We spent a couple of days in Jaipur, the capitol of Rajasthan, looking at the old "Pink City" (it seems more orange to me) and the magnificent Amber Fort. However, being anxious to get out of the center of confrontation between the different castes and continue to outrun the monsoon, we decided to head further west to Jaisalmer in the middle of the Thar Desert. The old part of the town was built inside of a large fortress on a hill that overlooks the desert, and it was an important town among the ancient trade routes between India, the Middle East, and Europe. With such an incredible setting and history, my brother had the brilliant idea of wanting to re-enact one of the grand journeys of old, the camel safari.

Upon arriving in Jaisalmer from the train we went to a hotel, and then found out how to get on one of the safaris and left the following morning. A jeep took us several kilometers out into the desert passing many Jain temples and small villages with little square houses built out of yellow sandstone block until we met our camel crew. They then tied turbans around our heads, made us jump onto a camel, and we were off plodding along through the desert. It was not more than 10 or 15 minutes before I was having serious second thoughts about our new adventure because stretching my legs around the camel, which is much wider than a horse, gave me nothing but excruciating pain on the inside of my thighs and groin. After only a few hours we stopped for lunch, which was a welcome sight, but once I got off the camel I could not walk. I stood there and tried to stretch in order to regain some normalcy in my legs, but when I tried to move again I just stumbled and fell back into my camel.

Luckily, our camel drivers know enough about the heat of the desert in the middle of the day to not do anything during that time. So, Ian, my brother, and I all hobbled over to the shade under a thorn tree to rest and begin to fret about another three days of this pain. After a hot, spicy lunch, hot tea, and hot water sitting in the sun of the baking desert, we laid there under the tree like human water fountains pouring out sweat. At about four o'clock we set off again heading for one of the sand deserts, but when we arrived the "vast" sand desert was not much larger than a few football fields, and we could here the sound of a tractor plowing on the other side…not a completely desolate place. That night we made a small fire from the many dead, dry pieces of wood and tumble weeds and then slept on holey blankets out in the open trying to deflect dung beetles from rolling camel dung into our hair or up our pants. My brother also found a scorpion that had made a nice home in his backpack!

The next couple of days were very similar to the first except that we picked up a dog from the sand desert that followed us scurrying from shaded spot to shaded spot. The pain overall was worse, but I began to become more numb to it and would sit methodically bouncing along with the camel's steps trying to think about anything to keep my mind elsewhere. I can honestly say that even after hiking the Inca Trail, Patagonia, and Mount Kilimanjaro and face planting multiple times while sandboarding in Namibia, this was definitely the most painful experience of the trip thus far and those writers that romanticized about grand camel journeys across the deserts had obviously never ridden a camel for any length of time.

After returning from our expedition, we spent some time wandering around the old city which is well-known for its leather goods and silversmiths, but being overwhelmed with the heat of India we decided to begin moving north and headed toward Amritsar, the holy city of the Sikh religion and the home of the Golden Temple. Till next time, cheers.