January 7th. Great Thar Desert, Rajasthan.
Jan. 7th, 2007 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whathoThe only time I'll ever get the dates to match....
January 7th 2004 is the only day in my life thus far on which I wake in a desert and fall asleep sixteen hours later still in a desert. That makes it fairly remarkable for me. So it pains me slightly that, though I remember being woken by a man with an indescribably seedy voice crooning 'Good morning' through the tent flap and trying my darnedest to wash off yesterday's double layer of sunblock and mosquito repellant and general deserty goo with wet wipes and a single jug of tepid water, and then I remember running to the top of the sand dunes where Laura and Joe have been sitting since sunrise – I caught last night's sunset but I wasn't doing sunrises at that stage – and I actually remember just about every step that I took on foot and on the camel and, seriously, I remember the entire day minute by minute… I've forgotten what I had for breakfast. I think it was an omelette. An omelette is a fair bet in India. A very ubiquitous breakfast. But I can't be sure. And chai. There would've been chai in thermos flasks. I remember the plates. I'm almost sure it was omelettes. I ate it on a mat on the sand, watching C and Pam doing yoga on the dunes and thinking that was probably going to be a keepable memory for them, though personally I prefer omelettes to yoga. I do hope it was omelettes.
When we've packed our rucksacks, lobbed them in the jeep, bought our water and the like, two of the camel drivers come galloping down into the camp much faster than we really had any notion the camels could go, which I think is fairly sadistic of them. I've organised a camel swap with Jane: much as I enjoyed yesterday's solitary headlong dash, it was a tad unsociable at times and I fancy staying back with the group today. My new mount is a massive, shaggy, solid looking old brute called Bura, and my new driver is an ancient, weathered-looking man with a massive turban and an equally substantial beard. I like him. He's sullen and purposeful and he doesn't say much. I mount up successfully this time, remembering when to lean and everything. I trust you're sufficiently impressed.
We push off westwards into terrain much the same as that we covered yesterday and beyond the whole being on a camel in the middle of a desert OMG thing, there's not a great deal to occupy, which is fine. Actually it's lovely. We do see some wild camels and their baby wild camels. Otherwise it's pretty bare. But noisy. Dan and I had a brief and relatively pointless conversation last night during which we somehow decided that it'd be a good plan to rally the entire camel train into singing 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary' during the journey. I have no idea why. Sadly, or not seeing as I've totally gone off the idea by morning, we couldn't remember the Piccadilly/Leicester Square line. But Dan seems to have a contingency plan and is encouraging the group to sing that bloody awful scout song instead. Ging gang etc. Worse still, it's working. My driver is singing it.
Our first stop is at a sizeable watering hole: a walled-off lake where the camels barge through the tight ranks of buffalo and take a nonchalant slurp. I get the impression that they don't much like to do that in front of people. 'I don't really need to be drinking water, you know. I'm only doing this to be polite.' We don't stop for long… there's nothing much to see beyond the animals and a few tracks, toiletish shrubs and a distant village, so we just stretch our legs for ten minutes or so and head back to the waiting camels. But there is a herdsman standing by in charge of the buffalo, and a couple of friends alongside him. They have admirable turbans that draw the interest of the photographers. Pam has a CD player with her – she's been listening to Rajasthani folk music she bought in Jaipur as she rides. As a thank you to the herdsman for letting her take a shot of him, she shoves the earphones into his lugs and turns it on. He laughs hysterically and dances with one of his pals. Now I snatch my photograph, when none of them are watching. I've discovered I find taking portraits so intrusive as to be impossible, even if you have permission, so I have to steal them.
We push off again. The land is subtly changing now, becoming not hilly yet but bumpy with lots of rocks to step over and the occasional little gully that results in a camel's doing the closest thing it does to a jump, though it does it very unwillingly. Or mine does anyway. I'm enjoying Bura to begin with. He's a fairly plodding sort of fellow with a bouncy trot, and he keeps good pace with the main pack. But there's something very much amiss with the saddle that I've been noticing more since we left the watering hole – it's listing to one side slightly and pressing shockingly powerfully into what I've only recently learned is a very important nerve in my thigh. Within another half an hour I'm more or less in agony and am relishing the trotting just because it provides a slightly different sensation. When we stop for lunch, in an oval arena of straggly trees and in what to me is blazing midday heat, though actually it's winter, my entire right leg has gone elsewhere. On the plus side it doesn't hurt any more, but on the down side I've lost almost all sensation in it and have to move it with my hands. Bummer.
