Traveling By Camel

We boarded our train at midnight. It was dark and crowded and there were men already asleep in both our beds. Damnit! Again… We asked a young man about our seats. “Yeah, here I’ll wake them up!” He swatted both of the guys and spoke to them in Hindi. They stumbled out of our beds and down the train aisle, 

“But where are they going to sleep now?” 

“You don’t need to worry about them.” He said. 

There was a general mentality here of, I look out for me and my own. It reminds me of the hardened shell people acquire after living in New York. The unfortunate mindset that there are too many people to care about everyone… I don’t want to develop that mindset, but it was difficult at times not to feel that way. How do you develop a more healthy outlook about the wellbeing of your neighbor or a stranger in a country of 1.339 B-I-L-L-I-O-N people. In a place where 163 million people lack access to safe water and resources are evidently finite…

India got me asking myself a lot of challenging questions; questions that are ugly, and complicated, and seem hopelessly unanswerable. But I feel the need to at least sit with them. 

The only train tickets available were in sleeper class. The only difference between sleeper and 3rd class was the air conditioning. We’d already taken a 22 hour 3rd class journey… If anything sleeper class would be a little hot but that would be fine. Well, once we’d throughly cleaned our beds with hand-sanitizer and toilet paper, and settled down to sleep, it wasn’t the heat that was the problem. It was freezing cold with the windows open. The desert air blew in, rattling our bones! 

Jaisalmer Fort

Jaisalmer is in the heart of the Thar Desert, and known as the Golden City. Our new home—with the most comfy beds of the whole trip—was The Golden Marigold Hotel. Annika and I had our first Thali, a variety of dishes served on a round platter. Usually dhal, curry, chapati, curd, and rice. We sat on a balcony eating dinner when suddenly from the street there was an assault of dance music! After a few songs we got up to look out on what could be happening… 

It was an India wedding! The whole street had turned into a dance party. A DJ booth was setup in the back of a pickup. The groom was riding a huge white horse! After a while they created a procession down the street and out of sight.

Marsala Dosa! Our Favorite Breakfast 

Our first day they picked us up from The Golden Marigold in a jeep with two other tourists—two guys from Spain. We toured ruins and a dessert village—which was just us stopping on the side of the road, our driver saying, “This is a village.” Us saying, “Ahh, mmhmm.” and then he continued driving. Finally we made it to the star attraction, our camels. Mine was a handsome sand colored camel named Lalu. Anni’s was a slightly darker sand color with a wicked slant underbite, named Calu.

Camels can grow up to seven feet tall, so when they stood up, you were really up there. You don’t want to drop anything, especially yourself! 

Amazing sunsets in the desert

We rode for a few hours through the empty desert. And when we got to a patch of rolling dunes, our camelman said this would be our camp for the night. He told us to go sit on this dune and watch the sunset—people always be bossing us around! It was an amazing sunset though. The sun got bloated and bright red as it slipped through the sky. It felt good to be out of the continuous buzz of Indian cities. I realized I’d only been in metropolitan areas for the last four or five weeks. Finally we were out in the quiet of nature… Well relativity quiet. There was faint screaming and dancing music coming from over the hills—which turned into a strobe light and party “Whooos” as the sun went down. The next morning I asked our camelman, what was going on last night? Oh, South Indians partying…apparently South Indians were on Diwali holiday and enjoy a good all-nighter in the desert.

Our camelman built a fire, boiled water and chopped fresh ginger. He whipped up a pot of chai. Then a pot of rice. Then he sliced fresh veggies for a curry. He mixed flour and water, and rolled out chapatis. We had a beautiful meal around the light of the fire. With just the subtle thump of dance music in the background. 

Our sweet camelman, making chai 

Anni and the camels after a long, hot day

Cooking station

We shared travel stories and suggestions with the guys. They drank beer. Anni and I shared a “special cookie” we’d bought from a “special lassi” shop in town. In Rajasthan, there’s a weed like substance called bhang. It’s thick and green and usually mixed into lassis. They make cookies with it as well, portable and perfect for a night out in the desert. I found this blog about bhang. The writer explains not to take bhang before your camel safari because… “Possible complications due to bhang effects include: almost slipping off your camel, wobbling for an hour, thinking it’s hotter than it is, feeling like you’ve been on your camel for days, and worse thinking that you are in danger in Pakistan since during my trip 6 years ago, a couple of tourists had been killed there at that time.”

