2-6 December 2010
You don’t just find yourself on a camel. You have to pay. When I originally read about camel safaris months before our departure, I proposed to Rachel that we partake in an 8 to 21 day camel safari. Her immediate response was “WTF”. And after eight minutes on a camel, twenty one minutes seemed like a lifetime. Rachel is always right (she wrote that).
We met up with our camels after an hour long jeep ride from Jaisalmer, the Golden City, though the Thar Desert near the Pakistani border. As we pulled up, the four camels rested peacefully in the hot sun, disinterested. They were acting like, well, camels.
We spent about 3 hours on our camels that afternoon. Our time between the humps alternated between crashing through desert scrub (camels just cannot be concerned with avoiding shrubbery), gazing at rolling sand dunes, yelling at Kevin’s camel, Charlie, to stop eating every plant in sight (“Charlie stop eating that”), enjoying the peace and quiet, and stretching our groin muscles to the near the point of rupture. We ate a simple dinner of potato curry, rice, and chapattis, and watched the sun go down over the dunes. The camel ride was a success.
Riding camels is one of the main activities to partake in outside of Jaisalmer. Jaisalmer consists of a massive, golden-brown fort perched on a small hill overlooking a small, busy market town below. We decided to splurge and stayed in Hotel Suraj, located inside the fort. For the first time in India, our fortified location protected us from the constant street noise and blaring horns.
Our hotel rooms were located inside a haveli, basically a mansion built of stone and wood. It is a beautiful 500-year old building, and is owned and run by relatives of the original owners. When we gazed out our rooms our eyes met the fort’s walls (complete with a canon for protection) and an intricately carved Jain temple. There is something gratifying about staying in a fort and waking up each morning in a room that has barely changed for 5 centuries.
We spent the rest of our time in Jaisalmer wandering through narrow alleyways trying not to be gored by cows, browsing in the many, many handicraft shops, getting lost, eating good food (there is even a decent Italian restaurant), and visiting a couple of restored havelis, which charge admission. We were astounded to learn that one of the “restored” havelis was less well-preserved and beautiful than our home at Hotel Suraj. What a special place! Jaisalmer is a gem.
From Jaisalmer we embarked on a long, long 18-hour train ride back to Delhi. The contrast between Delhi and Jaisalmer is remarkable. After 2 mostly peaceful weeks in Rajasthan, Delhi (the traffic, noise, pollution, horrendous poverty, open drug use, and filth) was a shock. Most of you know that I am the kind of person that likes to go out and do things. For me a day without a nice long walk seems incomplete. In Delhi, all I wanted to do was stay in our hotel room. In fact, going outside didn’t even cross my mind.
The plan was for us to wish Kevin and Sarah a fond farewell and board another long (16-hour) train to the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges River. I woke up that morning with a really bad feeling about Varanasi. For some reason, I felt that we shouldn’t go. We were both feeling weary (and tired of India), so after some discussion we decided to change our plans and bought plane tickets back to Kathmandu, Nepal. Little did we know that had we taken that train to Varanasi we would have arrived just hours following a bombing which occurred very close to the hotel where were supposed to be staying. This cowardly act of terrorism injured dozens and claimed one life.
We are now back in Nepal (we love Nepal), and will spend the next few days exploring some of the sights in the Kathmandu Valley that we missed in our last visit. In December, the air is cool and clear here in Kathmandu, and many snow-capped Himalayan giants are visible in the distance. Nepal seems like a nice place to spend the rest of 2010 and ring in the New Year.
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