Jaisalmer Part 2

The next morning I wasn’t woken up by an alarm or loud guests, but rather the roasting heat of the desert sun. Rolling over in bed, I was a bit surprised at how sore I was from riding the motorbike all over the dry desert the day before. I guess I’m still getting used to the new frail, more flimsy self that I am from the sickness and lack of meat available here in India. A good stretch helped the situation and off I went to check out the Golden Fort of Jaisalmer, which was actually only a five minute walk from where I was staying.

At one time this fort was home to Kings, Queens and their subjects, but now the Golden Fort is home to a few guesthouses and many shops. Of course the palace and holy temple were preserved, but now this fort has over three thousand people residing in it! It is called the “Golden Fort” for good reason. The entire fort is built out of this stone/clay mixture that gives it a golden look to it. Also, anyone that owns property in the fort, or owns a shop, must keep up with the “golden look” by painting any non-gold color object on the exterior of their place a golden color.

Quite an interesting day I had walking around the narrow cobblestone streets of the fort. Of course I took many breaks in the shade to chug water and wipe the sweat off my brow. I would usually join a local trying to escape the heat as well and we would chat about how hot it was and how we wished it were cooler. [You have to keep conversations pretty basic with the language barrier and all, otherwise you’ll just have people smiling and nodding blankly at you. Oh, and sarcasm and jokes are completely out of the question. Jokes are the hardest to tell to a foreign crowd. The attempt is actually pretty funny in itself. So, I pretty much stick to the weather, what’s your name, that sort of stuff.]

Deciding that I had seen an efficient amount of what I needed to see, and sweated way more than I needed to sweat, I began heading back to my guesthouse for another cold shower. That night, I went to sleep thinking about how the next day I was going to be joined by Kelli and Ryan and how we were going to be heading out into the desert on camels.

The next morning I was woken up by the sounds of Kelli and Ryan shouting my name, trying to find which room I was in. Opening the door a bit groggy and tired, I was overjoyed to see them and we immediately began swapping stories about what had happened that one late night on the train and how we had gotten separated. We then proceeded to their guesthouse, which was a popular one for booking great camel safaris. Getting all signed up, we headed out by jeep about an hour into the desert, bringing only the essentials that we needed. The jeep stopped at a small village, where we met our camel safari leader Lucky and our three camels we would be riding for the next three days. Lucky was about five feet tall, as many Indian men are quite small, do to their diet and lack of exercise. If you hadn’t seen the scruff on his face, you would think he was just a boy. Meeting him for the first time was a bit interesting as he seemed to be a bit drunk. It’s because he was! He didn’t even hide it was he shared with us how he had fermented a bottle of orange juice and had drunken most of it before we arrived. It was 9:45am, by the way, as if there was actually an inappropriate time to drink in India. I didn’t even know that it was possible to ferment orange juice, but then again, I’ve seen more interesting ways to get drunk here in India than anywhere else in the world. They’ll ferment just about anything and drink it. 

Lucky’s  apprentice, Raj, was just a 15 year old boy that seemed to be at that age where he thought he knew just about everything there was to know about anything there was to know about. We all go through that young silly, silly stage in life, even in the middle of the Thar desert in India I suppose. He did have quite a bit of knowledge about camels and safaris and all; you could just tell that he wasn’t quite far along enough to be able to lead his own safari yet. For many apprentices, it is part of the job to learn languages. Lucky spoke many, many languages. It seemed as though he knew enough to get by with just about any guest that he took aboard his camels. His apprentice wasn’t as competent in his diversity in languages, another reason he wasn’t quite ready to lead safaris.

By 10:30am we had four camels packed with our food, blankets and the rest of our supplies needed for the next three days out in the desert. With each of us sitting on our camels, with them sitting down, we were eager to begin. Without any instruction, or direction on how ride a camel, Lucky gave a quick command, sending all of the camels into a chorus of moans and groans as they began lunging dramatically forward, then backwards, and then finally evening out. Nearly falling off from the lunge forward, I noticed my knuckles were white from gripping the saddle so hard. We were all laughing pretty hard though at the sounds of the camels. It was like a Star Wars Chubaca call mixed with the belch of very large man. It was very unique and very entertaining. Camels may actually be one of the most entertaining animals I have ever come across ever. They have so much attitude and are so rude with their flatulence that you can’t help but laugh, unless your mouth is open. That’s just not cool.

Also, we were really high. I didn’t realize how tall camels were until I was sitting on top of one. My butt was a good eight feet off the ground. I felt good, as we began our safari, atop this large animal, heading out into the middle of nowhere.  It was a bit hard for Ryan and I, for male reasons, to find a comfortable position with the awkward movement of the camel. It isn’t the same movement as a horse, or maybe it is and I just don’t ride horses often, but it seemed less comfortable.  Then, Lucky, in his cheerfully inebriated state,  thought it would be fun to run the camels, which sent us into the most uncontrollable, painful laughter I have ever experienced. It hurt, but it was funny, because I was laughing at the moaning sounds of the camels, then the painful sounds Ryan was making, and then at Lucky as he bounced along with Raj sitting right behind him. Lucky thought it was all just at hoot as he then wanted to race the camels, rope in one hand, fermented orange juice in the other. Thank God we came to a stop at a nearby village. That was the most painful fun I had had in a long time.

