We traveled by overnight train to Jaisalmer, a sandstone town very reminiscent of Bible times. The houses have flat rooves and people sleep out on them in summer, as people were doing when we arrived at 6:30 am. On the top of a hill is the fort, not as high and as impressive as previous ones but unlike the others it is a maze of houses, full of people selling everything from children’s toys to beautiful Rajasthani patchwork as well as hotels. This is to the detriment of the city as it is slowly crumbling due to the amount of sewerage and waste water being pumped through its drains. Nothing I write here can adequately describe the town in the fort.
We have now had enough of people being nice to us in order to sell us something.
From our hotel we arranged a camel safari for the following two days. (Now don’t forget it is around the low forties here and we are on the edge of the Thar Desert.) We were dropped off by jeep about 40 minutes away from our hotel, where we met our camel driver and his two young assistants and our five camels. All turbaned-up, we mounted our trusty steeds and rode off into the desert, with our cameleers wandering along behind singing, joking or talking on their mobile phones. Yes Alice Springers, you can get mobile phone coverage anywhere in the desert here. (Not sure if it has anything to do with the close proximity to the Pakistani border).By lunch time it was stiflingly hot (don’t let Phil tell you otherwise), so we were sat under a tree on rugs, fed Chapatis, rice and a chilli vegetable dish, then relaxed, slept, or chatted for a couple of hours in the shade whilst the heat abated slightly. Back on our camels for another two hours, until we arrived at some beautiful sand dunes where we (at least our safari leaders) set up for the evening. We ate tea and sang silly songs till sleep time and closed our eyes to the silence of a night in the desert under the stars.
The next morning we woke to cool air and hundreds of beetles busily collecting all the camel droppings, rolling them up the dunes with their back legs to a hole in the dune that was not there the previous night. Very entertaining especially when another beetle tries to take away a ball from one who has already rolled it almost all the way up a dune!
After breakfast, back on our camels, we traveled away from the dunes and on into a village, made of dark brown mud, as is the surrounding soil, with many children coming out to visit us, asking for money, my earrings, wedding ring, necklace or pens. The villagers were very friendly, the women with brightly coloured clothing (mostly reds, greens, and yellows around here) of full skirts a bodice type top and huge lightweight scarves often covering their heads and sometimes their faces. They wear heaps of jewelry through ears, nose, up wrists and arms and around ankles.
I forgot to mention that although the terrain looks hot and dry with low shrubs, even in the desert there are villages within a few kilometers of each other, and almost everywhere you wander, except on the dunes, there are goats, cattle, camels and donkeys with one or two people herding them.
Back on our camels we traveled to a well, with many animals under the best trees, which were chased away so we could eat lunch and sit for awhile. Then Phil and I said goodbye to our traveling companions, Dave from England and Morton from Denmark whom we had been having a few adventures with, and headed off for our rendezvous with the jeep a few hot hours later. Dave and Morton were having another night out on the dunes. The best thing was that at the end of our camel ride some kids tipped beautiful cool water from a well on us and our jeep driver arrived with a bottle of freezing cold water!
We are a little sore from the camels but altogether fared very well.
Watched the Aussies play SA that evening- cricket is always a good talking point the next day as the Indians take their cricket very seriously.
The next morning we took very easy but did go to a Haveli, which is owned by a co-operative of desert people with a beautiful selection of things made from local fabrics.
Our next leg of the journey, sleeper train to Delhi from Jaisalmer began in the afternoon.
Did you know: that camels eat bones (they chew on them for ages like chewing gum).
At one stage in our safari we came to a well where a local farmer was watering his cattle, drawing water by hand with a rope and a bucket - this guy could have been Abraham's shepherd from 3000 years ago - right next to him is a guy talking on a mobile phone!
