We rode the train from Jodhpur to find a startlingly clean, small railway station at the end of the rail line in the desert town of Jaisalmer. Our pre-arranged driver from the hotel picked us up around 5 AM, and we rode down the sleepy street to our hotel on the edge of town. This town seemed a little different than the others – the road median had these stone pillars set out in an artistic, modern feel that was reminiscent of something you might find along a posh outdoor mall in Scottsdale. The fact that it was lit up by a near-full moon added to the glamour. We arrived at our hotel and were able to go immediately to our rooms and take a nap (for free! Don’t you wish more hotels offered that kind of service?). In the morning, we had breakfast on the rooftop and looked out over the desert town, and could see the old fort about 5 km away. This was Amy's final Lord of the Rings exclamation of the trip, "Helms Deep!". It was a massive stone fortress rising up out of a lone mesa, dwarfing everything else around it. Spreading out around the fort was the city of Jaisalmer, with nearly every building made of cut sandstone. The sand-colored buildings and low hills, combined with the wide blue sky, made us think of New Mexico, and we suddenly felt very much at home.
This being our last stop in India before returning to Delhi and catching our flight home, you’d think that we would have clamored to pack in as much adventure and sight-seeing as we could. At least, that’s what Rob was thinking before we arrived. But the fact that we had now been running ragged for nearly two weeks straight, combined with the desert feeling of home, made us decide to take it easy on this last stop. Besides, there were exactly two things to do in Jaisalmer: go on a camel safari and visit the fort.
We joined up with four Spaniards who were also staying at our hotel to go on the overnight camel safari. The driver from the hotel loaded all of us into his jeep, then took us to see a set of royal tombs of former Jaisalmer Maharajahs and their family members. Since they all cremated their loved ones, the tombs were actually cenotaphs (false graves) set up in memory of the dead. After that, we drove out of town for about an hour towards the Pakistan border. It was remarkable how similar the terrain was to New Mexico. And if our companions didn’t have that crazy Castilian lisp when they spoke Spanish, we could have sworn that we were in a version of New Mexico that had camels. We finally pulled off to the side of the road, where several camels and their caretakers were sitting. As soon as we started climbing out of the jeep, people were pulling at us to go hop on their camel, and Rob got totally confused. He wasn’t sure if these were the correct camels for the safari, so he resisted getting onto a camel. It was like we were being jostled around by a bunch of taxi drivers trying to get us into their vehicles, which should not have been necessary if we had a pre-arranged safari. But apparently they had the same instincts as taxi drivers, and they pulled us by the arms over to their camels, each of us hopping onto a camel saddle with the caretakers taking position alongside, reigns in hand. We leaned waaay back, and then the camel popped up hind-legs first, so we went from nearly horizontal to nearly vertical in half a second, then the front legs stood up and we had to pull ourselves back to sitting upright. The safari had begun! Now camel saddles are about as comfortable as a wooden box covered in a sheet, which is pretty much what they are. But at least you also get a big wooden handle to hold onto so you don’t fall off. And camels have this gait that forces your body to do this kind of forward-backward wave: your hips get pulled forward and your upper body tries to catch up, then your hips slow down and your upper body shoots past them. Once you settle into the groove, it’s actually kind of mesmerizing. But then your butt bones start hurting, and it’s time to take a break. So after an hour of sauntering through the desert, watching the camels of front of each us of fart and poop, we took a little break. We hopped off our big stinky friends and wandered over to a dune to take some pictures. Amy’s camel was apparently pretty exhausted by its burden, as it completely rolled onto its side and kicked its legs out to take a power nap. Amy and I went over to a little bush for a pee break, and two of the little boys who were leading camels kind of wandered over to get a good vantage point to watch Amy pee. However, she had her handy P-style with her, so she just turned her back to them and discreetly took care of business standing up. Of course, you have to give the P-style a little flick to get the dribble off the end of it. From the back, it looks like what a guy would do after he’s done peeing, so imagine the confusion of these boys as they debated whether or not she had some extra plumbing…
After another hour of riding, we came to the edge of the sand dunes and found our driver setting up some cots and a table for dinner. This was the end of the camel ride, and although we were expecting it to last quite a bit longer, our butt bones were thankful to be done with it. Dinner was simple but good, and we sat around the table as night fell, talking to our Spanish companions and the hotel driver. As the full moon came up, we started telling ghost stories (our contribution was the local New Mexico favorite of La Llorona) and talked about our impressions of India. The four Spaniards only had two weeks in India, and they were a bit freaked out by the whole thing. Understandable. It took us about a month to feel comfortable, and the first two weeks were definitely the roughest in terms of adjusting to everything; we could only imagine how crazy it would be to not have a local help you out with gently easing into life in India. We fell asleep on cots in the open desert, 30 km from Pakistan and under the bright full moon.