It got later, and the bhang started kicking in. Luckily the Spanish guys were talking for what seemed like forever, Anni and I were relieved cause it would have been pretty clear how high we were! Then their ride came—they were just doing a day trip, not an over night—and pretty soon it was just us, and our camelman, and the soft beat of dance music. “Welp! We’re off to bed. Bye. Goodnight!” Anni and I crawled into our little cots that were laid out on the sand. There were huge black beetles crawling all across the sand, they especially liked to curl up under our beds or blankets. Not the best case scenario but we weren’t too scared of them. 

Desert beetles! Yikes

We were only a few yards from our camelman, just cracking up and talking about all the craziest things. Then Annika looked to our right… “Are those camels, right there? Like a few meters from us?” Sure enough our camels were sleeping right next to us. We snuck up and gave them a pat on the head, and then made shadow puppets with our hands and flashlight. 

It was a strong cookie!

Three sleepy desert-heads waking up 

A camelman who visited us for breakfast

The next morning we were woken before dawn by a howling of a desert dog. I sat up in bed, then Anni, we looked behind us and our camelman was sitting up for the first time as well. Here was this man who didn’t speak any english and alone with us in the middle of the dessert. It was this strangely sweet, intimate moment. We were all just waking up. “Go up to the dune and watch the sunrise!” Oh, but, its pretty cold out…do we have to? We had to…

Our camelman made chai, boiled eggs, cut fruit, and laid out biscuits. Then he saddled up the camels, packed up our cots, and we set out into the cool morning.

Our guy really didn’t speak any english and had an intensity about him. I told Anni, I really don’t think we’re ever gonna be friends with our camelman…

Breakfast 

Sand makes good cup holders for am chai! Our camelman would wash our dishes with sand! Actually worked out pretty well!

We traveled through his village, stopped at his home, met his wife and child, who both had the same intensity about them. Maybe it comes from years in the desert sun. We rested in the shade outside mud home, while he had a shower and chatted with his wife. This was a barren life. These people were making their lives out in the middle of the fucking desert! 

Birds eating the rest of our lunch

Camelman's nephew

Preparing lunch

Our camelman took Anni's phone and wanted to take selfies! 

We traveled farther out into the sandy nothingness, and in the middle of a dusty field there was a mud shack. Inside was a goat herder. His flock wandered around outside. He also didn’t speak any english but we gathered that he was our camelman’s nephew. 

For the bathroom, we had to walk out of the hut and half a mile to the nearest shrub to squat behind.

Our camelman started a small fire, made chai, veggies, and when he started making chapati, we asked if we could help. Pretty soon the four of us were cracking up, smacking flatbread dough around. It turns out that “Ugly chapati” transcends language barriers! And man did I make a few ugly chapatis, lumpy and oblong! Suddenly I realized, we’re in! Maybe we’re gonna befriend our camelman—and his nephew—after all!

We were able to have some simple conversations with our camelman…mostly about camels. 

“How old is Lalu?”

“How many children does she have?”

“How old is Calu?”

“How many children does he have?”

“Do you have a favorite camel?”

Desert friends! 

That night, we truly made it out of civilization. There were no lights, no human noise. Just the sound of our camels munching their cud—camels are pretty gross and smelly.

We were all too full from lunch for dinner. So he made chai, and called his friend, they had a lively conversation while Annika talked about our day, our trip, and our lives.

The next morning we overslept and had to run on our camels all the way back to the jeep. Man, after two days on a camel, the last thing your body wants is to go for a brisk morning camel jog! It was painful and seeing the jeep in the distance was a welcomed sight!

We thanked and said goodbye to our new friends—the camels and our camelman. 

Loading up into the back of the jeep, the driver turned around “You like music?” Yeah, sure ok…He cranked the Bollywood and sped off down the sandy road.