Majestic prehistoric hissing camels

We rise later than expected at 6:20am and by 7am we are in a jeep on our way out into the desert. Our clothes look remarkably clean today. This is because yesterday we made use of the laundry. You hand in dirty clothes at 11am, and at 8pm they come back – clean, ironed and folded. Fantastic. And they are really clean – even my socks have been ironed. In fact I think my shorts have been washed with rocks – not to be recommended for delicates. Six pieces of clothing for 60p. I’m also wearing a pair of white Ali-Baba pants, purchased yesterday and the height of desert fashion, in an attempt to prevent sun burn.

Dunes!

In the early morning light, the scrub of the desert is beautiful and cool. The single-track metalled road stretches away into the sandswept distance. Passing another car involves driving in the sand. We are close to the Pakistan border here and see various signs of military activity including fighters flying overhead. We stop at a couple of peaceful monuments on our way and then at a gravelled layby we meet our two camels and driver “Dadya” with his camel. He says good morning like an old colonial and seems to understand lots of English even if he can’t speak much.

Scoff time

The camels are magnificent prehistoric creatures built for a life of hardship in the desert. When sitting down they are about as tall as me. With our bags and food and water stowed on theirs backs, and us squashed between them on blankets, they rise majestically (in two angled heaves) and walk, or lurch, slowly in line. They have nose pegs and ropes and basically you point their faces in the direction you want to go. At first I find it extremely wobbly and painful – particularly at the prospect of two days of the same lurching, rubbing motion… But soon I learn how to relax and find a comfort of sorts. The scenery is bumpy scrub – small prickly bushes – and it gradually gets hotter. Dadya sings songs to the world in general. It’s all rather haunting but incredibly beautiful. There is plenty of time for private meditation.

Our camp and sleeping under the stars

By 11am, I’ve got a sore ass. In the distance are some larger trees and I’m assured we can stop there for water. When we finally arrive, I am desperate to get off. Camels sit down in a complex quattro-lurch as four sets of joints bend and compress. We lead our camels stiffly to a well where they drink like Hoovers and we sit under the helpful shade of a tree. Some other men and camels join us for lunch.
They offload the saddles and bags and give the camels nose bags of straw to eat. I take some wonderful photos of them. The midday sun is absolutely scorching. We have to be in the shade and apparently we’ll siesta like this until 4pm – it’s too hot to move, even for camels. So we lie down while lunch is prepared by Dadya. We get green oranges which taste great and bananas, curried vegetables, chepatis and noodles. Absolutely delicious and cooked in front of us in the sand on a wood fire – hastily made from driftwood in the desert. Life here is basic and simple.

Lizzie, sunset

We snooze in the shade until it moves over us, then we all troop round and snooze some more. At 3pm they wake us with cups of Chai (tea) and then we get going again. The others leave us at a road and we continue into the real desert. It is just us three – we haven’t seen any other people around, especially not tourists. The scrub has gone now and we come across the breath-taking dunes themselves – sand dunes as far as the eye can see. It is a wonderful sight and one I have never before experienced. At one point we dismount and walk into the dunes on our own which is enchanting. It is a bit cooler now. A dishevelled man appears from across the desert with a wet bag full of 7Ups and Pepsis. It reminds me of something out of Monty Python. A man who we’ve never met has walked miles into the desert to sell us drinks: you can’t fault the Indian entrepreneurial spirit. We can’t resist so we buy one each and one for Dadya. They’re warm but this is the desert and drinking our mineral water is like drinking from the hot tap anyway.

