India. January 9th. Jaisalmer.
Jun. 7th, 2007 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whathoThree months? That's a bit rubbish. Sorry about that. It's Tiniago's coming home that reminded me.
Today, Sid turns us loose in the city while he gets some paperwork done or some such thing. I have vague thoughts of war-games in the foundations of the fort. It's that sort of town… warrens of desert-coloured, battlement-shaped houses at the foot of a desert-coloured fort. In a desert. I'm fairly in love with Jaisalmer. And I'm here. That's the astonishing part. I saw a photo of it a couple of years before and I thought 'what a place', and now I'm here. Which is a little bit wowish. But the major goal of the day for my roommate C and my neighbour Pam – who are up at a silly hour with a view to yoga-ing the morning away by the poolside – is to procure a massage. My aching hip and frankly most of the remainder of my camel-ravaged body say that the pair very much have their senses about them, but the parts of my brain that insist I wouldn't enjoy being smeared in oils and partially nudified and all that say otherwise, and I'm totally going with otherwise.
Besides, Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide between them suggests that those with rupees to burn in Jaisalmer ought to seeking out patchwork quilts and embroidered cushion covers, so the first thing we do post breakfast (a banana – I wasn't braving the wobbly red things) is to rickshaw our way to the foot of the fort and duck into the very first fabric shop we encounter. We is currently myself, Pam, C and Dan, as per Delhi. T' others have formed their own various groups and singles. We'll get a bit more mixed as we go on. We're not massively cliquey. So I sit cross-legged on a pile of rugs, drinking chai, and enjoying once again the spectacle of men throwing silks all over the floor and Pam and C angsting over whether or not they want to buy them. Except this time I get very sneaky about it and decide I kind of want a couple of cushion covers myself, only there's no way I'm getting involved in all that bargaining nonsense. This is my technique. Let Dan barter the cushion covers down to the desired price, then say 'I'll have one of them too'. It's pretty straightforward.
Laden with the requisite patchwork quilts (C's bought a beauty and now has to cart it around the entire world for the next year: her advice to others on year-long jaunts around the globe is to end with India, not to start with it) and cushion covers, we stroll out into the stupidly bright sunshine and up into the fort. In its main square, which is a dusty hub of stalls and a temple and havelis on three sides, Joe is sitting on a sort of plinth or a septic tank or something, taking photographs and watching Jaisalmer do its general things. We trot over and show off our buyings, then we sit on the tank with him and have a bit of a dekho as well. He points out a particularly belligerent cow that's been shoving its nose repeatedly into a basket of red carrots and getting elbowed irreverently aside for its troubles. I marvel slightly, because that more or less happens in the opening chapter of Kim.
Some time in the afternoon, after we've found a tiny internet café in one of the lanes and I've 'phoned home for the first time 'cause one of the two computers is broken – I feel a bit weird when my mum mentions my cat, but otherwise it's fine and I get to say that I've spent the past few days crossing the desert on a camel, which I'd not told her was on the itinerary – Pam and C go for their massage. It's going to take about an hour and I'm not massively up for sitting in the little hallway of the house while they get pummelled, so I take a solo jaunt about the lanes. Which I've not yet done in India… been properly alone. Ignoring the fact that all the lanes curves back into the square eventually and there's nearly always one of our number hanging around there. But still. I'm mildly proud. I spend a good forty-five minutes or so winding in and out of the lanes. I buy a bottle of water, accidentally walk into a football game, join Jo and Laura in a silverware shop where I snaffle another cup of free chai, get butted in the chest by a massive bull with horns that very fortunately go either side of my torso – I'm sufficiently ticked off with it that I shoulder it aside and bark at it, forgetting that it's a massive great bull - then finally I end up in the massage parlour wondering if maybe C isn't dead. She's more or less comatose and is being comprehensively oiled by a young woman. Pam says not to try and talk to her. There's no point. I nod politely at the owner's small daughter instead, who giggles incessantly. I pretend to be offended and berate the child. She giggles more. I'm in a stupidly good mood.