Lunch is delightful… not just numerous hot vegetable dishes and two kinds of bread but lots of lovely little nibbly bits and dried figs and the like. And the immense relief of not being on the camel, which has suddenly become an instrument of mild torture. Not having two functioning legs with which to grip and maintain my balance, I'm quite nervous now of riding again… I was having to do peculiar things with my upper body to stay upright as it was. Still, I can entertain the others with my amusing new hand-aided walk, and they suggest I seek out a masseur when we get to Jaisalmer. It sounds a grand idea only presumably that sort of thing involves a certain amount of not being fully dressed and oil and the like, and you know how I feel about that.
I shift some of the cushioning about and attempt to beat the errant saddle into submission before remounting. It seems to have wandered forward too far onto the lumpier and more lopsided portions of the camel. Once I'm on, and getting on is something of a trial, it does seem a little less damaging, but and I'm still having to hurl myself about in an effort to keep my balance. And while trotting, it's becoming something of a trial staying put. It's doing my shoulders in somewhat. Luckily, my driver notices and administers a series of violent karate chops to my upper back. Which is surprising, but very helpful.
In the middle of the afternoon, we come into a village… a much more developed village than the mud hut hamlet we encountered yesterday, with things akin to roads and a couple of little shops and the like. The drivers walk the camels to the other side while we dismount and take a good forty-five minutes to explore its handful of streets and stretch our legs, which for me still involves swinging the dead leg forward. I'm not in an overly fantastic mood. Pam and C are talking excitedly about the possibility of handling their own camels tomorrow, and allegedly we're going to finish off with a mad gallop into the outskirts of the city. Actually this slightly sickens me. I had a good canter yesterday and it all felt fine, but I don't want to be on a galloping camel without all my legs intact. I say as much, feeling slightly snowed under, and hobble comically onwards. Joe has found a dhaba, a slightly ramshackle roadside eating-place, and he's handing out sweets to a few local kids there. I don't think that was his initial intention, but it happens if you'll wonder around looking like a tourist and carrying sweets. I blag one off him – it's like a turbocharged parma violet made entirely out of e-numbers – and lurch to the top of a nearby rise to take in the view, which is actually pretty stunning. It's flat desert most of the way, but the route we're set to take to camp goes through a deep rocky valley and looks eminently explorable. Then I turn the other way and freak out completely. It's letting-out time at the local school and there's a torrent of blue-shirted kids streaming along the main road. They spot me standing on the rise looking unbelievably peculiar and touristy, and then they point and en masse head towards me. I'd guess about seventy of them. I contemplate running for the hills, but I can't run and it'd look stupid, so I stay put, and very quickly I'm surrounded.
'Hello,' I say, and they laugh. Fine.
Jay, the head camel man, comes to my rescue along with a couple of my fellows who apparently quite enjoy being mobbed by overexcited kids. It's much less overwhelming after that and I can talk to a couple of the kids on their own. I point to their schoolbooks and ask if they enjoy their lessons. One boy pulls a face and says no, which is fair enough really. Jay turns to him and ticks him off very thoroughly, saying he should be grateful for his education and it's important that he enjoys it and works very hard, and I sort of mumble that he's, what, ten? But, you know, fair point. It'll be better for the kid if he takes Jay's attitude. Though I never did at ten. And Jay spoke to him in advanced English, which evidently he understood, so I've a notion he'll be all right.
We regroup at the camels, still with a group of the children in tow. Due to my vocal moaning about my deceased limb, I've been assigned yet another camel, rumour has it a very amenable one. He is, in fact, a total darling, very pale and soft and quiet with an even walk and a trot you can barely feel. I ask his name. The driver says something that sounds like 'Alan'. It can't be Alan, but no way am I going to ask him to repeat it because Alan is a perfect name for a camel. Then the driver gives me the reins and I say something along the lines of 'egad, are you sure', but apparently he is. Now, I go a bit peculiar when I'm in charge of reins, which for sound reasons I very seldom have been. The control freakery comes out. Because, look, if you pull it this way, the camel goes this way. Such power. So I do that for a bit until the driver points me in the direction we're actually supposed to be going and we head into the valley. I can't really explain these hills. They're like something you'd build out of the innards of a quarry; I can't quite imagine how they formed. They're pink and lumpy and mostly bare. It's really fairly great.