It was great to see how people lived out in the middle of the desert. Everything is really simple, everyone has their tasks and jobs to do and if you don’t do them, then you die. If you don’t go and collect water from the well, you die. If you don’t plant the seeds for next season, you die. Now I’m sure they wouldn’t let anyone die if little Indian Timmy forgot to feed the camels, but you get the point; it’s the desert, and the desert is very harsh and unforgiving.

All of the homes were made out of mud, which left them nice and cool on the inside. It was incredible the temperature difference from the sun outside and the shade inside the mud huts. We came across a small family that welcomed us in and talked to us a bit. They offered us watermelon oddly enough, but it turns out that watermelon grows like weeds out in the desert. They soak up all of the water during the typhoon season, and are able to grow as big as basketballs out there in the desert. We were shocked as we later saw miles of vines and watermelons growing in the blazing heat. We spoke with two very old ladies with interesting features. It was all basic conversation, but it was fascinating to interact with them, not because the conversation was extraordinary, but because their appearances were. Their skin was like leather, beaten and worn from the sun. Their eyes, also sun damaged and light. Their faces, without saying a word, told the most interesting story of a unique life in a most unforgiving geography. These ladies knew only what they had to about living in the desert. I couldn’t imagine they had been too many other places in their lives other than these barren lands.

The women are the strong ones in the family. Aside from essentially being single mothers out in the desert, due to the fact that their husbands work in the cities and send money home, they also have a very unique skill that is critical to their survival. They have the ability to carry gallons and gallons of water. They don’t just carry the water; they carry it on their heads, stacked in metal containers that hold about two liters, and sometimes piled ten containers high! It was quite the sight to see these brave women balance the water.

After watching the camels drink out of a troth, which is actually quite impressive the amount they consume, well needed of course, we headed on towards the dunes that lie ahead. We had gone a good distance already, but had much further to go. We had taken a rest for lunch around 2pm under a giant desert tree that provided a great deal of needed shade. Ryan and I got a little nap in, while Lucky and Raj collected firewood, and made lunch. You could always count on chai tea no matter where you are in India. There is always a chaiwalla that has piping hot tea ready and every young boy must know how to make tea. Every single one; it’s like learning how to pour a bowl of cereal for them. Even in the desert, we always started each meal with a tea and then ate whatever it was we were having. It is weird that whenever we stopped for a meal, Lucky and Raj tied each of the camel’s front legs together so that it could only take only these tiny steps. It was quite funny because it made them looked like they were wearing high heels on their front pads with the way they stepped. After their legs were tied, they just let them go. Sometimes it would take forever to find them, but I guess the camels needed the space and chance to find different food. So after finding our camels, bellies full, we pressed on. The sun began casting long shadows now that made everything look much larger and remarkable. Finally we had come to the dunes where we were going to sleep that night.

The sand in the desert is much different than that you would find at the beach. This sand is almost powdery soft and sinks in deep when you step on it. Doing a little exploring during sunset, I could see the squiggly lines left from high winds, pushing the sand across the dunes, erasing any trace of what may have stepped foot there hours prior. The dunes were unpredictable with not one of them being alike. Some would be long and rolling, others would have sudden drop offs. One thing remained pretty consistent however. There were these black bugs about the size of your thumb that scurried all about the dunes. They were harmless however quite annoying when their little feet would grab onto you and try to scale your pant leg or arm. More alarming than anything really.

 As the sun was now diminishing beyond the dunes, we watched as it turned the sky colors and made for amazing pictures of the desert landscape. Darker and darker it got. Raj had gone to tend to the camels but hadn’t come back for quite some time. We just figured he was staying with the camels for a bit just to make sure they would be alright for the night, but then Lucky became anxious. All of the sudden we were rummaging for flashlights and going out on a search party for Raj. It took half an hour to find him in the dark. When we finally did find him he was just wandering across the dunes in the wrong direction When we asked him what had happened, he said he was tending to the camels and walking with them for a bit, and then before he knew it he had gotten turned around and didn’t know which way was which. The dunes are a mysterious place, and during the night they become even more arcane as they seem to shift shapes right before you. Quite a bizarre place really.

