Lawrence of India

I went to Jaisalmer, in the far western desert of India for the purpose of going on a camel safari out into the desert. It has become an extremely popular touristy thing to do, but the thought of sleeping out in the desert on a sand dune under a blanket of stars sounded to good to pass up.
I also wanted to travel through the desert to see what the people who lived out there were like. Jaisalmer, which is right on the edge of the Great Thar Desert, used to be a major trading hub between India and points east and the city was built on the fortunes made by traders, travelers and bandits who used to spend their lives crossing the desert in camel caravans. Along with these caravans were the gypsies who were nomadic people who traveled the desert, going from village to village, camp to camp, playing music and dancing for their keep, sometimes performing for that day's meal. I wondered whether any of those nomadic, Bedouin people still existed out there in the sand.
I joined up with a group of French travelers who were staying at my guesthouse and the next day we were transported by jeep 40 kilometers out into the desert where we met up with our camels and their guides. The camels were loaded up with all our supplies: food, cooking utensils, blankets and backpacks. There were 9 of us on the trip with 5 guides. There were 12 camels all together. It was like going on a white water rafting trip across the desert. Each of us had our own camel and the guides, who initially walked and lead our camels by reigns, would eventually ride double on a camel or take turns walking.
Now if you've never ridden a camel before, it's fun for about half a day. We would be out for three. Camels don't really ride like horses, they rock back and forth a lot more and most importantly there are no stirrups. By the end of the first day, my butt was so sore. And not just sore, it was raw. I'm not kidding. Everyone was complaining about how much it hurt. I ran into people in Jaisalmer who set out on a 3 day trip and bailed after the first day. I was determined to make it all the way through.
Another thing about camels is that they are really ornery and like to fight and bite at each other. They're also stubborn and if they want to eat a bush, you can yank on their reigns all you want and it won't help, they'll go off and eat. Camels are also really, really smelly animals. They are constantly belching and farting. You kind of travel in a cloud of farts as you go and at night, in camp, if there's no wind you are in a big cloud of farts. Sometimes, when the camel would be in the middle of a 10 minute long belching fit (seriously), this thing would come out of its mouth. Initially I thought it was their tongue, but it's not, it almost looks like some sort of bladder or gland. The camel guides would call it a tongue if you called it a tongue or a stomach if you said the word stomach, so I don't know what it's really called, nor do I have any desire to look it up, it was pretty gross.
To me, camels are these prehistoric things that remind me of a Salvador Dali painting. Giant hump backed ships floating on spindly thin legs, sailing across a sea of sand.
While riding along that first day, the sun beat down on us but it wasn't that bad. It was so dry that your sweat evaporated and every so often there was a nice breeze. The desert wasn't the shifting sand type of desert you usually think of, it was a dirt and scrub brush desert, similar to that in southern California. There were big fingers of sand dunes here and there way out in the desert and we were heading towards one of those dunes to set up camp for the night.
In the Thar Desert is the Sam Sand Dunes, which are a big area of dunes but because they are so close to Jaisalmer and you can easily drive to them, they have become developed at their edges with all sorts of gift shops and are covered in garbage. It's a popular place for people to go and party and then leave their trash and empty beer bottles.
We passed through a couple of villages during the trip, mainly to water the camels. Each village looked relatively the same. Concrete or mud cubical homes with a big circular well in the middle. The well was a pool that was about two feet deep and 10 yards across. The women of the village would wash their clothes along the side of the well and some people were hauling away jugs. The villages didn't seem that isolated, they had a road passing through them and a line of telephone poles that carried electricity to the village. The people of the village mostly did their own thing though it was hard to tell how they made their living there, there was no agriculture. They definitely didn't look like the Bedouin, nomadic type. Once in a while a public bus would pass through. Occasionally the kids would beg for chocolates or "school pens". I asked our lead guide, Mohan, how deep they had to dig to get water for their well and he told me that they didn't. All the villages were supplied water by the water pipeline that comes out of Jaisalmer.