I'm taking it very slowly now and the others are getting ahead of me. My driver is singing a song about how riding camels is no fun unless you let them gallop. I think this is more than a little insensitive of him and then steer Alan gently around a small rock to show that I can. But as the valley opens out and the camp hoves into view, we launch into a bit of a trot, and Alan's such a kind trotter that it doesn't try my balance at all. In ten minutes we're in front of the tent. I drop the camel myself and am unnecessarily proud.
The new campsite is stunning… an open plain with a dry river bed running around it and then a wall of great big rocky hills all around us. Though my leg's still not doing half of what I suggest it do, I have to make my way to the top of the nearest rise to check the view. Anyway, some of the others are excitedly showing off the tiny cakes of opium they blagged off one of the drivers and are intending to consume later in the evening, and I'd quite like to get out of there before one of them decides I'd be riotous fun if I was stoned. Pam agrees to come with me and we make our way slowly up what is essentially a heap of boulders, and when we reach the top I have to curse for about ten minutes because I've forgotten my camera and the view is just astonishing. And unexpected. It's a plain full of wind turbines, hundreds of them strung out across the horizon, and the sun setting pinkly behind them. We stand there watching till the sun's almost down, applauding slightly because it's really that good, then we amble back down to camp, breaking Dan's nearby moment of zen with our unnecessary noise.
That evening, after we've eaten (and after some others of us have eaten opium and find it makes them laugh and then, disappointingly, fall asleep), a troupe of Rajasthani dancers drives out from Jaisalmer and puts on a little show for us. I've not really got into traditional Rajasthani folk music, sadly – I've played a little on the guitar and it's very intuitive and immensely entertaining to perform, but I don't find it so rewarding to listen to – yet it's a great thing to be seeing mid-desert, very skilfully done, and, oddly, I still remember some of the tunes. Also, there's a little boy of about eight who dances very well for us and tries his hardest to get us all on our feet and dancing too. I've overcome hefty grown men who want me to dance many a time, so a small boy's not going to do it, but Laura's much more of a sport and gets very much into the spirit of things. And then Joe stands up and spins the kid around by the hands until his turban flies off. Which is fairly untraditional, but the kid seems to enjoy it.
I deliberately go to bed with the music still playing. There's still a strong party going on out there, but it makes a pretty fine soundtrack to the close of probably the only day I'll spend crossing a desert on camelback, waking up and falling asleep on the sand.
January 7th 2004 is the only day in my life thus far on which I wake in a desert and fall asleep sixteen hours later still in a desert. That makes it fairly remarkable for me. So it pains me slightly that, though I remember being woken by a man with an indescribably seedy voice crooning 'Good morning' through the tent flap and trying my darnedest to wash off yesterday's double layer of sunblock and mosquito repellant and general deserty goo with wet wipes and a single jug of tepid water, and then I remember running to the top of the sand dunes where Laura and Joe have been sitting since sunrise – I caught last night's sunset but I wasn't doing sunrises at that stage – and I actually remember just about every step that I took on foot and on the camel and, seriously, I remember the entire day minute by minute… I've forgotten what I had for breakfast. I think it was an omelette. An omelette is a fair bet in India. A very ubiquitous breakfast. But I can't be sure. And chai. There would've been chai in thermos flasks. I remember the plates. I'm almost sure it was omelettes. I ate it on a mat on the sand, watching C and Pam doing yoga on the dunes and thinking that was probably going to be a keepable memory for them, though personally I prefer omelettes to yoga. I do hope it was omelettes.
When we've packed our rucksacks, lobbed them in the jeep, bought our water and the like, two of the camel drivers come galloping down into the camp much faster than we really had any notion the camels could go, which I think is fairly sadistic of them. I've organised a camel swap with Jane: much as I enjoyed yesterday's solitary headlong dash, it was a tad unsociable at times and I fancy staying back with the group today. My new mount is a massive, shaggy, solid looking old brute called Bura, and my new driver is an ancient, weathered-looking man with a massive turban and an equally substantial beard. I like him. He's sullen and purposeful and he doesn't say much. I mount up successfully this time, remembering when to lean and everything. I trust you're sufficiently impressed.
We push off westwards into terrain much the same as that we covered yesterday and beyond the whole being on a camel in the middle of a desert OMG thing, there's not a great deal to occupy, which is fine. Actually it's lovely. We do see some wild camels and their baby wild camels. Otherwise it's pretty bare. But noisy. Dan and I had a brief and relatively pointless conversation last night during which we somehow decided that it'd be a good plan to rally the entire camel train into singing 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary' during the journey. I have no idea why. Sadly, or not seeing as I've totally gone off the idea by morning, we couldn't remember the Piccadilly/Leicester Square line. But Dan seems to have a contingency plan and is encouraging the group to sing that bloody awful scout song instead. Ging gang etc. Worse still, it's working. My driver is singing it.
