Solo tripping through North India - 2

On 29th September morning, my bus made a routine stop at a small desert town in Rajasthan. I got down to buy some refreshments, and I asked the shopkeeper where on earth were we. "Pokharan", he said. The name rang a bell, but I couldn't remember what was special about this place. Meanwhile, I asked my French friend Alain what his plans were for the day. I had planned to do an overnight camel safari in the desert, but I needed company to bring the costs down, and he seemed like a nice chap. It wasn't peak season in Rajasthan, so it was going to be difficult to find a group of people for the safari. He said he didn't have a plan, just the address of a hotel that a friend suggested to him.

All this time, we were constantly pestered by a local who was trying to convince anyone to take a room in his hotel. This was only the beginning. When you are 120 kms away from your hotel, trying to sell a room, one can only imagine what awaits the hapless traveller at ground zero. An hour and a half of travelling later, we finally reached ....

In case you were wondering, Pokharan is the site where India conducts its nuclear tests ...

29th September - Jaisalmer

The first thing you experience on arriving at Jaisalmer is the throng of people trying to get you into their auto and rush you to one of their hotels. I was rather fortunate then to have pre-booked my safari with a very straightforward guy named Inder, who sent a car to pick me up, and later on was instrumental in making Jaisalmer an experience I wont forget. After finalizing the deal on an overnight camel safari (around 1.5K per head in a group of 2, it costs a little lesser if the group is bigger), we freshened up at a nearby hotel for 100 bucks, and got a quick tour of Jaisalmer's hawelis with a guide.

The safari kick-started with an approx 50km drive into the desert, where our guides and camels were setup. After an hour of 'warm-up' riding into the desert, we took a break to give the camels and our butts some rest.

As we continued safariing for a couple more hours, one thing was starting to annoy me - the numerous village kids that kept cropping up from time to time. I was expecting more isolation and I thought we would be safariing through dunes after dunes with no signs of water, vegetation, people, etc. Instead, the deserts of Rajasthan are filled with villages, and they feed you sweet melons. Now I love sweet melons, but this was just not how I pictured the safari - I've lived in a desert for 17 yrs, and it doesn't take long to find endless dunes in a real desert. OK I'll admit it .... Having read and loved The Alchemist, I was hoping for caravans, dust storms, star-navigation, tribal wars, vultures hovering above for a sure meal, etc. And the best I got was a bunch of villagers cribbing about water and the heat - that's the same story at my grandma's place!

We setup camp and had some really good chai, followed by a decent dinner of rotis and a Rajasthani dish. On this day, I learned that the moon actually sets in the night, after which the sky looks absolutely spectacular in the desert.


The next morning we woke up early, and had some eggs and porridge for breakfast. Alain set off looking for an isolated spot to 'make toilet' Borat-style, and when he didn't return for a long time, I had good fun joking with the guides about how he must've reached the next village. Soon after we started riding our camels, I got what I deserved for that joke. If you have the slightest pressure to take a dump before sitting on a camel, trust me, do it first. What a whole bottle of Hajmola cannot do, a camel ride for 2 mins will suffice. I rode in agony for 15 mins before I jumped off the camel and set out into the wilderness to make some boombastic music. My first time in the wild! ... :D

Some 4 hrs of camel riding, and we were back at base camp where the jeep was already waiting for us. Then back to Jaisalmer, said au revoir to Alain and a t-shirt of mine that got lost, and off I was to Delhi en route to my next destination - a former hunting ground in present Uttaranchal, where the hunter Jim one day decided a camera took better shots than a gun, and setup a beautiful wildlife sanctuary ...

TO BE CONTINUED ...