Jaisalmer – Part 2 (The Camel Trek)
8.30 starts are not my friend, as a result it took me a little while to get into the whole camel safari swing of things. To be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect from the whole expedition as it wasn’t one of my must do things on my trip around the world, figured if the people I was hanging out with were on for it that I wouldn’t say no to it. You do hear some unpleasant reports back though from most people about pains in bottoms and the sheer bad smells that the grumpy camels emit constantly. We didn’t get to the camels till about 11, for the first couple of hours we took a jeep ride around to a few temples in the immediate jaisalmer area. To be honest they were nothing special at all, I was more preoccupied with how I was going to cope with the big hairy ships of the desert instead.
There were just 3 of us in the group – the other guy Ivan, was also a melbournite so that gave himself and shari something to instantly relate to each other. As they nattered away about all things australian I took it handy in the back seat trying to catch up on some zzzs between occasional glances out the window over the thar desert.
We started the camel trek itself at 11 or just after, my camel was called raja. Our guides were two local village men. The main guy Badir seemed like any other indian guy to start with but as the trek progressed we really became great friends. The lad looked like he was in his late thirties at least so you can imagine my shock to discover that he was just a month older than me. Now I know I am not a cub anymore but jays twas a wee bit of a shock. After the briefest of ‘How to make yer camel stop and go’ tutorials we were set and off we went. It is now that I debunk or at least make some attempt to explain why I didn’t have the same problems that other people had on their trips, I reckon I didn’t get saddle sore because of all the times I had to peddle my way through jobstown on the way to work and maybe I could tolerate the smell a wee bit better than most having shared a house with barry for 5 or so years – not saying thats definitely the truth but it would go someway to explaining it.
We stopped for lunch at about 1.30 and sat under the shade of a lone tree in the middle of the desert, it was a fantastic setting. The meal badir prepared for us with such meagre resources was pretty phenomenal. It was so so so spicey though, the most I have encountered in the entire country by far. I went through at least 3 bananas, not chewing them but using them as a makeshift lip balm. I thought I was gonna die, but what a way it would’ve been to go – ‘Phil was happy when he died, His belly was full’!!!
After lunch we made our way to the sand dunes. Now they are not really something I thought about as tourist attraction, I mean how different cuold they be to the sanddunes you find off the west coast of ireland – how wrong can you be? It was beautiful – the only thing I kept on thinking to myself (and outloud I admit) was that it looked like a scene from the side of a Hazelbrook farm box of icecream, a land made completely of butterscotch icecream!! We were let off to explore the sanddunes just intime for another spellbinding sunset. Being in the desert the pollution wasn’t nearly as bad as other places so it gave it a much more natural effect. We had some dinner later before sleeping under the stars.
I have to say that I was in my element, we booked for just 1 night and ended up staying for 3 days out on the safari. It was such a relief to get away from the honk honk honkness of the indian towns and roads – some of the lorry horns are ridiculously loud and they play some of the most bizaare jingles. I saw a car the other day reversing that was smaller than a micra, it had its own personalised reversing music – Silent Night!! This country is NUTS!!!
So another day on the camels, Camels are great creatures. Riding them is like playing wolfenstein or one of those 1st player shooters where you can see the gun aiming out the front of you, they just bob along occasionally stopping for the odd mouthful of bushweed. They pee incessantly aswell, whatever about racehorses, camels really do take the biscuit (note the way that I refused to use the word piss, I thought that might be a bit too obvious or even crude, don’t want to offend anyone on this family blog 🙂 ). We stopped into the camel guides village where we go such an amount of attention from his family and neighbours, all the kids were pleading for pictures, school pens, ruppees or just plain chocolate. They settled for a half an hour of mainly shari playing with them – a couple of the younger lads hung around me asking for photos or were bemused by my terrible attempts at magic tricks.
We headed on that evening to the more tourist oriented sam sands. A spectacular set of sanddunes for another night under the stars. With the best of intentions to head for Bikaner the following morning we requested an earlier than normal return to jaisalmer but when we got to the hotel there was nothing that could have moved me enough to get to the bus on time. So another night in the cool little town. We decided to alter our itinerary slightly aswell, rather than head north to bikaner we decided to head east to pushkar and so booked an overnight bus to get us there. Like everthing else it was not a normal bus trip, nothing is normal here but you are going to have to wait for the next entry to read all about it – and 2 more entries before I get to the major major drama….
later,Phil
Tags: camel safari, India, India, jaisalmer, Rajasthan
Phil Gill
There’s been alot of controversy over whether to stay or not stay in the Fort. It’s eroding from increased water usage and tourists are contributing to the problem. I’m trying to raise awareness about the situation so tourists can get involved.
Check out this link, it shows the different viewpoints so readers can have more info about this important question and get involved to help out!
http://beta.flowgram.com/fgshare/FLOxsnFr/
Happy Travels!