Jonny and Hoodu - Two true sheeps of the desert

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Jonny (Duncan's camel) and Hoodu (aka Jeff, Ahmed, Oi you turn right) (my camel) were to be our steeds throught the barren scrub land known and the Thar desert. After coming from cities with poeple, cars and cows consantly battling with you, the peace of the desert, even with the hum of electricty pylons and the farting of camels makes a refreshing change.

There were 8 of us in total and 5 guides with an extra two camels. Unfortunately all the camels were male and as it was mating season everytime a female camel came near everyone would speed up in her direction leaving the guides running aroung trying to stop 8 camels disappear off in different directions (none of us were consistently successful in steering our camels and making them listen to us). This was expertly demonstrated by Duncan and Jonny on the first day when walking along the dunes we had to cross over a narrow strech of sand. Jonny decided he didn't like this idea and set off down a steep slope at a trot completely ignoring Duncan. The rest of us had just met an elderly shepherd on the dune and while chatting to him, Duncan and the charging Jonny managed to disperse his flock in every direction. The shepherd had to go and resuce his flock and return Jonny.

Having said that, Hoodu wasn't much better. I seemed to have no effective steering- it was easier to go 270 degrees left than make a right turn. I also had no way of stopping him. At one point we had to cross a trench about 9 inches wide, all of the camels hated the idea and our inablity to control them wasn't helping. The guides started pulling the camels across one by one, and seeing the others cross, Hoodu decided it wasn't too bad and braved it on his own. I was so chuffed that I didn't notice that we had carried on walking in a different direction to everyone else. Only now did the real problem of not being able to stop or turn right became apparent as we plodded off into the distance - towards Pakistan!

Eventually, we had to be rescued.

A couple of times a day we would pass through villages and be mobbed by small children all desperate to have their photos taken - one even tried to make off with my sunglasses. My problem being that once my glasses were off I couldn't see where the the little git had run off to next!

We spent the nights on the sand dunes so we could watch the sunset and sunrise, we even woke up to find that dunes had started forming around us.

However, on a list of must do's sitting on a camel, plodding through the desert, watching the sun rise was just magical.

(just ignore the chaffing)

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Photos

Returned to safety
This is shortly after Jonny had taken a running jump down the dunes