Camel cruising

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We have spent the last couple of days in Jaiselmar, a little place that rises like a big sandcastle out of the Great Thar Desert, near the Indian border with Pakistan.

Our first day there was spent exploring the fort, which sits on the top of the sandy mound and houses families, restaurants etc. The place is seriously crumbling and quite large chunks have fallen off in recent years. This does turn a drink in a rooftop cafe there into a bit of a 'living-on-the-edge' experience!

We had an Italian day yesterday, eating pizza and pasta for lunch and dinner. It was our first departure from curry and quite a welcome relief in a way. Later on we wandered around the stalls and shops and spent waaaay too long in one particular place which had the most beautiful saaris, wall hangings, cushion covers etc. There are so many beautiful things here, you could shop forever. We both caved in and bought something and were greeted with traditional Indian hospitality - a cup of chai - an odd and either refreshing or slightly nauseating (I can't quite pinpoint which) combination of milk, sugar, cardoman, salt and ginger.

We have just arrived back in Jodhpur having been on a camel safari. We were slightly dreading this, especially after the grumpy elephant, but it was actually pretty relaxing as these things go (and a good workout for the legs)!! The desert here is mainly quite scrubby, but there are also some beautiful sand dunes, at which point we got very snap happy!! We settled on a dune to watch the sunset, only to find that this set of dunes were the sunset-watching equivalent of the rush hour M25!! Also, loads of little boys had trekked out from the nearest village with bags of drinks and crisps to sell to the tourists. Quite amusing that you can even get ripped off and hassled in the middle of the desert here!

At the end of the day, we went back to the camp and ate dinner round a camp fire, were entertained by traditional Indian music and then slept in a hut. The offer of sleeping in the desert was romantic and poetic in theory, but sounded bloody cold and, despite our checking there were no tigers or monsters in the desert, a bit scary...

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Comments

[Michael]

Chai
Fran, just started looking at your blog. Great to see the ups and downs and interesting experiences your having. Interested that you had not had chai before - it's great stuff, but I have only ever had it in clean, pristine western cafes, not in deepest India. Take care. Love, Michael