Blog : Jaisalmer

We arrived to the City of Sand, Jaisalmer, just before lunchtime and wowzer it was so Arabian nights meets Aladdin! The overnight, 18h train, which hasn't been too bad, as our posh carriage had been virtually empty, had whisked us through miles of deserted desert, with just some weeds growing as the only sign of life. It was so weird looking out of the window and seeing nothing, nothing, nothing, sand, sand, sand, sand a d then the most impressive sand fort erupt out of the ground! Jaisalmer a old fort is made from rock and sand and stands to a pretty impressive size and looks a lot like a giant sandcastle perched on a hill! The city sprawled out around the fort and looked very Egyptian to me, with lots of small concrete houses with flat roofs packed in tightly together, with little terraces dotted around the rooftops. We had a pick up from the station which was good, as the second we got off the train we were harassed with 'come to my guesthouse', 'come in my tuktuk', 'come to my silk shop' etc and when were carrying out now pretty heavy day bags and backpacks (that have hardly any clothes in them, so I don't understand the weight gain!) it's the last thing you want, to be pulled left and right and effectively fought over! We saw our little dude holding a big sign with the name of our hotel on it, saying free pick up so we made a beeline straight for him and all got into a really cool desert jeep, a bit like Suzi the Suzuki at home, but with no doors (they'd been ripped off as a new form of air conditioning) and barely any boot door, so we all held onto our bags and seats so we didn't fall out!! We'd booked out guesthouse in advance from the Lonely Planet which is literally our bible in India, especially as we don't meet people half as easily as we have done throughout the rest of our travels and so we only have limited recommendations to go on! It was basic but clean and just outside the fort which made a good base for exploring and the staff running it were really chilled and funny, although in pretty sure that on the journey back to the guesthouse when we said Jaisalmer would be 'the' place to sit and do shisha on a roof terrace and asked if there were any places for hookar pipes, they thought we were seeking out hard drugs! (Which were offered to us more than once by people on the street over the next two days, as were we in Varanasi actually! Homeless looking people walk around muttering cocaine, ecstasy, opium etc... Whist giving you a bit of an indicative head wobble) Wed decided we wanted to go for lunch next as we were all pretty hungry and after all quickly showering we jumped back in the jeep and 'boy' - as all housekeeping staff or lackeys are called - dropped us off at the restaurant we wanted. We sat outside in a cute little courtyard area, which was absolutely stifling in the sun though, so we were all sweating buckets even before the spicy curry cane! The girls had a weird looking desert vegetable curry which they said was nice but I wasn't keen and I went for the Jaisalmer and Rajistan special which ended up being a watery, creamy soup with no flavour and weird corn dumplings bobbing around. So I sat and ate my burnt roti unhappily and then continued to polish off the shared spiced potatoes we'd ordered which were amazing!!! And about three garlic naans which had been plonked on the table. It's one thing for sure, I can't pass up any Indian food being left to waste, most of it is far to delish! And the thoughts of loosing weight in India are definitely not coming into fruition with all this food! After lunch we were all feeling really exhausted so decided to head back to our rooms for an hour of chill time before going on a camel safari trek.

The LP warns of cowboy travel agents that go in for the very hard sell on camel treks and how over priced they usually are and actually a bit s*** but we thought as were here it would be cool too, although we only wanted to do the sunrise trip other than a two day trek and sleeping in the desert because we all knew how much camels stink and how uncomfortable and dare I say it, a little boring two whole days of baron desert would be! Our guest house ran what looked like a good trip but it was astronomically priced, rs1000 for an evening 4-10pm with a simple chapatti and daal dinner, versus the rs500-700 LP said was the going rate IN SEASON (were out of season as too hot for most tourists!) and that was for a full day, including three meals!! But in the end we decided we didn't want to spend all our time training around travel agents to find the same trip cheaper and wasting the one and a half days only that we had in Jaisalmer. Plus it was the funny guy from the guesthouse that took us out into the desert and so we knew we'd have a good laugh! We got into the jeep for 40km worth of driving into the desert, even closer to the Pakistan boarder, which already felt pretty close with the military planes flying overhead the whole time! And we met our 'camel drivers', mine was a young boy, about 13 maybe who was obsessed with the SLR camera and kept wanting to take pictures and swizzle the zoom, although almost every single picture he took, the persons head was chopped out of the frame which was a bit annoying! My camel was the least mangy looking out of them all and called Lucky and the girls thought it was hilarious that once it had stood up it did a big wee, which they said was very me! We all laughed a lot harder though when Kate's Rocket stood up and took a massive poo!! Before we'd even walked 10m on the pretty uncomfortable makeshift pillow seats between the hump and the neck, we got accosted by a man selling Pepsi and telling us our camel drivers were thirsty and would need energy for the trek (only an hour) so please would we each buy then a drink for an extortionate amount. After a bit if haggling to a better but still way inflated price, we each ended up buying our drivers a Pepsi which they managed to collectively spill half of and then down and spit out the other half - with no thank you. Later in the trek Kate's driver, the only one that could speak English apologised and said that it was their bosses brother and so they're not allowed to say no or help us western tourists with a bit on conscience out of the situation!! We appreciated that. We walked sat on the camels backs for about twenty minutes or so, which was pretty uncomfortable in the nether regions and difficult to hold into the little stick, water bottle, camera and manage to keep both my feet in the stirrups as well! I wasn't a natural born horse or camel rider let's just say! Plus the camels really did real and all if them kept pooing as we were walking along and all of the drivers just chatted away to each other in Hindi so we didn't actually learn anything about the desert which was a bit annoying but we had fun all the same and it was a pretty cool view all around us. We passed a gypsy village settlement as well which actually looked pretty similar to the ones we have back at home. Donkeys roaming around and kids playing out in the open, but the actual houses were not caravans but very basic looking shacks that surely would blow down in one gust of wind. We were told that they make their money from the tourist camel rides which take us lot into the villages and the gypsy girls perform a traditional dance routine for money. We were all quite pleased when we didn't go in to do this as we felt we'd already been conned once! After a quick rest for the camels, where they sat down and we got off, which was a bit if a terrifying procedure, we fit back on and our drivers sat behind us and we trotted a little to our end destination - how they knew where they were going i'll never know as the whole desert and the sand dunes all looked identical! I didn't really like going fast on the camel as I was boy fed really dad out of my seat which hurt my legs and arse every time I hit back down and I could feel my boobs jiggling everywhere and I was trying to hold the camera to stop I'd falling and smashing against the wooden stick to hold on to and the whole seat on the back if the camel felt quite slushy and so I had to keep saying to my driver no camel racing, slow only! But I think he mistook my screams for laugher and kept making us go faster, which I paid for the next day with a massively bruised bum!