In the morning, we awoke to find an air-conditioned tour bus parked about 50 yards away from our camp. Seriously? There was an endless desert and they had to pull up right next to us? Right next to the tent toilet, too. Our camp watched as people piled out of the bus, then another bus pulled up next to it, and a small cargo truck. We quickly noticed that these were not tourists, though. There were three guys dressed in these Desperado-style cowboy costumes, a dozen or so girls in these police/cheerleader uniforms, and another half dozen dudes in black-and-white-striped prisoner uniforms. Then some guys pulled a boom out of the cargo truck and started attaching audio and video equipment to it, at which point we realized they were shooting some kind of video. So we all followed them up onto the dunes and watched these girls start line-dancing behind one of the Desperado guys, in sync with a Bollywood song! We watched, jaws dropped, as they shot a Bollywood music video right in front of our eyes. They had the classic formula: lots of fair-skinned foreign women in skimpy outfits dancing with a dashingly handsome Indian guy, with cheesy pop music blaring loudly. It was awesome. We watched for about half an hour as the women (who were obviously tourists that had no idea what they had signed up for) tried and failed to get the dance moves down before we hopped in the jeep and drove back to the hotel.
The rest of our time in Jaisalmer was spent exploring Jaisalmer Fort. We got some sweet pictures of the Fort and its bat inhabitants, but by this point, we had seen so many amazing stone structures that some of the awe was lost on us. We decided to spend half a day napping, then woke up the next day and spent our morning checking out the Jain temples inside the Fort. The Jain temple complex is a stunning set of intricately carved walls, columns, and doorways connecting seven temples in a close neighborhood. There were thousands of religious icons scattered throughout the seven temples, all of them variations on the marble shirtless dude sitting in a meditative pose. An overly helpful tour guide that we didn’t hire (but he followed us around anyways) explained that there were a series of Jain prophets/gods/teachers (it wasn’t really clear) that have appeared over the years, and the variations on the statues represent the different teachers. If you didn’t know ahead of time, you’d think they were all Buddha statues, but a quick way to tell the difference is that the Jain icons are never wearing a shirt, whereas Buddha always has robes on. At least, that’s what we found. Interestingly, there is actually a lot of similarity between the two religions in their respect for living beings, with Jains having a somewhat more restrictive diet and moral code. Although Jains represent a small minority in India, many restaurants cater to their super-vegetarian diet. They won’t eat anything that grows underground (potatoes, garlic, onions, etc.) because in order to harvest these crops, animals that live underground will inevitably be killed in the process. There’s way more to Jainism than its strict moral code, but we never got a chance to talk to a Jain about it, so that’s kind of the main thing we learned.
On our train ride out of Jaisalmer back to Gurgaon, we met a Chinese couple who had been touring India for a couple of weeks and were not impressed with the relatively narrow food choices available. In China, they said, you can get anything. In fact, the cities have no animals in them because they all get eaten. Birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians... everything. If it moves, it gets eaten. With that kind of selection, it makes sense why someone would be disappointed in the variety of Indian foods!
When we finally arrived at Janis' house, we received an odd text message from our travel agent: "Found your iPod at the hotel. They can send it to Janis via courier." We were a little confused by this, as we had our iPod in our backpack. We thought. Upon checking, we realized we didn't have our bag of electronics, so we were missing the iPod, a camera battery, battery charger, some cables, and the camera memory card that had pictures from Bangalore all the way up until Rob changed the cards out in Amritsar. So everything except the last two weeks was missing. After panicking for a few hours, and several phone calls later, we found out that they found the iPod at the hotel after we had left, but there was no trace of anything else. They even checked the garbage for us, in case our electronics bag somehow ended up in the trash can. But all to no avail. Our memory card and pictures were lost forever, probably on the train ride back to Gurgaon somehow. It was a sad way to lose the pictures, but we were heartened by the fact that the hotel alerted us to our missing iPod. They ended up sending it to our travel agent in Delhi by way of another pair of American travelers (because the mail system is so untrustworthy), and we arranged to have Janis mail it to us in the U.S. when she flies back the States for Christmas (again, because international mail has a decreased chance of making it to its destination when the contents have anything of value). Ah, the joys of traveling!