Tim, sunset

We carry on – more dunes – and finally at 6:30pm reach a flat area where we will sleep tonight. There is a small hut but we’re sleeping out under the stars. Whilst watching the sun set gloriously over the dunes, another Pepsi seller tries to cash in. Can’t believe it: you think you’re all alone in the Indian desert and then people spring up from nowhere with American drinks. Wouldn’t fancy trying to be a hermit: you’d never keep a vow of silence for want of telling all the drink sellers to piss off. This one goes away disappointed and we feel inexplicably guilty.
Dinner, in the dark, is the same as lunch but with rice this time and still delicious. Then it is time for bed. We lay out our mats in the sand some distance from Dadya and the hut and lie together staring at the stars. It is absolutely the best view of the sky – no light pollution to spoil it, just black sky and a cool breeze. Waking up in the middle of the night to the eerie quiet and the ceiling of stars – crisper, cleaner and more perfect than I ever imagined – will be a memory I treasure for ever and one I have dreamt of for years.

Screaming camel with the hump

Jaisalmer is in the desert. The early morning air is clear and cold and there is sand everywhere. A comic sight greets us at the station. Lined up outside are a set of jeeps and solemn porters standing in front of them, each holds a flag as a representative from each hotel in Jaisalmer. They offer free transport to their hotels in a bid to “win” the most tourists. Naturally, presented with such choice, all of us travellers stand cautiously before them, studying our guidebooks to see which offers the best deal. We plump for the Hotel Renuka which sounds good and get in the jeep.
It’s a great choice. It is square and white like all the buildings here but is clean and friendly. Soon we are showered and ready to face the heat of the day. It is hot. The first port of call is, unfortunately, the doctors. I have already had a second rabies jab (in Jaipur) and today is time for my third. Unfortunately there is no private doctor in Jaisalmer – only a government run hospital. In India, “government” means “hopelessly under-funded and very crowded”. But we go there in high spirits.
At the hospital, I join the end of a rather long queue of hopeful, sick people as if the doctor only turns up once a week. There is quite some confusion over where to actually go but eventually I get to see Dr Dobe (DooBee). Once again, the doctor’s room is a free for all with everyone piling in to see what I’m to get done to me. The Doc tells me to go and get my injection from the sister. So we locate a nurse in a white sari and explain the deal. She doesn’t seem to get it.

Jaisalmer fort

We are standing in what can only be described as a concrete cow shed. The walls are plain breeze block. There is a queue for injections which we’ve just jumped. The scene is this – on the floor, a bucket of water with syringes soaking (not boiling) in it and on the window sill a piece of newspaper with a load of needles (maybe used) on it. She first goes to get one of those from the bucket – thank God I have my own clean ones. For a minute, the three nurses present don’t seem to know what is happening or what to do. The vaccine is inactivated: you have to mix some powder into a salt water ampoule (provided) using the syringe and then shake it. There are moments of confusion when I think she’s made a mistake and wasted the vaccine but then she manages to mix up a small amount. I’m scared. This is not an ideal injection – just one look at the state the needles are in is enough to get anyone concerned. Anyway, she does the business and I get out – glad to be alive. My syringe goes back on the pile. I am very glad not to have to have any kind of surgery here – standards seem atrociously low.
Our next stop is much easier – a drink and then money changing. Then we do a bit of market research on arranging a camel safari in the desert. We’ve been looking forward to this as a highlight of our trip since neither of us has really seen a desert or ridden a camel before. There are many safaris to choose from although most are quite similar. The cheapest ones are not worth it since basically you begin to compromise on how much food and water you actually get to take with you which isn’t good. We opt for a two day, one night safari arranged through the hotel.

Cycle rickshaws around town

They are very good about it and will keep our bags for us. It is just the two of us (very romantic were it not for the sand) and a driver and we will sleep out under the stars. A jeep will take us out to the real desert and we will trek the camels from there. I can’t wait. 950 Rs each.
We go to the fort which is alive unlike the others we’ve seen and straight out of Arabian nights. We sit out on the roof and watch the sun set on this the truly “Golden City”. The fort is majestic and when the sun has gone, the walls are lit up yellow. Beautiful.