We left the village and continued to the sand dune where we would camp for the night. While riding along, I asked Mohan, where he was from. He said he grew up in a village not too far away. He said his main job is guiding camel treks. He spoke English very well and said he learned it from the tourists he guided, picking up a little each time. He could also speak a tiny French and Spanish and knew a couple words in Japanese. All of the guides dressed in the usual Indian fashion for city men. They had long sleeved button up shirts on with the sleeves rolled up and were wearing dress slacks. All wore sandals and all spoke, quite regularly, on their mobile cell phones as we rode along. In comparison to other working Indians, they earned good pay plus tips. They definitely weren't the nomadic Bedouins I was thinking of.
Once at camp for the night, the guides would hobble the camels by putting a short rope around their legs to keep them from running away in the night. Then they would make dinner which was the same as lunch: vegetable mush with rice. We did get plenty of chai tea, which was nice. The camp area was right at the edge of the dunes which was pretty neat to walk around on or roll around on. The different patterns the wind made in the sand was really cool. You could tell that they come to this same spot to camp each night, which is probably good to reduce impact. That being said, there was still a bit of garbage strewn about. Nowhere near what you would see in town, but still a bunch on the outskirts of camp and here and there across the desert.
There also seemed to be a couple of vagrants hanging around the camp in the form of two medium to small sized stray dogs. They were there when we got there, no doubt hanging out waiting on a few scraps.
Before dinner, Mohan asked us if we wanted beer or to have some gypsies come and perform for us. Everyone said yes and Mohan got on his cell and made a call. I didn't realize that you could make a phone call and have gypsies and beer delivered to your desert camp but apparently you can. Shortly after dinner, Mohan's guys started a big raging bonfire and two men and two women, dressed in traditional garb showed up and performed. One man played a two sided drum while the other played a flute type instrument. The two women sang in a very high pitched melodic voice. Once in a while the women would dance. Along with the beer, the gypsies brought "desert wine" that they had made themselves, it was in reused 2 liter plastic water bottles. I wasn't drinking any beer for fear it would re invoke the Ghangida and I certainly wasn't doing the desert wine. The rest of my group drank the beer and a few had the wine. The guy next to me let me sniff his wine. It smelled like really bad, cheap Mexican tequila. And it was hot. None for me thanks, I'm driving a camel. Needless to say, those that drank the desert wine that night, woke with horrible headaches in the morning. Towards the end of the night, the gypsy ladies kept making everyone dance with them and no one wanted to. Occasionally, during their performance, you would hear a strange ringing and one of the gypsies would stop and answer their cell phone. They would talk for a minute while the other three kept playing and singing. This happened three or four times. I also came to realize that for the last hour, they played the same song over and over. This wasn't just me being unfamiliar with gypsy melodies, everyone noticed it. It got to the point where we were all willing to pay them to stop. Finally they did, we paid them and off they went to their next gig. Not the nomadic, Bedouins I was thinking about either.
For sleeping arrangements, we all just laid down in the desert. Packed in on the camels were these thick blankets that we laid on the sand and used as our beds and then we had blankets to put over us. One, maybe two blankets was enough when it got a bit chilly in the night, but when you first laid down you didn't need anything. On the other hand, the French people all had new Northface 3 season bags that they were zipped up tight in, I'm not sure why, they must have been sweating away.
That night, the stars were bright and I laid there for a while watching the constellations and shooting stars before drifting off to sleep. In the middle of the night it got a bit chilly so I pulled the blanket up on me. A couple minutes later I was stirred by something at my legs. It was one of the stray dogs trying to snuggle up at the back of my knees. I looked at him and said, "Shoo", which he put his ears back and his tail between his legs and slinked away. I felt sorry for the little guy but didn't really want the little flea bag in bed with me.
Between sunset and going to bed, we saw a bunch of black beetles come out and start running around on the sand dunes. They would keep trying to come to you and hide under you or your blanket for warmth. No matter which way you flicked them or turned them around, they would keep coming. Even if you built big sand trenches with your hands in the soft sand they would try and come back, sometimes getting stuck in the sand at the bottom of the little valley. As you can tell, we entertained ourselves with these beetles. A few of the French people were worried that a beetle might climb on them in the night, that might explain the sleeping bags. When morning came we looked around at the sand and it was completely covered in the little tracks of beetles. They had been over every inch during the night. No doubt a few had danced on us!
