Uncomfortable Beasts

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Jaisalmer is an amazing place! So far i think it has the most beautiful buildings i've seen in the country! all golden sandstone(fronted at least) and most are pretty old! Our hotel happened to be in the fort itself and in my oppinion is a lovely place! sat on the rooftop of the hotel having lunch on a bastion is a brilliant experience! Unfortunately it wasn't all good in this city... I experienced some of the most shocking animal cruelty i've seen so far in my entire life! Jill, Andrea and I were walking up the road when we heard a dog screaming with pain, i looked up ahead and saw two indian men, one with a 5 foot long pair of iron mongers calipers locked round a dogs back end, this dog was screaming and biting at these big steel objects digging into its sides while screaming so much, the guy infront was smashing the dog in the head and upper back with a splintered lump of branch at every opportunity! I turned and walked away a little down the street as these guys seemed to be on some sort of official business. As i turned and walked, these two guys spotted me enraged and stopped taking as much pleasure in their actions and sped up to get the quite badly injured animal into the back of their van then started to approach me! By this point i'm sttod at the end of the street seething and gritting my teeth! OK, I don't care what that animal did, I don't care if it had Rabies, if it attacked a child, its all irrelevant. You DO NOT treat an animal like that!! I don't care if its the reincarnation of hitler!! There is no excuse!! If your gonna kill the dog, kill it. Don't torture it!!! I found my self snarling at the guys who'd done it who were now right next to me as if they'd come to justify there actions. I snarl and spit and growl at these scum sucking oxygen thieves and they still never grasped the fact that they had done anything wrong so with a deep breath and a remaining clean karma slate, i walk off and spend the next two days trying to calm myself down.

A day or so later and we're heading out on a camel safari into the desert. We get to the village where we wait for the camels just before dawn and watch the sunrise over the desert(i say desert but this place has had more rainfall this year than in the last decade so it was more like farmland, Scrub at worst) which was nice. We eat breakfast and the camels arrive so we mount them and are on our way. after an hour or so i can't take any more agony and decide to chicken out and get off this bloody uncomfortable creature! At the place we stop to get off, a dog comes running up to me, a bitch, with swollen teets. I offer her some food, she turns it down, i offer her some water, she turns it down, all the time whimpering at me and running in tight circles. I notice that one of her eyes is gone in a sort of myximatosis fashion. As i turn to leave, not knowing what to do for this poor animal, one of the guides on our camel trek informs me that she had a litter of puppies that had died recently and she came to me because she thought i'd be able to do something about it and maybe bring them back. I fought tears for a few hours but eventually accepted that it was the natural order and was at ease with myself once more. a couple of hours into the trek and we came across an abandoned city that by the looks of things had at one point or another been sacked by the muslim invaders into the area, we were given ten minutes to explore this place whih dissapointed me as i could have spent hours in that place!! A city of the dead that wouldnt have looked out of place in a computer game!! everyone else gets back on the camels and i walk as i'd finally got my hips back into their natural shape and i didnt want to upset them again. As dusk approached and we made it to the only Dunes in a hundred miles of scrub, we bedded down for the night and had some food. Around nightfall, from out of nowhere, came a muslim guy on a camel with a bag full of cold beer!! Light seemed to eminate from around him as we all began to chant beer at him. then our night was set. we spent the next few hours listening to the guides sing in hindi and then giving them some personal desecration of songs to feast on much to their amusement. When the moon came out it cast huge shadows of us on the sand almost as bright as a cloudy day!! but the best was to come when the moon set and the stars were able to shine. There were so many stars that i found it impossible to discern between constellations! Orion, The plough and the seven sisters all vanished amongst a blanket of bright white, blue, orange and green stars!! Even though the moon had set, there were so many stars that just from star light alone i was able to see all around me like the moon was still up and full! The next morning came around far too fast and we were once again saddling the camels up for departure. Before we boarded these torturous critters, i made my way to top of the dune and filled a cigarette packet with sand to take home. After about 20 minutes on the back of my camel, i couldn't take any more so i got of and walked the rest of the way back to the camp where we were picked up by our guides boss in his jeep and taken back to the city.

The next day and our expenditure was fully realised as the coffers were all but empty and we suddenly felt that we weren't going to be able to complete our journey here. If it wasn't for James and Andrea being so nice to us in our time of need, we'd probably be on our way home by now but many thanks to them we are still here and forcing ourselves to be thrifty. Thanks for the second chance guys and you will be repaid!!

Goa for christmas and new year seemed like a good plan and we'd booked our travel half way there by the time we saw the prices of things... when we realised that prices were between 3 -5 what they are in the UK for a quarter of the quality we decided to change and spend christmas and new year in Diu so merry christmas folks and a happy new year!! Speak to Y'all in the 0 1 1 Biatch!!

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