It was a little noisy in the room last night. It was the night before Eid al-Adha, an important Muslim holiday also known sometimes as the day of the sacrifice - more on that later. Robin and I were in a room at the end of the hotel that was right next to a tent that had been set up for some usage for the festival. When we went to bed at around 11:00, the music was blaring! Ashraf said it was kind of like the Muslim kids flexing their muscles and making a bit of a statement. I told Robin not to focus on sleep, but just to lie down and listen to the music. It worked after a while. I recalled the recent movie Neighbours, with a thirty something couple with a baby living next to a fraternity house that partied hard. Should I go down and ask them to "just.... Keep it down a little?!"... Ha, no chance.
The music played on and on. The pace of it was very up beat and had no signs of slowing. I fell asleep chuckling to myself at how ridiculously loud it was. Robin got up a couple of times, but managed to go to sleep. I filmed a little video at 3:30.... Yes, 3:30! You can tell how loud the music was....
They eventually stopped at 4:00am, I can tell you as a first hand witness!
The girls had painting on the brain, so Beth and I took another opportunity to get away.... And sure enough we strolled into the vase guy's store and bought the damn vase at his initial list price. Lol.
We grabbed the rest of our purchases back at the hotel and hopped into a Tuk Tuk, heading for the post office for some guaranteed hilarity. It didn't disappoint.
We came into the dark building and saw a line of twenty men behind the glass wall with four or five clerks sitting behind. I played the role of clueless tourist, quite well, and asked a clerk where we could ship a package to Canada. He indicated a bank of chairs near him, behind the glass wall (like, in the back office section of the post office). Ok then. We went behind the glass and sat down. Then we waited for something to happen.
Sure enough, ten minutes later a guy came up to us and weighed our stuff and said "package 4700 rupees, packaging fee 400 rupees. Ok?". Yes, I said. "Ok, you come to outdoor packaging Center". We followed him through a maze of piles of paper and old equipment, into the back storage area with even more paper and dusty filing cabinets, out the back door and into what I can most accurately describe as a small concrete holeless outhouse.
The dude proceeded to stuff our things into a box and began to sew a white sheet around the box. He offerred Beth a small piece of styrofoam to sit on.
We made a little small talk, but it was pretty hard. If we hadn't experienced things like this in the past, we would have been a tad uncomfortable, but as weird as this whole thing was, I couldn't say it was that unexpected. When he was finished, he sealed a lot of the seems with hot wax for good measure. Then we wrote the "from" and "to" on the box (here we go again Mum and Dad!), and a few dozen steps later and perhaps only fifteen minutes and we were done. So.... Weird. But, kind of fun at the and time!
When we got back to the hotel, the artists had made a lot of progress...
Robin really took liberties with the real estate!
Abby added a poem she'd written for good measure...
After another late lunch, we went downstairs and got ready for our overnight camel trek experience to start. Beth vowed in '97 that she would never ride a camel and stay in the desert, yet here we were and she was totally relaxed about it. Even having the opportunity to ask questions about the trip and conditions, she was quietly relaxing on the couch. This is the new Beth!
Seven of us crammed into an SUV - there was also a guy from Prague and a father daughter duo from Indonesia. We left Jaisalmer and flew down a smoothly paved road that pretty quickly was splitting the middle of a dry wasteland. Occasionally, we would pass a bus jam packed with people inside and out.
Every once in a while we would spot mud houses - traditional desert houses built with mud walls and thatch roofs. The mud keeps things warm at night and cool in the day.
After about twenty kilometers or so, we stopped at one of the 80 plus abandoned towns in the desert. The story goes that about one hundred fifty years ago, a lower caste man who was friends with the king of Jaisalmer wanted to marry one of the women from one of the towns. The townspeople were all high caste - Brahmin, so nobody supported this marriage to a lower caste man. The people of all 80 towns met in a huge meeting and decided that they'd rather abandon their towns than either defy the king or agree to the marriage (it would set a dangerous precedent). The day after the meeting, tens of thousands of people from all 80 towns packed up and left - leaving these rather big towns completely abandoned.
Some say you can still see ghosts wandering the streets of the town. We just saw these two....
Back on the road, the landscape continued to change. Our final destination was 47km from Jaisalmer. Every ten kilometers or so we would pass through a small village. We saw huge herds of goats, colourfully dressed women and children, and men dressed in their traditional garb - all working away in the hot, late afternoon sun.
Near the end of the line, we passed by a sign saying that we'd entered the national park area. A large swath of the Thar Desert is protected as a national park - the only development in the nearby area being huge wind power generation towers.
The jeep pulled up near a pack of camels who looked like they were waiting for a bunch of tourists....oh, yes.... us!
We must have missed the safety and instructions seminar, as before we knew it, we were on the camels, hanging on for dear life as they see sawed back and forth to the standing position. They were much taller than I'd remembered.
There were three groups of three camels, with two that didn't have riding gear attached. Abby asked the leader why those camels were coming and he told her that camels like to hang out with friends, and each of the group of three camels always went everywhere together. It reminded us of the old lady elephant groups at ENP in Thailand.
Everyone had a huge smile on - we were heading to the desert!
The ride was pretty bumpy - I couldn't imagine riding on a camel that was in a full run - ouch.
It was a nice time of day - maybe 4:30 or 5:00. The sun wasn't that hot and there was a gentle breeze.
After about a half hour, we reached a huge band of sand dunes, miles long and maybe four hundred meters wide. It was so cool looking.... So - expansive. We crossed that dune, went through another patchy desert area and crested a hill to end up at an even bigger dune area. That was where we were to make camp. We trudged through the dunes for ten minutes to find an ideal spot. Getting off the camels was easier said than done - we were all pretty sore from sitting in that wide position for so long. It was a relief to finally sink our toes in the soft sand.
The girls put their thoughts on video....
We chilled out on the dunes and watched the sun go down. The girls tried to really own the space...
To cap off a really nice afternoon, the boys brought by some chai. Sweet! I mean, a cold beer would have also been nice, but the chai was a great addition to the zen-like atmosphere.
Dinner was prepared while we sat around talking with the other three guests - comparing stories, sharing information. Having other adults around to talk to is always a nice treat for us :-). Dinner was served - a simple potato and cauliflower curry, Dahl, rice and chapatti prepared over a small cook fire. It was plain but good - the boys offerred to add some of their spicy curry to our curry, and I accepted with gusto - much better! To top it off, I got a nice, cold beer to accompany the meal. Sweet.
After dinner, four of the camel boys set up little homemade instruments - a water jug for a drum, pots and pans for percussion - and played four songs for us.
It was a nice treat for the end of the evening and soon we were ushered over to each of our sleeping areas. The "beds" brought back memories - simple, white, thin mattresses with thinner sleeping covers on top. Abby was hilarious as she was constantly swishing sand off the covers and her skin - we were in the middle of the desert, but her disdain for sand was holding strong.
The moon was about three quarters full, and I was shocked how bright it was. You could see up and down the dunes for hundreds of meters in the moonlight. I woke up a couple of times at night - both at the request of one of the girls to find a good spot to pee. The second time I got up, the moon had set and the stars were out in full force. It was absolutely beautiful, and reminded me of one of the reasons we'd come all this way, to the middle of the desert at the edge of India.
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