Our first stop is at a sizeable watering hole: a walled-off lake where the camels barge through the tight ranks of buffalo and take a nonchalant slurp. I get the impression that they don't much like to do that in front of people. 'I don't really need to be drinking water, you know. I'm only doing this to be polite.' We don't stop for long… there's nothing much to see beyond the animals and a few tracks, toiletish shrubs and a distant village, so we just stretch our legs for ten minutes or so and head back to the waiting camels. But there is a herdsman standing by in charge of the buffalo, and a couple of friends alongside him. They have admirable turbans that draw the interest of the photographers. Pam has a CD player with her – she's been listening to Rajasthani folk music she bought in Jaipur as she rides. As a thank you to the herdsman for letting her take a shot of him, she shoves the earphones into his lugs and turns it on. He laughs hysterically and dances with one of his pals. Now I snatch my photograph, when none of them are watching. I've discovered I find taking portraits so intrusive as to be impossible, even if you have permission, so I have to steal them.
We push off again. The land is subtly changing now, becoming not hilly yet but bumpy with lots of rocks to step over and the occasional little gully that results in a camel's doing the closest thing it does to a jump, though it does it very unwillingly. Or mine does anyway. I'm enjoying Bura to begin with. He's a fairly plodding sort of fellow with a bouncy trot, and he keeps good pace with the main pack. But there's something very much amiss with the saddle that I've been noticing more since we left the watering hole – it's listing to one side slightly and pressing shockingly powerfully into what I've only recently learned is a very important nerve in my thigh. Within another half an hour I'm more or less in agony and am relishing the trotting just because it provides a slightly different sensation. When we stop for lunch, in an oval arena of straggly trees and in what to me is blazing midday heat, though actually it's winter, my entire right leg has gone elsewhere. On the plus side it doesn't hurt any more, but on the down side I've lost almost all sensation in it and have to move it with my hands. Bummer.
Lunch is delightful… not just numerous hot vegetable dishes and two kinds of bread but lots of lovely little nibbly bits and dried figs and the like. And the immense relief of not being on the camel, which has suddenly become an instrument of mild torture. Not having two functioning legs with which to grip and maintain my balance, I'm quite nervous now of riding again… I was having to do peculiar things with my upper body to stay upright as it was. Still, I can entertain the others with my amusing new hand-aided walk, and they suggest I seek out a masseur when we get to Jaisalmer. It sounds a grand idea only presumably that sort of thing involves a certain amount of not being fully dressed and oil and the like, and you know how I feel about that.
I shift some of the cushioning about and attempt to beat the errant saddle into submission before remounting. It seems to have wandered forward too far onto the lumpier and more lopsided portions of the camel. Once I'm on, and getting on is something of a trial, it does seem a little less damaging, but and I'm still having to hurl myself about in an effort to keep my balance. And while trotting, it's becoming something of a trial staying put. It's doing my shoulders in somewhat. Luckily, my driver notices and administers a series of violent karate chops to my upper back. Which is surprising, but very helpful.
In the middle of the afternoon, we come into a village… a much more developed village than the mud hut hamlet we encountered yesterday, with things akin to roads and a couple of little shops and the like. The drivers walk the camels to the other side while we dismount and take a good forty-five minutes to explore its handful of streets and stretch our legs, which for me still involves swinging the dead leg forward. I'm not in an overly fantastic mood. Pam and C are talking excitedly about the possibility of handling their own camels tomorrow, and allegedly we're going to finish off with a mad gallop into the outskirts of the city. Actually this slightly sickens me. I had a good canter yesterday and it all felt fine, but I don't want to be on a galloping camel without all my legs intact. I say as much, feeling slightly snowed under, and hobble comically onwards. Joe has found a dhaba, a slightly ramshackle roadside eating-place, and he's handing out sweets to a few local kids there. I don't think that was his initial intention, but it happens if you'll wonder around looking like a tourist and carrying sweets. I blag one off him – it's like a turbocharged parma violet made entirely out of e-numbers – and lurch to the top of a nearby rise to take in the view, which is actually pretty stunning. It's flat desert most of the way, but the route we're set to take to camp goes through a deep rocky valley and looks eminently explorable. Then I turn the other way and freak out completely. It's letting-out time at the local school and there's a torrent of blue-shirted kids streaming along the main road. They spot me standing on the rise looking unbelievably peculiar and touristy, and then they point and en masse head towards me. I'd guess about seventy of them. I contemplate running for the hills, but I can't run and it'd look stupid, so I stay put, and very quickly I'm surrounded.
