Farting Camels, Spitting Men and Scurrying Rats

I hope you’ve guessed from the title that a lot has happened in the last week! I left Udaipur to travel to a place called Mount Abu, a mere 7 hours’ bus journey away. Before the morning was through I’d learned the hard way that you never ask an Indian a leading question: when I arrived at the bus station I’d found a wise-looking old man standing beside a bus. “Does this bus go to Mount Abu?” I asked him. He nodded and replied “Yes”, so I climbed aboard. Only when a fellow passenger frowned at me in a later broken conversation about my intended destination, did I discover we were in fact heading 90 kilometres in the wrong direction to a place called Ranakpur… The trick is to ask an open question such as “Where does this bus go?” so you don’t risk getting a “Yes” or a falsely encouraging waggle of the head.

Mount Abu was manic - I arrived on the main night of Diwali. I actually had to stay in my room as the children on the streets outside were setting off crackers which were so loud I couldn’t stop myself from jumping every time they exploded.

The next morning I climbed a hill to look over the lake - an incredible place as it’s about 5,000 feet and considerably cooler (The British based themselves here I suspect, not just for the strategic advantage but to escape the heat of the desert). As is often the case while travelling, you wake up with a plan that can completely change during the course of the day. Instead of visiting temples I ended up firstly chatting with a bunch of delinquent teenagers who had come to Mount Abu to do what teenagers do - smoke and drink beer. Initially I was clearly a subject for joking in their own language, surprisingly intimidating, but my street cred was established after they tried to light a cigarette with both hands at arms length: I was suddenly cool once I demonstrated it has to go in your mouth first. Then I was treated to see x-rated pictures on their mobile phones - they told me I was lucky as “these English women” were obviously more fun than Indian ones…. I later met a charming Indian couple who were on their honeymoon from Mumbai - Sushil and Sonia, both of whom were well travelled and spoke perfect English - we sat and chatted til the sun went down and promised we would visit each other if we come to each others’ countries in future.

Jodhpur was a one-day stop - really I wanted to get to Jaisalmer but couldn’t face the 11-hour journey. It has an impressive fort with great views over the Old City, all painted in a charming dusky blue but I didn’t do much exploring. The “luxury” bus I boarded the next day was so crammed full of people in the aisles I couldn’t get to my seat - until I decided to join them at their own game of pushing and shoving, rather than stand with my rucksack for seven hours.

Jaisalmer was where the fun started and I knew it; I’d been looking forward to the Camel Safari as a change of pace from lone travelling. The organizer was a man called Mr Desert, a man whose face adorns many Rajasthan tourist posters (you can see a picture here - http://www.travelpod.com/travel-photo/sarah/pre-trip/1076275800/mr_desert.jpg/YES.html). I was delighted to meet some other travellers, Thor from Sweden and two girls (ding dong!), Caroline from can-you-believe-it Wimbledon and Tally (pronounced Tarli) from Israel. The safari was great, 2 days and one night in the desert - at the end of the day you dismount and hobble off with bandy John Wayne legs. I was especially delighted that the camels are great multitaskers: on the rare occasions when they come to water they drink and pee at the same time, for most of the day they soldier through the sand, munching the odd shrub and letting out regular and alternating burps and farts. I have to say I was especially tickled by a) my camel being the most flatulent and b) that it was leading the single-file train so the others received the full effect downwind.

The desert had a couple of areas of Sahara-like dunes - we settled in one of them for the evening and had a great meal around a campfire - apparently made by Mother Desert. Dung beetles materialized everywhere, frantically collecting their prizes from the visiting camels. It was great fun falling asleep later under a starry sky. Not so amusing was the next morning when the immodium I’d taken as a precaution for the bus journey 48 hours earlier wore off… rather embarrassing walking over a dune conspicuously clutching a toilet roll!

I stayed with Thor, Tally and Caroline for a couple of days afterwards - we had fun, visiting a temple and then spotting a funfair from the roof. We walked in its direction to find the main attraction was a “Wall of Death”, you know the kind where motorcyclists drive round at such speed they cling to the wall, like driving round the inside of a huge barrel. Only in India could they do this - 2 motorcyclists roaring round with no helmets or protection, then being joined by a car the size of a VW Golf - I’ll try to upload some video footage!

I left yesterday morning to take hopefully my last bus for a while - to Bikaner. This time I got to my seat no problem, apart from a hangover from the night before when we’d had a mini party with rum and coke on the roof. One thing that is hard to get used to - and REALLY makes me scowl and grit my teeth - is the constant hawking and spitting, a pastime especially popular on long bus journeys. A lot of men chew tobacco or paan, and then release big brown splats of spit out the window. It doesn’t even take an elementary grasp of Physics to know this will fly back through the window a few seats further back. It’s quite revolting to feel a cold spray on your arm or face and then see the brown splats on your clothes - the problem is which of the many heads sitting in front of you belongs to the culprit!?! It’s really not cricket…

Today I took a taxi (no more buses!) to a small town around 30 kilometres south of here called Deshnok, famous for its Rat Temple. Apart from the Taj Mahal this is the only other place I wanted to see before I got here, having seen it on a documentary a couple of years ago. There is a story involving gods but I won’t go into it here - suffice to say this is a serious place of prayer where the rats are revered and fed by worshipping locals. Apparently it is good luck to see a white rat, it’s also good if one walks over your foot (check!) and fortune will follow you if you ingest some of the food that the creatures have been slobbering over. Like most other travellers I’ll take their word for that…

Hope you like the photos, I’m off to Delhi in a couple of hours by overnight train so hope to be back in touch in a couple of days when I’ll have seen the Taj Mahal. Hope you are all well back home - cheerio for now!

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