People watching

Walking around this morning, looking for a camel-cart to photograph, Lizzie gets a load of hassle off two young boys who follow us. She tells them to go away a couple of times but they follow and keep pointing and touching her. I sense we’re walking into the wrong part of town and they are very persistent. I let my annoyance turn to rage for the first time in the holiday and grab one of them by the arm. My comment of “Oi! Wanker. Piss off” is probably not a fully recognised international negotiating phrase but it seems to do the trick and they run off laughing. It feels good but they were probably only having a bit of fun.
I decide to have my shoes mended. My boots have been with me all over and when the sole thinned last time, a little man in China managed to fix them nicely with some old tire rubber. Now a little man in India gets to continue the good work. He files down the sole, cuts a rough piece from some rubber and applies glue. Then he sits and fans himself while it hardens. All the while he sits on his haunches – a position which any of us would find very painful very quickly. Then he nails the new piece in place and sands the edge to match. A perfect job. Except that when finished he decides to give the boots a good old polish as only Indians know how. I try to point out to him that the boots are actually suede leather but I have trouble communicating this so I watch, devastated, as my precious boots get turned burgundy coloured and as shiny as patent leather. Thinking only of where to take them to get them dusty as quickly as possible, I pay him and we leave. I spend the rest of the day feeling like some clean-cut Austrian hiker in dancing shoes.

Having my shoes mended

Trying to get back to the hotel, we enlist the help of an auto-rickshaw driver. He offers us a price of 40 Rs which is way too high, so we move down the line of queuing drivers and auction them off against each other. This is real Capitalism – true market forces in action. When I have been pulled and tugged towards different vehicles enough times, we settle for 20 Rs, leaving the first man looking disgruntled and rapidly rewriting his pricing policy. An amazing contrast to our first day in Delhi.
Later we board the train to Jodhpur, sorry to leave Jaipur behind. The train is stuffy and cramped and four and a half hours seems to take an age. When we arrive the streets are dark, unfamiliar and sinister. In addition our chosen hotel is booked out and it is raining. We finally get a place in a nearby hotel, the Soner, which isn’t the lap of luxury but once we’ve got rid of the cockroaches isn’t bad. Sleep in a DEET Mosquito Repellent-induced heatwave.
We don’t intend to stay long in Jodhpur (blue city – everything is blue) because there’s not a lot to see. There is even less to see when we discover that the magnificent fort is closed for the day because they’re making a film. So we settle instead for a day out in the stinking heat shopping for cooking accessories, followed by an escape on the late night sleeper to Jaisalmer (golden city) tonight. I buy some souvenir copper-bottomed cooking pots which I’ve always wanted. We sleep the afternoon off – tiring heat – and end up in a small restaurant for dinner with a large group of Italian tourists all trying to order Spaghetti Bolognaise. I just can’t believe it.
The train has the smallest beds ever designed. My feet and ankles are in air. It is also incredibly hot. It is midnight and yet my shirt is sopping wet. I sleep surprisingly well despite this though and the journey is over by 6am before I’ve even noticed. Sleeping is definitely the best way to travel.

