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So! We arrived in Jaisalmer, off a long-ish overnight train, and were immidiately bombarded by a slew of commission-workers, trying to get us to go to their hotel. GAH!. okay, so this happens allll the time. They see two white people through the windows of the train, and wont stop badgering until you've hopped into a rickshaw, and driven away fast. We had to wait in line, however, to book more train tickets, so we were stuck with way too many people in our faces, pointing at papers, claiming to be "the best" while we waited for some "freedom fighters" to change like 30 tickets. Wa-hoo!
We picked a quiter dude at the back of the scene to drive us into town, deliberately avoiding the rudies, and went to his guesthouse. It turned out, though, that all the people we'd been trying to avoid worked there also!!! Nooo! One particularly slimy dude sold us into one of his camel treks... and when we'd realised we'd been asked for an outrageous price, refused to give us back out deposit. Anyways, we ended up getting him to lower the price to normal for us. gooood.
Jaisalmer is an amazingly cool place.
The weather was right hot, and as it was rumoured to be around 50 degrees, there were about three tourists in the entire place! Jaisalmer has a great fort... 800 years old. Our gusthouse was 600 years old, and was innnn the fort. RAD! it was gorgeous, and as most of the touristy shops were closed for the season, the place had some great relaxing vibes to it. Also, most of the Indians there were so nice to us... just talking for the sake of talking, not hassling us to bits over cheesy souvenirs. Rad. The city below the fort was very cool, also... full of windy streets, many cows, sheep, samosa-shops, and some realllllly crazy old crumbly buildings.
We went for a two-day camel safari. It was GREAT! We had an awesome guide... he was incredibly nice and cool considering he only got paid a little over a dollar for taking us out into the desert. He was a "desert man", and had never been anywhere else. Basically, the trek involved riding camels through the rediculously stifling Thar desert for a few hours, stopping under a shady tree for lunch (Sera, our guide, made the greaaaatest chapati ever,
and some tasty fried potato masala), and then riding the camels until dinner, and then again after dinner. The camels weren't exactly the most comfy mode of transport we've ever used... sooooore EVERYTHING was a result of that...
Sera found us a place to stay outside the mud-hut of an aging widower in the middle of nowhere. He owned three emaciated cows and a concrete platform. We slept on the platform, under the stars. Twas AMAZING... it got quite cool at night, and though the wind shot about 2 tonnes of sand into our mouths, eyes, ears, nose, clothing... it was a really cool experience. Sleeping in the middle of the Thar desert, nobody for milllles... Great stars, also!
The trek got a little tiring the next day... Desert is desert, after all... We saw quite a lot of sheep, random other camels, sand, peacocks, vultures, and some abandoned villages, and some tiny lived-in villages. It's hard to imagine daily life out there. What do they do all day? We passed through a tiny Muslim village, where they were having a "Circumcision Party". righty-o! Immediately after seeing us, the kids all ran up, saying the only things they knew
in English... "You have one rupees? Chocolate? You have pens?". We seriously plan to assasinate the first tourist who ever gave out those things to kids in this part of the world. Such a brutal expectation... foreigner = free candy! You get hounnnded by them. Aaaah. No good...
Sooo... we finished our day by riding our camels (Sarah's almost threw her off... twas a "training camel") back to the road. A very cool trip. We tipped the camel-dude. He was really nice... annnd he made up a song about our trek... "Camel Safari, Dal, and Chapati, do akka do, do akka do"...
We didn't like our sketchy gusthouse staff, so we moved to a nice place, with nice people... it was the house of a former Indian Prime Minister. We stayed in his room. His ghost may have stolen Evan's hand sanitizer. Rad.
Spent the next day exploring the really rad fort... got an aryuvedic facial... had some really good street-samosas (theyre far spicier and tastier than at hooome!), and just explored the cool place some more. Apparently in tourist season, there are so many foreigners that you "don't see indian people". Crazy. So we enjoyed being
in the town... even though it wasss rediculously hot. 44, I reckon... HOT!!!
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Sztricskooooooos
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Camel Jockies
I hope you took some great pictures...the whole desert trip really sounds incredible. Sleeping under the stars in some desert with no one else around for miles seems so amazing...so primitive. It sounds like some of the people you have meet are really nice and actually want to be of service. Look forward to the next update.