So, we succumbed to the painful but hilarious camel safari - only for a day and night though.
We had heard various stories about taking a camel in the Thar desert but we thought we would give it go.
And everything that everyone says about the experience is true in that it's extremely uncomfortable having your legs spread about 3 feet apart, dangling with no stirrups, 7 feet up in the air, balanced on a loads of cushions for hours at a time. But it is also a fantastic experience.
We met our guides - Mangelsingh and Hussain early in the morning along with our camels...mine called Rahul, very beautiful, quite shy and very chilled, Monkey, Simon's first camel - who was being kept on a very tight rein - and Bubble, the camel for Mangelsingh and Hussain, the largest of the three who also had some serious wind issues and farted constantly the whole time, which isn't great when he's leading the way and we're all following in the slip stream. This later became Simon's camel as monkey was playing up and kept trying to throw Simon off. which although I thought
was funnny at the time, was not very relaxing for Simon seeing his fate from 7 feet up.
The photos hopefully tell the tale, it was another great experience. It was just the 7 of us, we probably saw less than a dozen people of route.
We trekked through the day and at night, we watched the sunset on the dunes, had local food cooked from scratch and ate around a fire in the desert. Mangelsingh purchased local 'moonshine' f for us rom a nearby village made from who knows what (we're convinced he drank half of it on the way back from his quest) and watched the milky way and constellations come alive above us. We then slept under the stars - albeit not for long when sharing company with some huge beetles.
It took about 4 days for our legs to recover but really worth it, and with our local guides, felt like a truly local experience xx
Rahul
