Well, the plan was to take a nice 13 hour train to Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, a small, dusty, brown tourist town about 60 kms from the Pakistan border where we would embark on an amazing Indian Jones-like camel safari. Of course, things are never that easy.
After we missed our first train (due to small error made by the travel agent where he told us the wrong train station - no biggie), we improvised and took three consecutive sleeper buses. To say the least, we were simply excited to be on our way to meet our camels.
We finally settled down though and the 21 hour trip to Jaisalmer actually ended up being quite fun.
Greeting us in Jaisalmer was the amazing Jaisalmer fort. Everything is the color of sand...
...and greeting us in the desert:
What you can't see below is the giant cooler my camel (the youngest and presumably the strongest...or simply lowest on the camel food chain) that got stuck carrying a big cooler with food and ice.
On our first day, we were accompanied by four people, two men and two boys, 7 km to the camp where we would sleep that night. Parbu, pictured below, goes to school from 10-1 p.m. every day. Then at 4 p.m., he walks tourists like us 7 km to a desert camp, sleeps overnight in the desert, wakes up at sunrise and walks back (at least 7 km, although I don't know exactly where his school is) to town in time to go to school at 10 a.m., then he does it all over again.
Sunset.
Sunrise.
There's not enough times in our lives where we get to see an amazing sunset and sunrise back to back.Here, we were spying out on the enemy camp.
All of our guides made us a nice lunch on the second day to cap off an unforgettable weekend. Nearly as unforgettable was the strawberry the camel left me in a place to be named in private.
All of our guides made us a nice lunch on the second day to cap off an unforgettable weekend. Nearly as unforgettable was the strawberry the camel left me in a place to be named in private.