As the sun came up, the sky turned pink and the wind picked up. I woke and pulled my blanket off. The others were still sleeping so I lay there looking at the sky enjoying the cool breeze. Eventually Mohan's crew stirred and made breakfast. After that we packed and mounted up and off we went. Though my butt was still really sore, riding on my back was the little bird of good fortune, so I felt positive that today would be different. I had an idea. I would take my daypack, which is all I brought with me on this trip, and hang it off the horn of the camel's saddle. I would let out the shoulder straps all the way so they hung as low as possible and slip my feet into them to serve as stirrups. This worked a little bit better but not all that well. Actually what I think it did was shift my body weight onto a different part of my butt so that by the time we stopped for lunch I had two huge raw spots instead of one.
After riding for a while that morning, I noticed that one of the stray dogs was following us. It was the guy who tried snuggling up with me last night. It was funny to watch him from up on the camel, way down there on the ground. He kept up with us the whole day, either walking right in line between the camels or off to the side in the random scrub. He was a white, male mutt who was maybe 30-40 pounds and had scars on his face from past battles. One of which was a big slash scar across his left eye and had lost that eye.
When we did stop for lunch, "One Eye" would stop too and sit under the shade of a bush. After lunch I determined that I didn't want to ride anymore and asked Mohan if I could walk. I told him I could walk my camel so it wasn't something else he had to worry about. He told me walking was not a problem and that because there were more people than camels, one of his men would just ride it.
So off we went, the caravan of camels and me on foot. I was surprised that the walking pace of the camels was the same as a human so it was easy to keep up with them. The only place I had trouble was when we hit spots of soft, dune sand, especially on a slope. There, I would be scrambling and the camel's big flat feet would show why they were so good in the desert, it didn't phase them in the least. I did notice though, that if I walked in the middle of the caravan it was really dense with farts. And I noticed that if I walked at the back of the caravan line that the camels actually kicked up about 6-7 feet of dust that you don't notice way up in the saddle but do when walking, so I paralleled them by about 100 yards off to the side.
It was good to walk. Between all the travel on planes and trains and now camel back I realized that I had been sitting for days. It was a nice and very needed chance to stretch out a bit. And before I knew it, One Eye was walking along with me. As I tried to cut a relatively straight path across the desert, One Eye would run ahead of me and find a shade bush to pause under. He would wait until I passed before taking off again and passing me to find another shady spot, all the while playing hide and seek with the sun.
As I walked, I saw lizards zipping across my path and birds flying around the bushes. In the sand were the nocturnal footprints of beetles, mice and snakes. That day I would walk for about 3 hours across the desert. It was really nice and I actually wish I had walked more than I did. I don't think I covered any great distance but I did go through a couple liters of water. It was hot. About 95 Degrees F.
That night we would reach another small dune and set up camp. This time there would be no dancing gypsies and no desert wine. The bonfire would not last as long, which was fine with me, I was happier watching the stars.
The next morning we had breakfast and packed up again. I decided to ride the last bit since we would be back at the road by late morning. One Eye, of course, headed out with us.
Whenever we would pass a shepherd and his flock of goats or sheep, the shepherd's dog would bark and chase One Eye. One Eye would run ahead and after a while we would come across him, standing there, panting under a thorn bush. When we would stop in a village to water the camels, One Eye would wait on the outskirts of town, knowing that if he tried to enter, the village dogs would run him off. At night he would sit at the edge of camp as if keeping a watch for bandits. He would bark at any person or other dog who appeared to be coming near camp. One Eye lives off the scraps of our food and the occasional handful of water. One Eye is the true Bedouin, living and moving out alone in the desert.
There on the last day, the camel trail left the desert and poured us onto a dirt road that skirted a farmer's irrigated field. It was a big field of tall grass that swayed in the wind. One Eye spotted something off in the field. At first I thought it was a person, but quickly realized that it was a scarecrow. One Eye's ears perked up and his tail wagged. Off he went into the coolness of the lush green field to hide until the next caravan came along to lure him across the desert again.