It was a much more comfortable temperature later in the evening and although the dusk light meant flies and Mosquitos, they seemed to he a lot more interested in the camels than they did us and our deet smothered arms! We haven't have very much luck with sunrise and sunset timed tours over our whole six month trip, always managing to go on the cloudy or over cast days and surprise surprise we lost the sun about twenty minutes before we should have done, behind a cloud so the beautiful sunset in the desert that we'd be promised didnt materialise! We walked the last 100m or so to the camp that had been set up by our guest room boy for us all to eat dinner, after we'd each tipped our camel drivers, way over the 'going rate' LP suggested, to no thank you's and questions for more. My cheeky sod of a bit even asked for pens to do his school work or paper (which clearly I wasn't carrying in my bumbag, even after he'd told me he didn't go to school! I find the constant expectation for money and more across India quite hard, as once you say yes to one you say yes to all and unfortunately I do believe in most cases that charity belongs at home and if I wouldn't dream of giving £5 at home to a child, why would I here!? But anyway! We sat at a table and chatted with our boy who had learnt his impeccable English solely from tourists! And made lots of jokes about running away to Pakistan as which of us he would have as his second wife! He showed us how to make chapattis and we all had a go, rolling the dough very flat and cooking it in the hot ring he'd set up on top of a gas canister from the jeep. We had chapattis, daal and a paneer and veg curry, which although all cold were really nice and there was a whole packet of biscuits and chai tea which we absolutely demolished! We chatted about what life was like in Jaisalmer to him and what it was like to have an arranged marriage, how it was to be a Muslim in India and what the tourism industry in Jaisamler was like, which was al lready interesting and before we knew it it was half ten at night or so! Whilst we'd sat chatting and eating it had gotten really dark and so quiet! We had a couple of stray dogs sat near us, I guess searching for any scraps of food, but other than that we could see any other signs of life. I had to silence out all the sounds we could hear though of various creepy crawlies croaking and buzzing and I weed very quickly with my bum pretty far away from the ground, just in case a snake came out the middle of no where or whatever!! We went to bed once we'd gotten in, as we wanted to get up and see Jaisalmer the following day before we caught the train to Jodhpur that night.

