Jaisalmer – Deserts, forts, and camel safaris

Jaislamer's desert ruins

The air force streaked across the sky more and more often the closer we approached Jaisalmer. Military bases litter the eastern side of the city, the direction in which we were coming from. Pakistan is on the west side of the city by a few hundred kilometers. But that’s close enough to have the military presence for a quick response in case Pakistan decides to strike.

We were warned about the very aggressive touts that were in Jaisalmer. And forewarned we were. To the point where we booked a pick up from the hotel, which turned out to be a good idea. As the bus pulled into the bus stop aka, side of the road, the rickshaws appear from thin air along with their drivers. I didn’t know rickshaw drivers were even on the bus until Neil was stopped by one before he had a chance to even get off.
As soon as Ian got off, he was shoved with brochures “Tokyo Palace.” Not a surprise as everyone thinks he’s Japanese. Like, com’on, look at him. Asian; Korean, Japanese, Chinese? Chinese is usually the last guess for some odd reason.

We fight our way to the back of the bus to take our packs, while the rickshaw drivers were cutting us off. They would throw their pitch, we’d walk around them.

“Where is our damn driver?!”

Some incredibly cute calves

Suddenly, a driver comes up to us and whips out a paper with “Christina” written on it, our friend who had booked the hotel and pick up. We all ignored the other drivers and went straight for him. Ian got lost in the confusion as someone grabbed his arm and tried to pull him aside. A quick smack on the wrist and a “I don’t want no trouble, just let me go” did it. The experience there was so chaotic. Hands in face, grabbing, people shouting at you all trying to get your attention and business.

The rickshaw sputtered to life and we were off. We get into our hotel in the morning and sat down for a meal. A quick consolidation of plans and in the afternoon, we were off to see some of the sites of Jaisalmer.

Alladin street-scapes

Jaislamer looks like the romanticized version of Alladin, but in real life; minus the flying carpets and genies. It was a desert city. The old city had very tight streets the width of a cow and amazing drivers; rickshaws and motorbikes alike, squeezing through and honking. Ropes spanned the top of the buildings with clothes drying in the desert sun, while other ropes had a canopy to provide some relief from the sun as it casted a hot shadow on the ground.

And then there was the fort. A living fort from the 1600 if not older. Most the city spills outside of the fort now but everything is planned around the fort. The fort sustained numerous battles and it was evident in its bloody history. And now, the battle its fighting is against water damage as the ancient walls give way to landslides because the foundation had had simply enough of the fort. But the city is repairing it to keep it alive as there are businesses and people living in the fort.

The view of the fort

2 days later, the skin on our bums were chaffed off by the day long camel ride into the remote desert. We started early in the day to beat the desert heat. We sat under a nice big tree for lunch after 2 hours on the camel. We had lunch around 11. Our guide, Dellboy, tied - effectively - handcuffs to the camels feet to prevent them from running away too far while we ate. We set off again at 2 in the afternoon. So much for beating the heat. Even the camels didn’t want to go into the sun.

It wasn’t too much later when we arrive at our sand dunes for the night. By this time, everyone was groaning from pain, in their derriers, their legs, their back, and pretty much everything. A safari it was, but we weren’t warned about how painful riding a camel is.

The formation of the caravan of camels

The camels lay down for us to get down, slowly in agonizing pain our legs swung over the saddle. The handcuffs were put on the camels again, and shame, we saw one camel try to jump with joy that his work was done, but only to find he could only hop. Slightly. And then he was sad again.

A beer boy appeared from thin air (I don’t know if it’s the Alladdin spell in the desert, but people seem to do that here…) Everyone bought a beer from him to watch the sun set on the desert dunes. The sky turned red and the scarabs crawled out from hiding. You know those little beetles you saw in The Mummy? Yeah, those black beetles came out. And they bite. But they don’t dig into your skin though, luckily.

The black beetles drinking liquids

As night settled herself over us, dinner was served. And we served the scarabs as hundreds and thousands, possibly, decided to test if we were dinner. We sat under the brightest stars we’ve seen in over 2 years. Star gazing was definitely on the agenda that night. Each of us pretended to know what constellations we were talking about and pointed out shooting stars. Christa missed every single one. The moon didn’t rise until the morning, so we had a whole night of bright star gazing.

We all slept in a plastic bag with raised edges to that the scarabs couldn’t crawl in and into our blankets. The desert was cold at night. Dropped down into the mid teens. But in the day, mid thirties. To be expected, but to experience it was brutal.

Camel safari through the dunes

The moon rose at 4 am, and then the sun rose an hour later. Dellboy, our guide, rose with the moon and started making breakfast for us. Tea was ready by the time we wanted to watch the sunrise. But only Ian was up for that. After boiled egg breakfast, we were back on the painful saddle. Luckily we took the short half day back. We met up with the jeep after an incredible 3 hours of pain.

We shot back to the city and settled ourselves into the fort this time. We had to spend a night in the old fort. And this was an old city. Everything was stone. Our hotel was right against the wall of the city so we could look over the desert from our small window in our room. The building the hotel was in spans over 3 centuries old. The roads inside the old city was the width of half a cow and only motorbikes made it through. Not before running it’s tires all over the cow dung which was plentiful. Open defecation is popular.

Sunset in the desert

The experience of staying in the fort is pretty unique. The sad thing is, inside the fort, it’s completely based on tourism. There was not a single local shop for local people who don’t want any trouble there. Christa went with our friend Christina to get a full body ayurvedic massage for post-camel safari comfort.

Next day, we got on the night train to a very iconic city in India; Agra.