This being our last stop in India before returning to Delhi and catching our flight home, you’d think that we would have clamored to pack in as much adventure and sight-seeing as we could. At least, that’s what Rob was thinking before we arrived. But the fact that we had now been running ragged for nearly two weeks straight, combined with the desert feeling of home, made us decide to take it easy on this last stop. Besides, there were exactly two things to do in Jaisalmer: go on a camel safari and visit the fort.
We joined up with four Spaniards who were also staying at our hotel to go on the overnight camel safari. The driver from the hotel loaded all of us into his jeep, then took us to see a set of royal tombs of former Jaisalmer Maharajahs and their family members. Since they all cremated their loved ones, the tombs were actually cenotaphs (false graves) set up in memory of the dead. After that, we drove out of town for about an hour towards the Pakistan border. It was remarkable how similar the terrain was to New Mexico. And if our companions didn’t have that crazy Castilian lisp when they spoke Spanish, we could have sworn that we were in a version of New Mexico that had camels. We finally pulled off to the side of the road, where several camels and their caretakers were sitting. As soon as we started climbing out of the jeep, people were pulling at us to go hop on their camel, and Rob got totally confused. He wasn’t sure if these were the correct camels for the safari, so he resisted getting onto a camel. It was like we were being jostled around by a bunch of taxi drivers trying to get us into their vehicles, which should not have been necessary if we had a pre-arranged safari. But apparently they had the same instincts as taxi drivers, and they pulled us by the arms over to their camels, each of us hopping onto a camel saddle with the caretakers taking position alongside, reigns in hand. We leaned waaay back, and then the camel popped up hind-legs first, so we went from nearly horizontal to nearly vertical in half a second, then the front legs stood up and we had to pull ourselves back to sitting upright. The safari had begun! Now camel saddles are about as comfortable as a wooden box covered in a sheet, which is pretty much what they are. But at least you also get a big wooden handle to hold onto so you don’t fall off. And camels have this gait that forces your body to do this kind of forward-backward wave: your hips get pulled forward and your upper body tries to catch up, then your hips slow down and your upper body shoots past them. Once you settle into the groove, it’s actually kind of mesmerizing. But then your butt bones start hurting, and it’s time to take a break. So after an hour of sauntering through the desert, watching the camels of front of each us of fart and poop, we took a little break. We hopped off our big stinky friends and wandered over to a dune to take some pictures. Amy’s camel was apparently pretty exhausted by its burden, as it completely rolled onto its side and kicked its legs out to take a power nap. Amy and I went over to a little bush for a pee break, and two of the little boys who were leading camels kind of wandered over to get a good vantage point to watch Amy pee. However, she had her handy P-style with her, so she just turned her back to them and discreetly took care of business standing up. Of course, you have to give the P-style a little flick to get the dribble off the end of it. From the back, it looks like what a guy would do after he’s done peeing, so imagine the confusion of these boys as they debated whether or not she had some extra plumbing…
After another hour of riding, we came to the edge of the sand dunes and found our driver setting up some cots and a table for dinner. This was the end of the camel ride, and although we were expecting it to last quite a bit longer, our butt bones were thankful to be done with it. Dinner was simple but good, and we sat around the table as night fell, talking to our Spanish companions and the hotel driver. As the full moon came up, we started telling ghost stories (our contribution was the local New Mexico favorite of La Llorona) and talked about our impressions of India. The four Spaniards only had two weeks in India, and they were a bit freaked out by the whole thing. Understandable. It took us about a month to feel comfortable, and the first two weeks were definitely the roughest in terms of adjusting to everything; we could only imagine how crazy it would be to not have a local help you out with gently easing into life in India. We fell asleep on cots in the open desert, 30 km from Pakistan and under the bright full moon.
