Tunes in the dunes - Jaisalmer Camel Safari

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Our relationship with Eshaq, the young hotel manager, began to deteriorate fairly rapidly once we came to discuss whether or not we would be going on a camel safari. He had persuaded us into his hotel with a cheap rickshaw ride and very cheap room prices but we knew (and we told him that we knew) that he was going all out to make his money from us on one of the desert trips that Jaisalmer is famous for. That was fine because we weren’t intending to go on such a trip and he assured us that there was no obligation!

He sat down with us on the rooftop restaurant on the evening we arrived, feigning casual friendliness. He wasn’t going to be the one to bring up the camel safari topic that was so inevitably going to rear its head at some stage. Instead we made chit chat about his hotel and the string of girls that he had bedded there. It was clear that he was arrogant and motivated solely by money.

I buckled and enquired about the safaris and Eshaq immediately launched into sales mode. Out came the photos of grinning tourists and goofy camels in the desert along with glowing testimonies from those that had been on one of Eshaq’s special tours. We began to think it would be fun for a night so long as we were promised certain things. We requested that we would be able to do some jeep driving ourselves.

“Of course. Why not?!’ cried Eshaq. We stressed that we wanted to spent as little time bumping along on camel back as possible. “My friends (dramatic pause)… whatever you want. No problem”. Things carried on like this for a while - Eshaq promised the world, we began to believe that he might be able to arrange a trip that was suitable.

To cut a long story short, much of what Eshaq promised was totally untrue as anyone having been to Jaisalmer will warn you about. The price seemed a bit high by Indian standards but after we had negotiated two free nights at the hotel it worked out reasonably. However, the camel safari was actually a lot of fun thanks to Daniel, our guide and cook. We rode uncomfortably for a couple of hours before setting up camp in the dunes, having a great supper cooked by cap fire and then sleeping open air under the blanket of the desert night, punctuated frequently by shooting stars. We sung a range of Now 23 classics (Tasmin Archer 'Sleeping Satellite', John Secada 'Just another day', Charles & Eddie 'Would I lie to you') to Daniel and he responded with some folk songs of his own.

So the story of Jaisalmer, the desert town near the Pakistan border, as is the case with almost all travelers who go there is that you pay for a camel safari which probably isn’t quite as grand as you were promised but it is fun all the same.

ROAD TRIP TO AGRA

Stuck out in western India as we now were we faced with a long trip to Agra. We took and early morning bus to Jodphur thinking we would be able to fly to Delhi and then proceed to Agra from there. There were no flights that we could take so we commissioned a vintage ‘Ambassador’ to drive us 14 hours to Agra which it duly did with the minimum of fuss but no shortage of near misses with lorries.

Yesterday we played golf and this morning Matt and Ollie went to the Taj for sunrise. This evening we take another taxi to the Nepalese border from where we delve into the Himalayas for our last week together.

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