Camels, snakes and a Tiger Chief

From the rather disappointing Agra we journeyed to the Rajasthan, a desert region in the North West. As the last unexplored area on our six week Indian adventure, it had been eagerly anticipated, and I am glad to say it exceeded all expectations.

On arrival at our first stop - the city of Jaipur - a midget rickshaw driver with a humpback and an extreme mullet (yes I am deadly serious, wish I had taken a photo now…) attached himself to us and became our unofficial guide for the next two and a half days. Jaipur is famed for having the best shopping in India so, as you can imagine, the majority of our time was spent in huge shops full of textiles, handicrafts, leather goods, and jewellery. At one point we spent over an hour at the most incredible textile store where we were offered drinks, shown a large variety of incredibly beautiful things that would have never fit in our packs. One of the sales men took a liking to Rose and insisted on dressing her in a full Indian sari (she looked like a total babe!). Although we thought our packs couldn’t possibly fit anymore, we all left Jaipur with many more scarves, pashmina’s and jewellery than we intended to purchase. However, despite an epic amount of shopping we did manage to fit in some historical sites... We wandered around the pretty bazaars in the old part of the city, which are responsible for Jaipur’s nickname of the ‘Pink City’ due to the pink colour of the stone that all the buildings are made from. Our humpbacked tour guide also took us to Amber Fort - an ancient fort with great views of the city and surrounding mountains.

On our last afternoon we decided to visit one last jewellery store (as I was on a quest to find Indian style gold earrings) and ended up each having a 20minute discussion with one of the men who worked there who was a mineral therapist. For no money, and by only touching our hands and using gems, he was able to tell each of us intimate details of our lives and personalities - so much so it was a little creepy at times. However, his insights and advice were truly remarkable, and without sounding fruity, it really was a life changing experience for all of us.

From Jaipur we trained further West to the town of Jodphur, also known as the ‘Blue city’ due to all the blue painted buildings. Jodphur collectively turned out to be our second favourite place after Hampi. This was partially due to our incredible guesthouse, where we got our best and biggest room of the entire trip for an absolute steal. Not only did we have an air cooler and two huge (and actually comfortable) double beds, the guest house was also situated right underneath Jodphur fort - a large foreboding building on top of a hill that overlooks the town. Our two days were spent hiking up to the fort and the palace within, and an awesome temple near to it, called Jaswant Thada. Despite promising ourselves not to shop anymore for fear of breaking our backs under the strain of our packst, we couldn’t help but to succumb to the plentiful antique and textile stores.

Our next and last destination was Jaisalmer, a desert town in the far North West near Pakistan that is in the Thar Desert. Compared to Jaipur and Jodhpur, the town was not nearly as scenic, and although it also boasts a large fort it was not as stunning as the one in Jodphur as the general population still inhabits it so it is extremely rundown. However, our hostel had a pool and the small quaint town provided enough entertainment. On the afternoon of our second day Rose meet an local Indian man who referred to himself as ‘Tiger Chief’ and insisted that he cook us dinner that night. Tiger Chief would not take no for an answer and although we already had dinner plans with these two awesome Polish men who I meet on the train to Jaipur, we just made them come along too (which worked out well, in terms of safety). So as it turned out, Tiger Chief was this crazily well respected man in town who everyone knew and kind of worshiped and, as he lived in the middle of the desert, our dinner location was on the roof of his friend’s house. For about five hours the three of us, the two Poles, Tiger Chief and a few of his friends ate and drank on the roof with Tiger catering to our every whim - we were banned from paying for anything and as we were guests the Indian’s in attendance wouldn’t even eat until we had finished. The food was some of the best we ate in India and the conversation was hilarious, as Tiger Chief was one of the most eccentric and conceded men we have ever met, and who always referred to himself in the third person and spent the night starting great philosophical conversations. We were chaperoned home by the gentlemanly Poles and all in all the evening was one of the best and most original of our whole trip.

The next morning, slightly suffering hangovers, we ventured off on our two day camel safari - the main reason we went to Jaisalmer. We took a jeep to meet our camels in the middle of nowhere and our group consisted of the three of us, a couple of hilarious Poms and two camel men. We saddled up (the camel standing up felt like riding a mechanical bull and it took some skill to not fall off the first time) and we were off. We rode for several hours and then spent the hottest hours of the day under the shade of a tree while the camel men made us lunch and we played cards. The afternoon riding was rather painful as the physical pain of sitting on an incredibly wide camel started to kick in, as did the physiological side of being in the desert with nothing for miles around you (basically at this point we spent several hours discussing which cold drinks we wanted and in what order, as our boiling mineral water just wasn’t cutting it). However, we finally arrived at our final destination, a large set of sand dudes, which were to provide our accommodation for the evening. The best part of the night was just before dinner, when we were sitting around discussing cold drinks, as per most of the day, and an Indian man all dressed in white rode up on a camel holding a big sack of cold drinks! Despite the nearest town being over an hour’s ride away this miraculous man (Stu, our Pom friend, dubbed him the ‘Desert Angel’) managed to bring us a variety of beer and soft drinks, which were all icy cold. Isaac, our camel man, said we were supposed to barter with him, however we were so unbelievably grateful we brought pretty much everything he had and tipped him. So with full bellies and nicely mellowed by the beer we relaxed on our beds - blankets laid out on the flat area at the base of the dunes - and gazed at the incredibly starry sky. However, just as we began to relax and fall asleep, a snake infiltrated our camp, which resulted in all us running away while Isaac killed it with a stick. Even though the snake was just a baby, it was right by where our heads had been so we were all a little freaked out and the decision was made to move our beds higher on to the dunes where there we no shrubs and hence less chance of snakes. The rest of the night passed without further snake incident, however as we were high up on the unsheltered dunes, we basically got caught in a sand storm and woke up literally buried in sand - needless to say no one got a lot of sleep. The following morning we made the decision to only do a half day back on the camels and meet the jeep earlier, as due to the sleepless and sandy night, we all were wanting to get back to the pool for a relaxed afternoon(also physically our bums couldn’t really handle anymore came riding!!!). This second camel trip day was also the start of a five day bout of giarida for me, so the majority of the rest of my time in Jaisalmer was spent laying about our room while Jen and Rose had a couple of fun nights out with Stu and Gemma (our Pom friends) and Indian beer.

From Jaisalmer we had our longest train trip ever, a nice 18 hours to Mumbai. However, we finally arrived and spent the last three days of our India trip in our beloved Mumbai chilling and eating all the Indian food we could before we had to farewell the tasty country. The main highlight was definitely our second to last night, where we had dinner at the famous Leapold’s cafe and saw Gregory David Roberts, the legendary author of Shantaram (if you haven’t read this book do it, it is incredible).

It was then time to farewell the best country we have ever visited in our lives; a country rich in colour, culture, tasty delicacies and quite possibly the kindest, most helpful race of people to ever exist.

Off to Europe we go.

More soon,
Claire xx

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