In the morning, we awoke to find an air-conditioned tour bus parked about 50 yards away from our camp. Seriously? There was an endless desert and they had to pull up right next to us? Right next to the tent toilet, too. Our camp watched as people piled out of the bus, then another bus pulled up next to it, and a small cargo truck. We quickly noticed that these were not tourists, though. There were three guys dressed in these Desperado-style cowboy costumes, a dozen or so girls in these police/cheerleader uniforms, and another half dozen dudes in black-and-white-striped prisoner uniforms. Then some guys pulled a boom out of the cargo truck and started attaching audio and video equipment to it, at which point we realized they were shooting some kind of video. So we all followed them up onto the dunes and watched these girls start line-dancing behind one of the Desperado guys, in sync with a Bollywood song! We watched, jaws dropped, as they shot a Bollywood music video right in front of our eyes. They had the classic formula: lots of fair-skinned foreign women in skimpy outfits dancing with a dashingly handsome Indian guy, with cheesy pop music blaring loudly. It was awesome. We watched for about half an hour as the women (who were obviously tourists that had no idea what they had signed up for) tried and failed to get the dance moves down before we hopped in the jeep and drove back to the hotel.
The rest of our time in Jaisalmer was spent exploring Jaisalmer Fort. We got some sweet pictures of the Fort and its bat inhabitants, but by this point, we had seen so many amazing stone structures that some of the awe was lost on us. We decided to spend half a day napping, then woke up the next day and spent our morning checking out the Jain temples inside the Fort. The Jain temple complex is a stunning set of intricately carved walls, columns, and doorways connecting seven temples in a close neighborhood. There were thousands of religious icons scattered throughout the seven temples, all of them variations on the marble shirtless dude sitting in a meditative pose. An overly helpful tour guide that we didn’t hire (but he followed us around anyways) explained that there were a series of Jain prophets/gods/teachers (it wasn’t really clear) that have appeared over the years, and the variations on the statues represent the different teachers. If you didn’t know ahead of time, you’d think they were all Buddha statues, but a quick way to tell the difference is that the Jain icons are never wearing a shirt, whereas Buddha always has robes on. At least, that’s what we found. Interestingly, there is actually a lot of similarity between the two religions in their respect for living beings, with Jains having a somewhat more restrictive diet and moral code. Although Jains represent a small minority in India, many restaurants cater to their super-vegetarian diet. They won’t eat anything that grows underground (potatoes, garlic, onions, etc.) because in order to harvest these crops, animals that live underground will inevitably be killed in the process. There’s way more to Jainism than its strict moral code, but we never got a chance to talk to a Jain about it, so that’s kind of the main thing we learned.
On our train ride out of Jaisalmer back to Gurgaon, we met a Chinese couple who had been touring India for a couple of weeks and were not impressed with the relatively narrow food choices available. In China, they said, you can get anything. In fact, the cities have no animals in them because they all get eaten. Birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians... everything. If it moves, it gets eaten. With that kind of selection, it makes sense why someone would be disappointed in the variety of Indian foods!
When we finally arrived at Janis' house, we received an odd text message from our travel agent: "Found your iPod at the hotel. They can send it to Janis via courier." We were a little confused by this, as we had our iPod in our backpack. We thought. Upon checking, we realized we didn't have our bag of electronics, so we were missing the iPod, a camera battery, battery charger, some cables, and the camera memory card that had pictures from Bangalore all the way up until Rob changed the cards out in Amritsar. So everything except the last two weeks was missing. After panicking for a few hours, and several phone calls later, we found out that they found the iPod at the hotel after we had left, but there was no trace of anything else. They even checked the garbage for us, in case our electronics bag somehow ended up in the trash can. But all to no avail. Our memory card and pictures were lost forever, probably on the train ride back to Gurgaon somehow. It was a sad way to lose the pictures, but we were heartened by the fact that the hotel alerted us to our missing iPod. They ended up sending it to our travel agent in Delhi by way of another pair of American travelers (because the mail system is so untrustworthy), and we arranged to have Janis mail it to us in the U.S. when she flies back the States for Christmas (again, because international mail has a decreased chance of making it to its destination when the contents have anything of value). Ah, the joys of traveling!