Courtyard at Diggi’s

This morning, we take an auto-rickshaw to Jaipur’s main bazaar and our very persuasive driver Yogi offers us a trip local factory shops where we can buy textiles and craftwork. To help in the battle of wills he has a book full of hand-written English with things like “Yogi is a very trusty man. He gave us good tour… Love Mr & Mrs Smith. Enfield. UK”. There is clearly some lucky Indian somewhere who can write in “English”, absolutely churning these books out for all the rickshaw wallahs to purchase. In the end we agree to Yogi’s scheme but know he’ll be getting a cut somewhere.
First, we wander the Tripolia bazaar, hunting for somewhere for lunch, but settle in the end for two samosas and some milky sweets from a small shop. Turns out to be quite filling enough. At the factory, miles out of town, all the employees seem to have been waiting for us. A guy gives us a demo of block printing camels and then proceeds to show us in great length, a stack of different cloth in various jaunty designs, colours and qualities. The prices are inflated for tourists but still, fundamentally, cheap. We buy a few souvenir wall hangings and table cloths for people back home then get to try on sari’s and turbans for size. I feel like a lobotomy patient. We spend about £20 between us and the rickshaw driver looks pretty pleased with himself.
We return to sunbathe at the hotel, which is nice. For dinner we push the boat out and dine at the “Copper Chimney” probably the nicest restaurant we’ve been in and I chance the chicken tikka which turns out to be a good plan. Dining here brings out the extremes in our holiday. One moment we are mucking down with the locals on a bus trip costing pennies and the next we are in a restaurant like this rubbing shoulders with the upper-caste professional Hindis. The best thing is, the meal still only costs us about £5 for both of us. One of the reasons why travelling to countries like India is so much fun, is that you get to experience being either rich or poor by choice. Shameless exploitation of local people? Unfortunately, yes, but not all the time.
On the way home, it’s all hammered home again, with street children begging at us for money when we stop at traffic lights and the cycle-rickshaw wallah jabbering on about his three sick children and wife in hospital and how the price will be “as you like, sir”. He gets 20 Rs like everyone else. That’s just the way it is.

Around Jaipur

Rajasthanis have a way of naming their cities using colours which conjures up wonderful images for the tourists but must require a huge amount of paint. Jaipur is the “pink” city, Jodhpur the “blue” and Jaisalmer the “Golden”. Jaipur turns out to be a rather dusty shade of orange but in the right kind of light I suppose it might stretch to pink. However, the old walled city (now the central business district) has a charm all of its own. Now that we’ve come down off the mountains and are on the plains of Rajasthan, the sun is hotter than ever; a hat (now filthy) and iced mineral water are both vital components in the fight against sunstroke.
The wide, vibrant streets of Jaipur are far more alive than those in Agra and a pleasant contrast to the city museum, which although peaceful, is, it has to be said, rather dull. We stop at a fruit stall to buy a pineapple – there comes a point when curry just doesn’t do it for you – and are waylaid by a young man about our age who begins a memorable conversation about the threat of skinhead attacks on Indians in Britain. Unsure quite how to phrase an answer, conversation turns out to be easy: he tells us he is going to Oxford in October to read economics and speaks very good English. Our interest is aroused and he asks would we like to chat with him over tea?
We are led through a fruit market, which apparently the boy’s father owns, then up some stairs to a tiny sitting room behind a shop. The boy vanishes en route but is replaced by four men of varying descriptions who sit us down. One disappears to fetch drinks. The others engage in the usual conversations except this time their English is good enough to ask “Which country is currently suffering your absence?” One in particular talks smoothly about his “English” friends and has travelled in England on business. He turns out to be a jewellery manufacturer and seems to be doing a brisk export trade. The prospects are good. He has 150 employees each working for 1000 Rs per month (that’s less than one meal in a restaurant per week) but from each of them he makes between 500 and 1000 Rs profit per month. Good for him.
Anyway, soon our suspicions of this little meeting grow. Our student ‘friend’ still has not arrived and bags of rings appear for our delection. It’s all low key but they appear to be looking to start up in export with us. The man tells us he has great interests in “Gemology” and gives a series of lectures to local people on the healing power of precious stones. He freely admits he invented this himself purely for the purpose of selling more rings.
Eventually our student returns and we chat about Oxford. It’s better but we’re soon back on rings. We give them five minutes of looking at Star Rubies, which admittedly are very pretty and not too expensive, but then we invent a spurious ‘dinner with friends’ excuse and make a dash for it. Maybe they saw us coming and do this scam regularly, maybe they were just genuine guys trying to do business. Whatever, we’re better off out of it…

