We pulled into Jaisalmer station after our pretty comfy 18 hour train journey from Delhi. I'm pleased to say it was the nicest train so far. We always prepare ourselves for the hassling tuk tuk and hotel room sellers that await us outside the station gates but Jaisalmer was something else. I was walking in front of the girls and got swarmed in an instant, men shouting "where you go, where you go'"or "tuk tuk" or "you want cheap room". I physically couldn't walk through the crowd of men, so I was just shouting "no, no, no". As horrible as it sounds, sometimes it's the only way. We had already booked a room and had our hotel picking us up so we didn't need anything from them, just to find our hotel man in the sea of people. Thankfully he was holding up a sign for 'Desert Moon', our accommodation for our one night stop in the Indian desert. The city had been described as having an Arabian nights feel to it; in my eyes it was Aladdin's world. The old fort was built out of sand and circled the city centre, it was a pretty impressive sight. I was amazed by the amount of detail on the engravings on each building, it's like someone had gone round the city decorating it with a fine tooth pick. Our hotel was rated best on trip advisor, it was really nice, I shared a room with Liv and we opted for the cheaper room, while Kate shared with Nelen. We showered and looked in LP where to go for lunch, Desert Boy Thani was one of the top choices and 100% vegetarian so it obviously won, the nice hotel man dropped us off. We arrived outside a little garden restaurant with customised metal chairs shaded by a huge tree in the middle of the courtyard and vine leaves climbing the walls. The food was delicious, even treated ourselves to a Kingfisher beer. Jaisalmer is a predominately Muslim area so beers weren't on the menu but they always seem to have a secret stash out back. We had to be extra careful of our clothes in this city, the local women were completely covered up, some only showing their eyes. We were covered up as much as we could be in the 40+ degree desert heat. Nelen wasn't feeling well and we was all shattered so we went back to the hotel for a lay down. We had booked a camel safari tour that afternoon, we hopped back in the jeep and headed 45km into the desert towards Pakistan! Apparently we where we ended up trekking was only 50km from the boarder; explains why there was such a big army presence in Jaisalmer! At the beginning of the trip the men guiding our camels were brought over cokes by their boss and he asked us if we wanted to buy the drink for them, we clearly couldn't say no so they managed to swine us out of another 30rupees. Naughty money making bosses. The camel trek was fun, felt like I was in the film 'The Mummy', riding through the tranquil desert, enjoying the downtime and spending time on the camels. Although I did get a very sore bum plus I was back wind to Kate and Liv's camels and they absolutely stunk haha. Poor Nelen had a rebel camel and he kept veering off to munch on some shrubs, I nicknamed him 'Honey monster', not only cus he was a pig but he genuinely looked like the HM too. After we got off the camels, had a little walk on the sand dunes and took some nice photos, we then jumped back on and this time with the guides sitting behind us. We tried to have a little trot but mine was clearly lazy and made a half hearted attempt. We reached a high point of a dune, watched the sun come down and took our final photos, some of us climbed off the camels as elegantly as possible but Kate managed to get tangled and fell off into the sand. Unharmed she found it hilarious just laying there laughing. We met back up with our hotel man, he had set up a little camp for us and boiled some Chai tea, even had a packet of biscuits!! After we had a little chill, we helped to cook the chappattis for dinner, rolling them out like pizza dough and putting them on the stove. The guy had already cooked the curry so we didn't have anything to do there, he pulled out the Thali trays and dished up the grub, which was surprisingly nice - and sand free. We attracted some attention from the stray dogs so we threw them the left over food, in hope they wouldn't attack us!! Apart from the pooches, it was so peaceful there, it was a little cloudy so sadly we couldn't make out the stars but the moon was so bright and the light was bouncing off the sand so it wasn't as pitch black as I would've imagined it to be. After some chit chatter between us and the entertaining hotel man, we headed back home again, he was singing to us all the way back, finding everything funny, belting out his hyena laugh. He was absolutely brilliant.

The next day, none of us slept that well so it took us a while to get moving, we sat and had breakfast on the big cushions on the floor in reception, put all our bags into one room and walked into town. I think we under estimated the weather that day, it was scolding, our cold water bottles were instantly turned to an undrinkable warm liquid. On the way into town, we walked down some little dirt roads with small huts built up along the roadside, it felt like we were in dwarf town, we couldn't believe that people lived there. We had a string of little people following us down the road too saying "one photo, one photo", clearly their way of getting pocket money. Heading towards the old fort, we came across a lovely leather shop and ended up spending quite alot of time in there, sifting through their collection of bags and shoes. We all tried to be good because we didn't want to luge leather bits around with us for the rest of the trip but it was really difficult; everything was so cheap and gorgeous designs. I ended up buying a new satchel for my imaginary new job!! Couldn't resist, it's now stuffed down the back of my rucksack along with my sari, my bag is overflowing some what! After a long hot walk wondering the little cobbled alleys of the old fort, getting fed up of being constantly hassled by shop men and street sellers, we found a little rooftop cafe called Shiva; there were even other back packers in there!! It was a cute little box area, filled with cushions, wall art and hanging ornaments. We definitely sat there to long, finally picking ourselves up, we went back to discovering what was around the different corners of the built up sand stone fort and surrounding town. The guys we met from the Shiva cafe recommended a restaurant by the fort view point for lunch so we went to check it out, we sat in booths that were hoisted off the side of the building, it had a bit of a drop if anything did happened. I did test it before I put my trust in sitting there, it did take a while for my nervous belly to calm though. To cut a long story short, it was long wait for disappointing food. We've fitted in quite a few cities and alot of trains in the last 10 days, the travelling had started to catch up with us and were absolutely exhausted so just went back to the hotel to sort through our rucksacks, repacked everything then had some lazy time before tuk tuk'ing to a restaurant in town for dinner. The waiter man recommended the Rajasthan Thali; Rajasthan is the Indian state we were in. It was absolutely delicious, full of flavour, great variety and apparently an all you can eat. Every time we finished something they came and filled it up in an instant. Dangerous but the good news is, we've banned ourselves from eating bread now, no more naans or roti's for a while, to much bread has been consumed in India. Not long after dinner we had to catch our 11.30pm train to Jodhpur, the journey was an interesting start. We were in a 6 bed compartment carriage, two of the beds were taken up by a family with a young kid, who was already being rather noisy and they had taken up all the luggage compartments so we had nowhere for our rucksacks. The 6 bed compartment next to us was free so we high jacked that one, slowly people came to our carriage, which was invariably their carriage, so we had to just smile and direct them next door. Luckily they were hypnotised by our western smiles and kindly obliged to our request. To add another fun part to the journey, the train was crawling with mice, we all sat with our feet, and watched them all wind in and out of our luggage. I just tried to think of them as little hamsters, like the pets I used to have. There was one guy that sat in our cabin, he started up the usual conversation of where you from blah, he then continued to get his camera out, put batteries in his camera and then ask to take a photo of us. Hmm, we weren't impressed. We all gave a clear, NO! As time went on, turns out he wasn't the creep he started off to be and we ended the evening by playing cards with him. After reading a few chapters of my book, I fell asleep only to be woken up three hours later but the train man saying we had arrived in Jodhpur!