Advertisement
Published: April 21st 2005
Edit Blog Post
Now thats a cool photo!
Melenie was pretty proud of this one. Today was our first day in Jaisalmer, a desert city in the northwest of India close to the Pakistani border. Its a city where everything is made of sandstone, basically because everything around it is sand.
Our main reason for visiting Jaisalmer was to wander the desert on a camel and then spend a night sleeping under the desert sky.
The first task for the day was to find a travel agent to book a desert tour with. The first guy we talked to seemed really dodgy so we told him that we'd think about it and come back in an hour if we were interested. However, we managed to find a more trustworthy guy and so booked with him. This caused some problems later in the day unfortunately (see below).
We then wandered through the desert fort - a walled fort made of sand with lots of sand buildings inside. Unfortunately thanks to tourism the inside of the fort was packed with shopkeepers harassing you to buy their wares, so it wasn't very emotive. We did manage to see some cool looking Jain temples (Jainism is a minor religion in India) which had lots of intricate carvings
Dunes and dunes everywhere
It was just like the movies. And we saw even bigger ones than these. of goodness knows what.
After a tasty lunch of praathas, mutton and spinach curry and butter chicken, we wandered over to the travel agent to commence our desert tour.
The tour guy had overbooked his tour, so we had to try and squeeze 7 people into a landrover that only fit 5. Thus one guy rode in the boot while Melenie sat on my lap in the front in a fairly contorted and uncomfotable position.
Enroute to the desert we saw a number of Rajasthani villages. Lots of rather poor people whom we felt sorry for, especially because rich tourists frequently stopped at these villages to gawk at them. Many of them asked for money but alas we were counseled not to give them anything.
We also stopped at another Jain temple which was moderately interesting. However, even more interesting was the fact that we met the first travel agent whom we had spoken to in the morning and told that we would 'think about it'. He actually was quite angry, yelling out 'you cheat me'. He demanded his taxi fair (when we had hopped in the taxi at the train station, we had agreed on
These camels hurt!
They definitely weren't as bad as they thought they would be, but we still felt quite sore after a few hours riding. a fare of 10 rupees but when we showed interest in his tour, he refused to take payment). I was going to pay him his fare, but didn't have any change, so instead, I decided to be pig headed and said that I had tried to pay him and he had refused, and that I hadn't cheated him at all. He looked real angry, and muttered stuff in some other language. Then, just before turning away, he looked right into my eyes and said 'I'll see you tonight'.
Okay, that didn't sound good. You can guess I was a little bit worried, because this guy looked like he would gut his own mother if it would get him a few rupees - I'm sure he had a switchblade or something concealled in his bushy beard.
Our tour guides reassured me and said it was alright because we wouldn't be sleeping at the same place as that guy that night. They tried to convince me that the guy was joking but I could tell by their expressions that they were a little bit worried too.
We stopped just outside the desert by the side of the road. Awaiting
Melenie with her trusty steed and guide
They guide was probably about 7 years old. And this was the guy leading my wife through the desert. us were our camels and camel drivers. To our surprise, the drivers that were going to be leading us through the vast wilderness were 3 kids, the oldest of which couldn't have been more than 12 and the youngest who looked about 7. It was a bit worryied, and I couldn't help wondering if we should have booked a slightly more expensive tour.
But everything turned out great. The kids lead us through some amazing desert scenery - huge dunes as far as the eye could see. Just like the Sahara desert images you see on TV. They entertained us with some Indian singing which kind of got annoying after 5 minutes. Melenie had a really nice 7-year old riding behind her (the guides hopped on the backs of the camels when they were out of sight of our tour guides) that she thought was really cute. He kept asking her everything 2 seconds 'Madam, you okay. If you are happy, I am double happy'.
After 2 hours of riding, we stopped to camp for the night. We stopped in a place where there was absolutely nothing to be seen for miles except for wide open desert. It
Its a dry and dusty place
Not an animal or person for miles. was so isolated and peaceful. And best of all, we got to watch the sunset from the dunes - one of the most beautiful sights we have ever seen.
One of the guides lit a fire and started cooking. We were expecting dodgy camp food but instead were given fresh chappatis, mutton curry and vegetable curry, all freshly cooked from scratch over a little camp fire.
That night we just gazed at the stars. It was amazing to see so many stars. However, it got a little bit less amazing once the cold desert night started to set in. And that point we retreated into the tent and freezed all night. Cleverly our tent had been positioned on an angle on the dunes and right on top of some dried camel poo, so we spent the night rolling down the hill and getting stabbed by rocks (dried poo).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.083s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0554s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb