Jaisalmer

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Hi Everbody who's reading this, its been ages since i last wrote anything, but i suppose when i started writing a blog, i didnt think how much i wouldn't enjoy sitting in front of a computer, its a bit different than being in dronfield, when its raining outside and there's nothing outside i haven't seen 1000 times before. That said, i'm going to be back in town in about 2 weeks and i'm kind of looking forward to it, mainly to seeing family and friends again, but i'll be disappointed to leave india, i've had a lot of fun here, and seen so many amazing new things.

Anyway, at the moment i am in Jaisalmer in Rajastan, it is an old camel caravan city in the Thar desert. The city has a huge fort and all the buildings here are made from "golden" sandstone, giving it the name "the golden city". This morning we came back from a camel safari, we went for 2 days, and slept out in the desert. It was definitel very cool to ride around the sand dunes on a camel, i felt like a bedouin, although it was pretty uncomfy, now i'm aching in all sorts of new and interesting places.

The problem with not having written anything for a while is that i dont know where to start, i've been to so many places that i cant really write about them all, without either being in this hot internet cafe for hours or writing a kind of itinterary of what i've done. I'll have a go at doing a combination of the 2, but the keyboard is almost broken and typing is quite hard work.

Me and ben split up for a while and i went to Spiti valley for a while, and another valley called Pin Valley. Both valleys are in the rain shadow of the himalayas and so the are virtually desert, but with huge mountains, the people are buddhist and look slightly chinese, the place seems more like tibet than india (although having seen the amount of different places i have during my trip, i've realised you cant say what india looks like). So i travelled around Spiti with some Israelis for a week or so, then went to meet ben in Ladakh, in the very far north of india, where it is even drier than spiti (although not when we were there).

Ladakh is culturally and phsically very different from the rest of india. The people are very friendly, but i think they could have been affected for the worse by tourism. When we were there, there were so many tourists, not just backpackers, but many middle aged europeans, which meant it was much more expensive there than in the rest of india. Apparently it used to be common in Ladah for women to have more than one husband, and you can tell women have a higher status there than in other places, for example it is the only place i have seen a woman driving a car. The ethnic Ladakhis seem to be a kind of overclass in ladakh, you never see them doing the bad jobs, and lots of them seem to have got quite rich from tourism, some ladakhis told me they thought ladakhis have become too materialistic, but i suppose it is too be expected, either way, it is cut off from the outside world for 8 months a year, and if you want to see how much tourism can ruin a place, you should visit Rajastan.

We did a trek in Ladakh, but only a short one, we climbed to 4900m (which was like torture, at that altitude it is hard to do anything, let alone climb a mountain, you have to rest about every 20 steps). We wanted to leave ladakh, by the end, because we had been there too long, but had to do a trek first, so we chose a 4 day one, but ended up doing it in one day, we were quite proud of ourselves, because it was over 50km, we walked from 8am until 9pm, and finished walking along this track which never seemed to end, with a torch. My legs ached for days.

Also while we were in Ladakh we went rafting on the indus, which was cool, we got very wet, but it was maybe a bit tame. We also went to a lake called Pangong Tso, which is mainly in Tibet, it was very beautiful, and you could see china, i wish i had the patience to upload some photos, but i think i would still be here tomorrow.

The jeep ride back to manali was quite exciting, the had been a huge thunderstorm a few days before, and the road had been closed. It was opened again, even though it probably shouldnt have been, and we left as soon as it was possible, by that time we really wanted to leave ladakh. But the road was blocked in a few places by landslides and floods. One river was really flooded, and was a huge raging torrent (seems like the best description) and had the army on standby with a winch to drag cars through. We drove through it and the water was coming in through the back of the jeep, and the exhaust was bubbling. All the landslides and floods meant the jeep ride took ages, it should have been 16h, but it took 36!

Now were in Rajastan, we've so far been to Jaipur and Pushkar. Pushkar is really nice, it is a hindu pilgrimage town and is full of temples. Jaipur is nice too, but i find it strange that many people come to india and only go to see Jaipur and the Taj Mahal, its a shame because you probably get a bad impression of indians. I must say that i dont like the people here much at all, maybe its because ive been in the mountains where everyone is friendly, but the people here only want tourists money, and will do anything to get it, i've never been lied to and had people try to cheat me as i have here. Also its a shame, but the children here seem to almost automatically ask any white person for money, they shout "hello, rupees" at you the second they see you, whether you're on the street, train, a camel... Like they expect you to wander around throwing rupees to anyone that asks. It isnt only the poor people who ask for rupees, its everyone, regardless of whether the're poor or not. Yesterday, 2 young girls asked me to come and see their house (which was quite big), but it turned out they were just acting as a kind of pimp for their grandmother, and when i got to their house they all started asking me for rupees. I've got quite good at ignoring "hello friend" and dispatching beggars, but i think that if someone was to only see Rajastan, it would be quite unpleasant. Everwhere in india people like to talk to westerners, and seem interested in us, but here more often than not, people only talk to you if they want money.

Thats all for now, if things havent made sense, try adding k or y, because both keys have to be beaten to make them work.
Tonight im going to Jodhpur, the home of.... Jodhpurs.

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