire in the sand while we watched the sunset and eyed our camel companions for the first time. At this stage I was crapping myself! My previous experience with a camel was possibly about 20 years ago (God, I feel old, that's terrible) and at the Royal Easter Show. In my mind they were about half as tall and certainly less vocal. FYI, camels also stink! It turns out that they're gassy animals from both ends, which means that when you're riding in a train you bear the brunt of it all!

After about five tries, I finally managed to get a leg over my camel Pepsi and we were off. One of the scariest things about riding a camel, as it turns out, is the getting up and getting down part - in the process of getting from its knees to standing up, the camel violently jolts backwards and forwards, leaving you to hold on to the small brass handle on the saddle for dear life as you frantically try and remember whether riding camels is listed under the extreme sports exception in your travel insurance policy. Thank God I never had to test that one out!

Having successfully mounted our camels, we set off into the desert. It's freezing in Jaisalmer and surrounds until late morning, so I was all rugged up in my beanie and polar fleece so it certainly didn't feel like desert at that time of morning. Actually, the Thar desert isn't what I expected -rather than being a barren landscape of red dunes, it's actually a sandy, scrubby kind of desert with small thorny trees and bushes and the occasional deserted stone village. We rode until late morning, when we stopped for lunch (chapatis and veggie curry cooked by our drivers under a shady tree). At this stage, Phil and I were beginning to realise that our only travelling companion, an American guy called Joe, was a massive pain in the neck. I do try to give American backpackers the benefit of the doubt, but this one was the stereotypical self-righteous yet whingy douchebag. His primary complaints at this stage were that Aman was not an authentic camel driver because he wasn't wearing a turban, and that there were too many flies. Grr.

We had a bit of a scare while we were riding along in the morning when all of a sudden Rocket, Aman's camel and the leader of the train, suddenly bolted for no reason scattering our food supplies on to the ground. Aman told us that it was currently camel mating season, and apparently the camels (we only rode male camels) were able to smell females up to 100km away in the desert and were a little crazy because of it! Later on though, we actually came upon some females grazing in the desert and were able to pass through without incident.

We rode for another three hours or so until we reached our campsite for the evening, the dunes. They were absolutely stunning - huge, rolling, and covered by that beautiful pattern that the wind leaves over sand dunes (will post pictures when I get a chance). By this stage I was in major pain - I knew that it was going to hurt, but seriously, it canes! Particularly on the thighs and hip bones, as you sort of have to clench your thighs whilst allowing your hips to rock freely with the motion of the camel, which is easier said than done.

We walked around the dunes and watched the sunset from the top as dinner was cooked. I can't wait to post some photos (actually I think Phil has the best ones of the sunset on her camera) so you can see how breathtaking it was. Of course, all was not so rosy for whingy Joe, who was upset that the newly made footprints on the sand dunes were ruining his photos!

After dinner (Rice, chapatis, dahl, fried potato 'chips' and another version of veggie masala curry)
we had an early night - we were exhausted and it was dark, so bed seemed like the logical thing to do. We didn't have tents, just padded bedroll-type mattresses that we laid on the sand, and we had a couple of thick blankets to put on top of us. By this stage we were rugged up in our thermals, beanies and scarved because it was freezing. It just felt so surreal to be lying in bed on the dunes in the middle of the desert in Rajasthan, looking at the stars and hearing the grunting of the camels and the animated chatter of the camel drivers on the wind. Unfortunately, the actual sleeping experience wasn't so great - it never fails to amaze me how sand can seem so lovely and soft, but as soon as you attempt to sleep on it it feels like you're lying on a rock! Phil and I also woke in the middle of the night to find that a feral desert dog had decided to snuggle in with us, and as much as we poked and prodded him and tried to shoo him away, the stupid thing wouldn't budge! In the end we just gave up in the name of actually getting sleep ourselves. I was convinced that we'd be infested with fleas by morning, but thankfully we managed to avoid getting infested.

Morning brought with it another beautiful sunrise, more chai and toast, and another three-hour camel journey to our pickup point in the desert where a jeep picked us up. We were back in Jaisalmer by lunchtime - tired, hobbling like eighty-year-olds and very stinky, but so happy that we'd done the safari. That said, I think we were both glad we'd opted for the 1.5 day version rather than the two night one because I'm not sure that our poor hips and thighs could have handled any more camel riding!

That's all I can write for now, but I'm sure that our photos will tell another story in themselves when I manage to post some.

E x