The Wet Desert and Other Adventures

Indian travel experiences begin long before you've reached your destination. My quirky weekend trip to Jaisalmer was of course, no exception. To get to Jaisalmer from Jaipur, one's only option is a 12+ hour train ride. My travel companion, Jennie pointed out that we were taking two 12 hour trains to spend 28 hours in the destination, something we both found amusing, but not unusual. Acquiring tickets for our train had gone remarkably smoothly, none of the typical gambling to buy a wait-listed train seat or fighting with a huge family over a place to sleep. Our train arrived to Jaipur exactly one hour late and we boarded around 12:30 AM when most passengers had already gone to sleep. We tried to quietly find our berths and go straight to sleep, but still didn't manage to escape the whispers of a curious near-by passenger: "Namaste, Where are you from? Where are you going? Oh, Jaisalmer--long way. Are you sisters or just friends?"When we arrived in the morning it became obvious that we were had not been the only videshis (foreigners) on the train. Out poured a wave of hippy Western tourists into the sea of hotel hustlers. As Jaisalmer is a relatively touristy place with only one or two trains arriving every day, the hotels send their representatives right to the train station to fight over the under-slept visitors coming in. We arrived to our hotel, The Shahi Palace (we had decided to splurge on one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in India--about $40 USD per night) in a jeep filled with train station pick-ups and were herded upstairs to the restaurant like cattle at the hotel-wallah's insistence, "You all take tea here then we check in. Theek hai?"

Tea consumed, the man showed us to our room, a beautiful sandstone-walled, antique-furnitured, air-conditioned haven. "This room is ok?" he asked. The way we signified our agreement gave away who we were. "I think you have been in India a long time. I can tell by your heads. You are students in India?" Again we bobbled our heads side to side, this time with a knowing laugh. When he left the room he mentioned that the sunset camel safari tour began at 4:30 if we were interested. We were.

Jaisalmer looks like no other place I've ever been to in India. It is called the "Golden City" because every building is made from dramatic, yellow sandstone. All the tour-books describe it as a "beautiful mirage rising up from the sandy desert," which is really cheesy...but it's true. Jaisalmer is pretty much the last stop before the huge expanse of desert that separates India from Pakistan. The tiny city surrounds the huge, 12th century sandstone fort. This fort, unlike the hundreds of other forts in India is not in ruins, rather, it is still very active with most of the city's residents living or working within the fort walls. Only part of the fort is really open to visitors since the rest is still residential. This means that walking around and taking in the sights is the main activity for the many tourists to Jaisalmer...that, and going on camel rides.

Jennie and I assumed that we would be going on our camel outing with other guests from the hotel, but arrived to find it would be only us and Anu, our jeep-driver. We loaded into the jeep then sped at 60mph off into the Thar desert. Our first stop was a desert village where we got out of the jeep for just enough time to be bombarded by the local children yelling "Hello!!" Back in the jeep to the sounds of Anu's loud Bollywood music we drove several more kilometers to another small village where a few men and two camels sat waiting. Our driver sat for a cigarette and a long chat with the men there while Jennie and I stood awkwardly awaiting further instruction. Finally, two boys (maybe ages 12 and 17 or so) called us over to the two camels. We awkwardly climbed on then, like a children's pony ride, we sat as the boys pulled the camels along by ropes, slowly walking in front of us toward the suspiciously lush, green desert. "My, what dark clouds those are..." I thought.Not ten minutes atop the camels we began to feel raindrops. And soon raindrops became monsoon rain. And soon Jennie and I requested to end our camel ride (scheduled to be an hour long) early. We dismounted, said goodbye to the camels (mine was named Papaya!) and ran, soaking wet, back to the jeep where Anu had switched the music from Bollywood to torturous 90's pop with the Aqua song, "Barbie Girl" on repeat. A far cry from my imagined camel riding experience music.By the time the rain had slowed down a little we had arrived by jeep (instead of by camel) to the massive desert sand dunes near by. We got out to look for a few minutes, but then Anu nervously requested we go back to the car because "Very much water is coming." Evidently rain water doesn't really absorb into the desert very well so when we looked back to the vehicle, we saw a huge monsoon-made river materialize from nowhere and rush towards it. In some daring driving maneuvers the jeep was reversed without sinking into the now raging current.

Anu was disappointed. Our camel ride was cut short. Our jeep almost drowned in the desert. There was no chance of seeing the desert sunset we had been promised through these thick clouds. "Please, let me take you to my home. Take some tea," he insisted. We arrived at yet another mud house in a remote desert village. Outside, Anu's two precocious children and a stubborn goat. Inside, his smirking wife. We sat down and tea was forced upon us. It was the best chai I have ever tasted.

By the second day the clouds had cleared way for the scorching desert heat that I had been expecting. Jennie and I headed to the fort. In the part of the fort that you can visit there is a typically beautiful display of artifacts, architecture, art, etc., but my favorite part was the tiny bats hanging from the ceiling in some of the darker rooms.

The fort is more than just the palace, it is an entire medieval city perfectly preserved, and still in use within the huge walls. Many little medieval houses have been turned into tourist-friendly businesses, so there were several options for eating within the fort walls when it came time for lunch. We picked a strange-looking little place advertising its own Australianness. Approaching the restaurant a disembodied voice with a thick, Hindi accent yelled to us, "Get inside girls! It's bloody hot out there!" Sitting down inside it became obvious, that it was not an Australian-owned restaurant in India, but an Indian restaurant owned by an Indian man who had spent some time in Australia. He appeared at our table in nothing but revealing white shorts, proudly bearing his enormous beer-belly and carpet of greying chest hair. His time in Australia had done nothing to improve his English, but he had incorporated all of the Aussie slang. "Christ, its bloody hot. The woman will take your order." The woman, it turned out was his wife, the first woman I have ever seen working in a restaurant in India. She appeared at our table, demanded we order the mango juice then stayed at least another 15 or 20 minutes to tell us her entire life story. She was from Mumbai, she had a degree in Economics, she had had an arranged marriage to this man from Jaisalmer with an un-educated family and here she was 20 years later running his restaurant and living among "these un-educated Jaisalmer people." Jennie and I tried to be polite with statements like "Yeah, Mumbai and Jaisalmer are very different, it must be a strange adjustment." "It's shit!" she responded. Her English, slang and everything else, was perfect. The two of them kept coming back and forth to our table referring to both of us as "Miss America" to add little bits of information about their lives and occasionally to serve us. "How's the bloody food, Miss America?"

By mid-afternoon, we needed to return to the train station. Our bickering, surrogate Indian parents from the "Australian" restaurant had insisted on packing us dinner to bring on the long journey back to Jaipur. On the train we were surrounded by a group of Indian men who all sat talking and joking with each other as Jennie and I both read quietly. It wasn't until a few hours into the train ride that they discovered that we both understood Hindi, much to their shock and subsequent embarrassment. Our occasional use of Hindi words and phrases was enough to entertain most of our train-car for the remainder of the 12 hour trip back to Jaipur.