Planes, Trains and Automobiles (and Camels!)

Turns out we didn't go straight to Jaisalmer after Jodhpur. No no, we spent one night in the midde of the desert for a camel safari. You would think since I'm such a planner it would drive me crazy not to know where we are going, what we are doing and when. But actually it's been nice, and it's helped me relax a little and not have to know all the time what exactly the plan is.

We drove to Khuri which is literally in the middle of nowhere in the desert. We pulled up to our "resort" which consisted of 6 cow dung and mud huts with straw roofs. Yeah, totally took us by surprise. We were offered a hut to rest in but it was about 110 degrees, not ideal resting weather. So we just sat there and sweated for about an hour until we could begin our sunset camel safari. We each got our own camel, mine was named Ziya I think, and our camel drivers were 2 boys around 15 years old. We rode the camels out to some sand dunes which took about an hour and half. That was an hour too long to be on a camel. Wow it hurts. I can't imagine how some people do weeklong camel safaris...they must walk bow-legged for days afterwards.

We dismounted on the sand dunes and waited for the sun to set. I swear it didn't move any closer to the horizon the whole hour we waited for it to set. Eventually it was covered by clouds and smog so we gave up and got back on the camels. On the way back to the "resort" the boys made the camels trot. Which was even more uncomfortable than them walking, but at least it got us back faster. All in all though the camel safari was a good experience. Sarah gave some gum to local children (who then asked if she had chocolate. Yeah right, in this heat???) and some other boys sang us a song with our names in it while we waited for the sunset. There was even someone selling beer up on the sand dunes out of a bag. There is no way that beer was cold.

Back at the "resort" we had dinner sitting on pillows and eating off tiny low to the ground tables. There was some live music and good food. We had the option to sleep out on the sand dunes under the stars or in a fan-cooled room with a roof so we chose the room. Good thing we did because even though the room was like a hot box I heard that sleeping on the dunes was none too pleasant either. And at least our room had a door to keep the GIANT dung beetles out.

We got the heck out of the desert early the next morning and drove an hour to Jaisalmer where we checked into our hotel, got massages to relieve the soreness from the camel rides and took long cold showers. Nice. Jaisalmer looks like a real-life sandcastle, its a pretty cool town. There is a huge fort up on a giant sand hill that overlooks the rest of the city. Not sure how it doesn't slide down the sand, but its been there for hundreds of years so I guess they have it figured out. We did some more shopping - we had to get big bags made to carry back all the stuff we bought! - and that night our driver Rajeev took us to dinner with another driver and his Swiss tourist couple. We had a few beers and mutton (not my fav) and listened to our driver talk about his wife, 2 kids and girlfriend. I think the whiskey was getting to him haha!

The next day we walked around Jaisalmer fort, some temples and a few havelis which are old style big houses. We also met this guy, Shankar, who our friend from college Elizabeth met when she was in Jaisalmer last year. He sells awesome textile stuff and great prices so we bought stuff from him and he invited us to his house for lunch. We met his wife, kids and sisters who gave us bangles and bindis. For some reason Sarah's hands are too big for bangles, even though she doesn't have big hands, but Shankar's sister was determined to get them on her hand so she lotioned her hands up and even took some skin off shoving them on. Haha it was funny to watch, but I don't think Sarah thought it was. Ouch!

Rajeev dropped us at the train station that afternoon and we said good-bye to our great driver. On the train we had 2 top bunks and there were 2 Austrian girls below us. We talked with them awhile then read some before going to sleep. I actually slept really well on the train - I was probably still tired from the sleepless night in the desert. The 19 hour overnight train ride went by pretty quickly and we were back in Delhi before we knew it. The train ends in Old Delhi and our hotel was in New Delhi. What should have been a simple thing to just get a taxi and drive to New Delhi turned into a 2 hour ordeal. We quickly found out that there was a taxi and auto-rickshaw strike that day. Awesome. So this really nice guy walked us all around the place trying to find us a taxi that wasn't on strike. We only found one guy who would take us all the way across town and he was charging 3 times what he should. So the helpful guy said the best idea would be to take the metro system to New Delhi then try to find a rickshaw, at least then we'd be in the right part of town. The metro was PACKED and we were carrying our backpacks and our new bags full of bedspreads, curtain material, and all the other stuff we bought. Not fun. Oh I forgot to mention that the train didn't have food on it so at this point we hadn't eaten in 24 hours. We eventually made it to New Delhi and found a rickshaw which took us to our hotel, even though he also overcharged. At that point I think we would have paid a million rupees for a ride. We didn't care anymore, we just wanted to get to the hotel.

We had a big lunch, took showers and laid in the air conditioned room. Today we slept in and did some last minute souvenier shopping. Our plane leaves in 7 hours, at 11pm, for Thailand. We are going to leave our India bags in a locker in Thailand so we don't have to lug it around for 2 weeks.

That's right...only 2 more weeks till I come home! I've loved my journey but am SO ready to have my own room, shower without shoes on, not live out of a backpack and have more than 5 shirts! Oh the simples things in life!