We were all up at a reasonable time and ate a cute toast and banana breakfast on little Moroccan style rugs and cushions on the floor outside our rooms, before heading off to explore. I wore my salwar top with leggings as I thought I ought to be pretty covered up in a city with such a high Muslim population - 50% Hindu and 50% Muslim. And the girls felt pretty uncomfortable almost straight away stepping outside with their shoulders on show, even in the glaring heat! I really love just wandering around the Indian cities we've been too just looking, as there is alway something I've not seen before going on! And we wandered for ages around the streets outside the fort and then managed to navigate our way into the fort, where the streets were similar to Varanasi (although at 100mph slower!) being so narrow and cluttered with books, post cards and material for sale. We were all quite pleased that we brought our sarees in Varanasi though as we didn't see any nice shops in Jaisalmer, even though it is meant to be famous for its silk! So I didn't curse having to carry such a weighty bag too much later than night on the train! Just inside the fort I managed to pick up an awesome bargain, a gorgeously stained and weathered leather bound book with blue recycled tissue paper pages that I thought would look great as my coffee table travelling photo album. It was only rs200 (less than £3) and probably might have cost closer to £70 at home its that nice! I had to take advantage of such a bargain (prices are cheaper when out of season) but I didn't really think about the logistics of actually carrying such a big flat item though and it was a bit of a squeeze to get it into my backpack! I loved wandering around the winding streets of the fort, which always seemed to lead somewhere entirely different to where you think! Although I'm still finding it impossible to get used to the smell of urine every corner and the ring of fire in the evening is getting a bit tedious! We stopped at a little rooftop restaurant at about 2pm for a cold drink as we were all so hot and sweaty and beginning to get a bit bothered and we stumbled across this really cute looking place, with cushions on the roof so up we went. There were a couple of Israeli dudes up there sat playing banjos which we all had to stifle laughs at as Nelen hates people who travel with musical instruments and try to play and sing when they clearly can't!! They invited us to sit with them, which was a bit weird as there was only one seating area anyway but they were friendly enough and had just come from Varanasi, the same as us and before that from Nepal and Everest base camp. So we chatted for a bit and he showed us his new SLR camera and looked to me to talk to him about photography which I epically failed at, as I obviously know nothing more than point and squirt but the big camera does make me look a bit more of a professional!! I had a much needed freshly squeezed orange juice as I trusted the kitchen not to put tap water in it like they do at the street juice stands and Kate had a yummy vegetable kofta curry which we all ha a mouthful of. Once the bit started singing Hallelujah and asking us to join in we had to leave effort we all burst into laughter and so we carried on pottering around, avoiding a lot of mangey looking dogs that we gave the 'no jab' crossed finger too whilst running away, not wanting to catch rabies or anything, much to the amusement if the locals that saw us!! We found an amazing view point which we all messed around having pictures taken and using the timer... We could see across the whole of the city and also into a nearby restaurant which the Israeli bits had actually recommended. We decided it must have been fate to have found it without even looking to so up we went to the rooftop and sat in cost little sofa alcoves overlooking the desert and ordered curry. The food was really disappointing and bland and we left feeling distinctly unimpressed - stupid Israeli boys for recommending it! We walked some more and stuck our heads I to an extortionate silver jewellery shop before coming out pretty quickly and the after realising we were pretty lost, jumped in a tuktuk and tried to direct him to an ice cream shop we'd spied earlier, near our guest house. The girls all had a scoop of ice cream and I dairy milk bar, which was the biggest treat as it had been in the fridge and was so hard and cold, instead of the usual s***ty melted chocolate they sell here! It really satisfied my chocolate cravings :)

We went back to our hotel and packed up all out bags, which was a bit more tricky now with all the new purchases. I had to do a ruthless throwing out session, where most of my little straps tops got the boot, as they any be worn in India and were taking up valuable space. I thought I'd treat myself to new vest tops when I get home - literally almost my whole wardrobe that I started out with has either been lost, thrown away or swapped!! One packed we went for a quick dinner to a local canteen where we all managed to squeeze in huge Thalis (school dinner trays with lots of small compartments with curry and daal and rice and chapattis in each one) This place was swarming with locals, who all have us a right eyeing as we walked in, probably because we were the only westerners in there though and we were all feeling a bit silly so we were saying hello to everyone, waving and giggling!! One man actually shielded the eyes of his son from us which we thought was hilarious and I imagined him telling the boy we were girls of Satan's hareem! The restaurant kept serving us seconds, thirds and fourths of whatever curry we were polishing off. By far our favourite was the spicy aubergine and tomato yummmm :) we all felt like we literally had to be rolled out of the restaurant once again, after just scoffing and scoffing! It's so hard not to when the food tastes so good, although I'm paying for it with my Indian pot belly! Straight to the gym for me when I get home - just over two weeks to go now, which is scary! Although we've name talking about when Al leaves us the day before Kate and I fly home, to fly to Indonesia for a month of travelling on her own. After the restaurant we paid our slightly extravagant hotel bill (16 bottles of mineral water in one an a half days!!) as headed off for the train station and to Jodhpur for a day before our flight to Mumbai. I find it very strange that so many people sleep on the floor in the train station, just randomly in the middle of the waiting area, underneath the big arrival screens on platforms and in the doorways to disgustingly stinky toilets. I just don't understand why, as most of the trains we've caught here in the north have been pretty punctual at leaving on time an so why would people arrive so early to catch one an just ed down for the night in the train station...? Baffles me! The train was a bit grubby this time round and at s*** times, 11:30pm to 5:30am and so I knew we'd all be knackered when we got to Jodhpur and only really get half a day of action, so I tried to arch as many zzzz's on the train as possible. Although we'd swapped seats a our compartment was full of a family and talk their massive amount of luggage so we and our backpacks would t for in and so we sat in the empty seats in the curtained six man compartment next door and had to field people into our seats if they had less luggage! I chose to sleep on the very top bunk, even though there wasn't much of a safety rail, as I really didn't like all the mice that were running around the floor in and out of all our luggage. They were darting about and I could see then out the corner of my eye, so wanted to get as high up and away from them as I could!! Bring on Jodhpur then...