Several of us convene again in the fort's main square. John's in conversation with a boy of maybe twelve, who turns out not only to be fluent in English but also has several words of Spanish, French and Italian. He's another one who talks to the tourists. He teaches us a few choice insults in Hindi. It passes the time. Mel whizzes by on the back of total stranger's moped. She says something in passing about going off to get her horoscope written. Her sister looks briefly concerned. Shortly before we begin to think of dinner, which is frankly shockingly late for people who forgot to have lunch, John mentions that the night before we all arrived in Jaisalmer, he went to an Italian restaurant at the top of the fort and had pasta. He thinks we ought to go there again tonight. The genius of this suggestion is beyond anything I've ever encountered. It's a week of spice that does it. It occurs to me that I've not been ill or anything, which isn't what I'd expected, so it's not that my stomach needs a break or anything, but it sounds such a fantastic change. It's almost as exciting as anything else on the itinerary.
The restaurant is right at the top of the fort, on the open roof of a tallish building, and the view is of the sun setting over the desert, which, you know, even after all these days, isn't a view you readily get bored of. I have ravioli. It's pretty much divine. We all steal Dan's bruschetta and have to chip in to buy him another round. While the others head back to the hotel, Dan, C, Pam and I linger awhile at the foot of the fort. We're leaving tomorrow for the village of Bhenswara. Though there's nothing much more fun than being on the road and having nothing more pressing to do than getting to the next new place, I don't wholly want to leave. Dan's finds us a German bakery – there are dozens of these in the tourist traps, though I doubt many of them have much to do with Germany – where we buy a collection of rum balls for dessert purposes and sit out on the street, talking and eating and watching. Plenty to watch. Across the road is a government-licensed Bhang lassi shop. There's seldom a boring view in this country.
We walk back towards the main road in search of a rickshaw, stopping on route to share a glass of milk badam out of a street stall. We stand in the middle of a heaving, smiling crowd, in the dark, in the coolish air, passing round this communal, warmish glass, not caring much for hygiene, thinking it's just about the most delicious thing we've ever tasted. We toast one another a bit.
Today, Sid turns us loose in the city while he gets some paperwork done or some such thing. I have vague thoughts of war-games in the foundations of the fort. It's that sort of town… warrens of desert-coloured, battlement-shaped houses at the foot of a desert-coloured fort. In a desert. I'm fairly in love with Jaisalmer. And I'm here. That's the astonishing part. I saw a photo of it a couple of years before and I thought 'what a place', and now I'm here. Which is a little bit wowish. But the major goal of the day for my roommate C and my neighbour Pam – who are up at a silly hour with a view to yoga-ing the morning away by the poolside – is to procure a massage. My aching hip and frankly most of the remainder of my camel-ravaged body say that the pair very much have their senses about them, but the parts of my brain that insist I wouldn't enjoy being smeared in oils and partially nudified and all that say otherwise, and I'm totally going with otherwise.
Besides, Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide between them suggests that those with rupees to burn in Jaisalmer ought to seeking out patchwork quilts and embroidered cushion covers, so the first thing we do post breakfast (a banana – I wasn't braving the wobbly red things) is to rickshaw our way to the foot of the fort and duck into the very first fabric shop we encounter. We is currently myself, Pam, C and Dan, as per Delhi. T' others have formed their own various groups and singles. We'll get a bit more mixed as we go on. We're not massively cliquey. So I sit cross-legged on a pile of rugs, drinking chai, and enjoying once again the spectacle of men throwing silks all over the floor and Pam and C angsting over whether or not they want to buy them. Except this time I get very sneaky about it and decide I kind of want a couple of cushion covers myself, only there's no way I'm getting involved in all that bargaining nonsense. This is my technique. Let Dan barter the cushion covers down to the desired price, then say 'I'll have one of them too'. It's pretty straightforward.
Laden with the requisite patchwork quilts (C's bought a beauty and now has to cart it around the entire world for the next year: her advice to others on year-long jaunts around the globe is to end with India, not to start with it) and cushion covers, we stroll out into the stupidly bright sunshine and up into the fort. In its main square, which is a dusty hub of stalls and a temple and havelis on three sides, Joe is sitting on a sort of plinth or a septic tank or something, taking photographs and watching Jaisalmer do its general things. We trot over and show off our buyings, then we sit on the tank with him and have a bit of a dekho as well. He points out a particularly belligerent cow that's been shoving its nose repeatedly into a basket of red carrots and getting elbowed irreverently aside for its troubles. I marvel slightly, because that more or less happens in the opening chapter of Kim.
