our first day in jaiselmer was spent doing those important things we haven't had the time to do as yet; email, laundry, journal, etc... it was a pretty low-key day which resulted in amg spending a fortune in a leather goods shop and me talking on skype to some lucky folks back home :-) in addition, we booked ourselves onto a 2-day/1night camel safari leaving the next morning!!
i woke after a fantastic night's sleep and went to rouse amg to see the sunrise on the jaiselmer fort however she'd come down with delhi belly and declined so i wandered the quiet streets at 6:30am with the cows, dogs and the occasional shopkeeper. i arrived at the fort however had time to kill as the sun wasn't rising as yet so i bought some chai tea and a small loaf of bread and watched the world wake up. it was a peaceful affair! chai finished, i headed into the fort for the morning light on the yellow bricks and i was definitely not disappointed ;-) i wandered the fort until i ran out of time and had to head back to meet our camel safari tour group.
it was an intimate tour with only me, amg and the two camel herders on the tour! we mounted our seated beasts and then slowly leaned forward then backwards as the camels raised themselves off the ground. it's quite amazing to actually watch a camel raise itself from the lying position ;-) once settled, we started on our journey. our first stop was the kings' cenatophs about 6km outside of jaisalmer where we stopped to take pictures. from there, we headed to a couple of lesser sites, had lunch and then wandered through the desert on camel back. by about hour 3 on camelback, i was a bit over camel riding, particularly since i had a sore butt, the sun was ridiculously strong and there was no escaping it!! in addition, the desert didn't quite live up to my expections as it wasn't nearly as barren as i'd expected; there were small shrubs and trees which didn't fit my image ;-(
we arrived at a pretty sandy spot around 6pm and set up camp which effectively meant removing the camels' load and gathering some firewood. amg and i took some silhouette photos of the sunset with the camels and our camel herder before we settled down to have dinner and relax for the evening. we slept out under the stars which was a cool experience however whoever attempts to convince you that sleeping on sand is comfortable hasn't done it ;-)
we rose the next morning and headed off again by camel, passing a small village and a temple en route. we settled for lunch and then had our siesta before we were collected by a jeep who took us to the sam sand dunes to watch the sunset. we arrived around 3:30pm and watched as the masses of buses, cars and jeeps arrived as we approached the sun-setting hour. the dunes were absolute madness with large amounts of people, camels and hawkers selling cold drinks and chips - it was definitely not a tranquil setting!! i'd hoped that the sun would light the sand before setting however it didn't so we just watched the sunset with everyone else and then quickly departed in hopes of beating the rush!!
our final day in jaisalmer involved a complete tour of the fort, some jain temples and more photos. i'd considered heading off to a ghost town about 25km out of town but was pretty worn out from the camel trek, etc... we headed off to the train station for our overnight train to jaipur and well, we had a bit of an incident involving our train tickets which i'll share next time ;-)
hugs to all!
s
No comments:
Post a Comment