Making it back to camp with a nice fire to keep us warm and to give us light, we ate dinner and talked about the day. Now pitch black all around, I decided to let my eyes adjust so I could experience the desert in the dark. Immediately my pupils opened wide, allowing me to see thousands of stars in the sky. The Milky Way shone bright and was more defined than I had ever seen it. Deciding to retire for the night I laid there on top of some blankets on the sand dunes and watched the heavens above me. Satellites slowly crawled across the sea of darkness on their perfectly straight projector as if they were on a spark, buzzing across a telephone wire. Shooting stars burned through the earth’s atmosphere and left trails of their gasses. Sometimes I would blink, and only know a shooting star had gone by, by its conspicuous trail it left behind. As I rolled over on my side, I then watched for the first time a familiar constellation rise into view one star at a time.  I could see Orion’s belt one star at a time come into view like a curtain slowly revealing a performer, and then with the rest of it coming into sight, it formed the Big Dipper.  It began to get very late, and as my eyes fought to stay open to watch the incredible stage of lights perform before me, I could hear only the sound of the desert breeze pushing the sand across the dunes and nothing else.

The next morning we were woken up by the hot sun that was beginning to cook us in the sun. We were immediately met with some chai tea that Raj had prepared, and began eating a breakfast of toast, biscuits and jam to get us through the morning. Before we knew it we were mounting the camels and with a bunch of groans and grovels from our noisy chariots, we were off, heading even deeper into the Thar Desert. This morning brought sights of all sorts of interesting desert animals. We saw the desert fox, mischievous and sly as it moved about the small brush as if it had known it was a little trouble maker. We saw wild deer skipping along, always on the run from something. Probably the scent of us as our camels continued to pass gas. By far the most breathtaking desert creature we saw were the incredibly brilliant brown eagles that soared through the sky with ease as they surfed the warm updrafts that had them gliding effortlessly through the sky. Coming over a small dune we truly got to see just how large this bird was as we caught it off guard perched on the bones of a large animal. At moment’s notice of us, its piercing eyes gave us one look and then with its mammoth seven+ foot wingspan opening up, it gave one large, downward thrust of its wings and began taking off. Another downward swoosh of its enormous wing span kicked up sand and twigs, sending the iconic bird even higher up.  Before we knew it, this large bird of prey was just another silhouette in the blinding sun above us.

Stopping for lunch right around noon, we oddly heard a phone ring. Somehow Lucky got cell phone service out in the middle of the desert. We sort of laughed and gave a “Can you hear me now?” joke and didn’t think much of it, but when Lucky got off the phone he looked as if a family member had died. He was bewildered and shock in his eyes. We quickly asked what was wrong. He looked at Raj and said something in Hindi. Raj got up and went over to put a hand on his shoulder. “Lucky are you okay”, we all said in almost unison. Lucky looked at us and then back at the ground and said, “He’s gone”. We had thought his father or brother or close friend had died, but just as important to him we found out that the only camel he owned had died. The one we were riding were owned by his uncle, and Lucky had just gotten a cut of what was paid for the safari, but the one camel he did own had died during the night, and getting another camel would mean years of safaris to afford another one. Trying to be sensitive on the subject, we said how sorry we were and that there would be more camels, but we would later find out just how hard it is for a young man to come about owning a camel. For Lucky, that camel meant everything to him. It was his ticket to earning money, transporting goods, water, supplies to his family. It was his support base for a marriage that now had to be postponed. It was more than just a fun ride, like we had seen it. It was his livelihood. I guess what had happened was that his camel had gotten sick, and like most animals, people, or things that get sick in India; they don’t last very long due to the lack of money to take care of the sickness, or just plain unavailability of treatment.

Needless to say, the rest of the day was a bit glum due to the news, but Lucky being the fun loving guy that he is did his best to make light of the situation and still have a good time with us. That night after dinner, Lucky had us each sing a song that we had learned growing up. Mine was some Chumbawumba song my sister Judy had played for about a month straight that is literally burnt into my brain to this day. Kelli and Ryan also sang songs from top hits of bands they like when they were younger. Lucky however sang a song that his grandpa used to sing to him when he was a boy. It was beautiful to say the least. It had so much character and meaning to it, and I didn’t even know what the words meant. I could just tell that it had importance and history behind it.

That night as I laid on the sand dunes, I thought about culture, and how unintentionally I had learned so much about Indian culture out here in the desert. It was fascinating and heartbreaking all at the same time. These people in India are so happy, yet they have nothing; and if they do have something, in a moment’s notice, it can be taken away from them, reducing their wealth, status and even ability to be able to marry the one they love.

The next day after breakfast, we began heading back to a village where the jeep could pick us up. Upon our arrival we thanked Lucky and Raj and gave our goodbye’s as we parted ways. As the jeep putted off across the desert, back to Jaisalmer I began to think about how another adventure had gone by and how now I would go back and start planning for my next adventure in Goa. I then began to think about Lucky. What was he going to do? How was he going to afford another camel? Would he still try and marry the girl he loved? Such different lives we live. I have so much to be thankful for. This camel safari turned out to be a bit of a culture shock for me as I realized just how much a single camel could affect a person’s life.