Some time in the afternoon, after we've found a tiny internet café in one of the lanes and I've 'phoned home for the first time 'cause one of the two computers is broken – I feel a bit weird when my mum mentions my cat, but otherwise it's fine and I get to say that I've spent the past few days crossing the desert on a camel, which I'd not told her was on the itinerary – Pam and C go for their massage. It's going to take about an hour and I'm not massively up for sitting in the little hallway of the house while they get pummelled, so I take a solo jaunt about the lanes. Which I've not yet done in India… been properly alone. Ignoring the fact that all the lanes curves back into the square eventually and there's nearly always one of our number hanging around there. But still. I'm mildly proud. I spend a good forty-five minutes or so winding in and out of the lanes. I buy a bottle of water, accidentally walk into a football game, join Jo and Laura in a silverware shop where I snaffle another cup of free chai, get butted in the chest by a massive bull with horns that very fortunately go either side of my torso – I'm sufficiently ticked off with it that I shoulder it aside and bark at it, forgetting that it's a massive great bull - then finally I end up in the massage parlour wondering if maybe C isn't dead. She's more or less comatose and is being comprehensively oiled by a young woman. Pam says not to try and talk to her. There's no point. I nod politely at the owner's small daughter instead, who giggles incessantly. I pretend to be offended and berate the child. She giggles more. I'm in a stupidly good mood.
Several of us convene again in the fort's main square. John's in conversation with a boy of maybe twelve, who turns out not only to be fluent in English but also has several words of Spanish, French and Italian. He's another one who talks to the tourists. He teaches us a few choice insults in Hindi. It passes the time. Mel whizzes by on the back of total stranger's moped. She says something in passing about going off to get her horoscope written. Her sister looks briefly concerned. Shortly before we begin to think of dinner, which is frankly shockingly late for people who forgot to have lunch, John mentions that the night before we all arrived in Jaisalmer, he went to an Italian restaurant at the top of the fort and had pasta. He thinks we ought to go there again tonight. The genius of this suggestion is beyond anything I've ever encountered. It's a week of spice that does it. It occurs to me that I've not been ill or anything, which isn't what I'd expected, so it's not that my stomach needs a break or anything, but it sounds such a fantastic change. It's almost as exciting as anything else on the itinerary.
The restaurant is right at the top of the fort, on the open roof of a tallish building, and the view is of the sun setting over the desert, which, you know, even after all these days, isn't a view you readily get bored of. I have ravioli. It's pretty much divine. We all steal Dan's bruschetta and have to chip in to buy him another round. While the others head back to the hotel, Dan, C, Pam and I linger awhile at the foot of the fort. We're leaving tomorrow for the village of Bhenswara. Though there's nothing much more fun than being on the road and having nothing more pressing to do than getting to the next new place, I don't wholly want to leave. Dan's finds us a German bakery – there are dozens of these in the tourist traps, though I doubt many of them have much to do with Germany – where we buy a collection of rum balls for dessert purposes and sit out on the street, talking and eating and watching. Plenty to watch. Across the road is a government-licensed Bhang lassi shop. There's seldom a boring view in this country.
We walk back towards the main road in search of a rickshaw, stopping on route to share a glass of milk badam out of a street stall. We stand in the middle of a heaving, smiling crowd, in the dark, in the coolish air, passing round this communal, warmish glass, not caring much for hygiene, thinking it's just about the most delicious thing we've ever tasted. We toast one another a bit.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-08 06:37 pm (UTC)(I think you should have had the massage.)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-08 07:07 pm (UTC)(I think I should too, 'cause my hip never got properly better. On the other hand, I do quite like explaining the occasional limp with 'It's my old camel-riding injury, you know - I never talk about it'.)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-08 07:11 pm (UTC)