Relaxing at Diggi’s Palace

Our bus out of Agra to Jaipur is a slightly hair-raising experience. Apart from the horrendous bumps and the leaking windows when it rains really hard, as we fly round one particular corner there is a low-loader truck in the middle of the road coming the other way and it grazes all down the side of our bus and rips the rear bumper off. My fingers were resting on the sill but had they been just two inches further outside the window, I may have been typing this one-handed. But the bumpers and bits of trim are duly picked up off the road, loaded onto the roof and we carry on. The low-loader doesn’t even stop.
We arrive in Jaipur battered and hungry. We get taken a long way by cycle-rickshaw, with backpacks weighing heavy, to our hotel “Diggi’s Palace” which has been recommended by some family friends. It is a welcome change from many of the hotels we’ve been in which haven’t been anything special. Apparently it belongs to a rich racehorse owner and is set in beautiful grounds but still has cheap rooms. The room is set off a small courtyard and actually smells clean. Fantastic.

Tim & Liz, Agra

Rise early this morning for the first of many rabies jabs. At the doctors house we have to first meet his wife, children, sister, father-in-law and what seems to be far too many children for any one man, before we can finally get the big man on to the important issues: like how long I’ve got to live. He redresses the wound and then agrees to meet me at his surgery at 11am.
“Surgery” is little more than a shop with a small waiting area in front and a low partition separating the consulting room. There is no privacy. When we arrive a man is having an injection in his bottom and all the other patients are looking on! The doctor gives me one jab of rabies vaccine and sells me four more packs, which I am to get various doctors to stab into me on certain days over the next four weeks. This is a daunting task considering our itinerary but the most concerning thing is the little note on the side of the packs: keep refrigerated. The total cost for saving my life is a meagre £20 and he won’t even give me a receipt for the insurance claim…
When we return to the hotel our very own friendly rickshaw wallah is waiting for us outside. He knows we will give him good money so we agree to let him take us to the Jama Masjid mosque to resurrect our day and do some sight-seeing. Our self-assuming guide around the mosque is a very funny man who has deformed knees and walks on his hands and feet in a kind of constant yoga position. It’s very disconcerting to see a man scuttling like a spider towards you at high speed across a religious establishment.
The sun is roasting today and when the delights of the rather dilapidated mosque have been thoroughly consumed, we take in the ‘main bazaar’ in a slightly larger than intended circular walk taking in the chaotic stalls and bustling streets. Lizzie gets a lot of hassles and stares which isn’t good. The meat stalls are particularly unpleasant which is why at lunch-time ordering a vegetarian curry is an absolute must along with two ice-cold Pepsis.
We play our trump card of the day by getting our wallah to take us to the Agra Ashok hotel (a faded four star), claiming we are meeting friends again. Our purpose for this little scheme is that they have a swimming pool and for a small fee we can negotiate to use it. As it turns out we’re the sole users of it and it is a peaceful, outdoor pool with leafy shade and sunbeds. Finally we get some relaxing respite from the heat and bustle.
Later, for dinner, we escape by cycle-rickshaw to a well-recommended restaurant called ‘Zorba the Buddha’. The 7km trip is pretty good fun in unlit streets without bike lights and with buses and mopeds flying by. The place turns out to be an enclave of profundity and cleanliness: Zorba (the Greek) and Gautam (the Buddha) fuse in mythically celebration of the new man, as written on their menu:
“My concept of the new man is that he will be Zorba the Greek and he will also be Gautam the Buddha: the new man will be sensuous and spiritual, physical, utterly physical in the body, in the senses, enjoying the body and all that the body makes possible and still a great consciousness, a great witnessing will be there. He will be Christ and Epicurus together.”
It would seem we still have some way to go…
Tonight turns out to be our 19 month anniversary so we consider the extravagance of dinner in a clean place worth it. The return trip (by the cycle-rickshaw wallah who has waited for us through the meal) is most exciting of all, half way through in the darkness, some bastards on a moped come past us and chuck a bucket load of water at us. Can’t believe it but it certainly cools you down.