'Hello,' I say, and they laugh. Fine.
Jay, the head camel man, comes to my rescue along with a couple of my fellows who apparently quite enjoy being mobbed by overexcited kids. It's much less overwhelming after that and I can talk to a couple of the kids on their own. I point to their schoolbooks and ask if they enjoy their lessons. One boy pulls a face and says no, which is fair enough really. Jay turns to him and ticks him off very thoroughly, saying he should be grateful for his education and it's important that he enjoys it and works very hard, and I sort of mumble that he's, what, ten? But, you know, fair point. It'll be better for the kid if he takes Jay's attitude. Though I never did at ten. And Jay spoke to him in advanced English, which evidently he understood, so I've a notion he'll be all right.
We regroup at the camels, still with a group of the children in tow. Due to my vocal moaning about my deceased limb, I've been assigned yet another camel, rumour has it a very amenable one. He is, in fact, a total darling, very pale and soft and quiet with an even walk and a trot you can barely feel. I ask his name. The driver says something that sounds like 'Alan'. It can't be Alan, but no way am I going to ask him to repeat it because Alan is a perfect name for a camel. Then the driver gives me the reins and I say something along the lines of 'egad, are you sure', but apparently he is. Now, I go a bit peculiar when I'm in charge of reins, which for sound reasons I very seldom have been. The control freakery comes out. Because, look, if you pull it this way, the camel goes this way. Such power. So I do that for a bit until the driver points me in the direction we're actually supposed to be going and we head into the valley. I can't really explain these hills. They're like something you'd build out of the innards of a quarry; I can't quite imagine how they formed. They're pink and lumpy and mostly bare. It's really fairly great.
I'm taking it very slowly now and the others are getting ahead of me. My driver is singing a song about how riding camels is no fun unless you let them gallop. I think this is more than a little insensitive of him and then steer Alan gently around a small rock to show that I can. But as the valley opens out and the camp hoves into view, we launch into a bit of a trot, and Alan's such a kind trotter that it doesn't try my balance at all. In ten minutes we're in front of the tent. I drop the camel myself and am unnecessarily proud.
The new campsite is stunning… an open plain with a dry river bed running around it and then a wall of great big rocky hills all around us. Though my leg's still not doing half of what I suggest it do, I have to make my way to the top of the nearest rise to check the view. Anyway, some of the others are excitedly showing off the tiny cakes of opium they blagged off one of the drivers and are intending to consume later in the evening, and I'd quite like to get out of there before one of them decides I'd be riotous fun if I was stoned. Pam agrees to come with me and we make our way slowly up what is essentially a heap of boulders, and when we reach the top I have to curse for about ten minutes because I've forgotten my camera and the view is just astonishing. And unexpected. It's a plain full of wind turbines, hundreds of them strung out across the horizon, and the sun setting pinkly behind them. We stand there watching till the sun's almost down, applauding slightly because it's really that good, then we amble back down to camp, breaking Dan's nearby moment of zen with our unnecessary noise.
That evening, after we've eaten (and after some others of us have eaten opium and find it makes them laugh and then, disappointingly, fall asleep), a troupe of Rajasthani dancers drives out from Jaisalmer and puts on a little show for us. I've not really got into traditional Rajasthani folk music, sadly – I've played a little on the guitar and it's very intuitive and immensely entertaining to perform, but I don't find it so rewarding to listen to – yet it's a great thing to be seeing mid-desert, very skilfully done, and, oddly, I still remember some of the tunes. Also, there's a little boy of about eight who dances very well for us and tries his hardest to get us all on our feet and dancing too. I've overcome hefty grown men who want me to dance many a time, so a small boy's not going to do it, but Laura's much more of a sport and gets very much into the spirit of things. And then Joe stands up and spins the kid around by the hands until his turban flies off. Which is fairly untraditional, but the kid seems to enjoy it.
I deliberately go to bed with the music still playing. There's still a strong party going on out there, but it makes a pretty fine soundtrack to the close of probably the only day I'll spend crossing a desert on camelback, waking up and falling asleep on the sand.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 02:47 pm (UTC)The Adventures of Geoffrey the Assassin and Alan the Camel should sell like hotcakes though.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 02:49 pm (UTC)