Camel Safari (Eleanor)

This morning, as we ventured out to explore the town and get a little shopping in before the safari, I got a proposal – a marriage proposal – from one of the people working at the hotel. I actually found him rather off-putting and was not particularly flattered by his offer, although 1000 camels is a pretty good bride price. Alright, it’s excellent and I would have been totally happy about it if he hadn’t winked at me. (And I was quite happy to have beaten my friend Mary in the number of camels I was offered, although her proposal was from someone in Niger, which is a poorer country than India, I think.) I was not, however, pleased in the least when Mom encouraged him! “Oh” says she. “I’ll have to talk to your mother about that. See if an arrangement can be reached”. UGH!
The camel safari was a success!!!!! I have finally found a beast of burden that does not bring on near death experiences! (I guess the elephant was fine too, but elephants are a bit much for me. Although I enjoyed it at the time.) I now have extravagant plans to circumnavigate the world via my trusty camel, who I will name William the Conqueror. (I have not quite figured out the Pacific Ocean part, but I’m working on it. Maybe I’ll book passage on a barge and ride Willie C. up and down the length of the deck every day for exercise. Or perhaps a cruise (with a luxury stable) is the way to go…)
I suppose I’d better start at the beginning. We set off with Mr. Desert, the jeep driver, and 4 other tourists – an Australian couple and two girls who had just finished their Masters in Mumbai and were celebrating. We drove for a while down a mostly deserted road and stopped for about an hour at an old abandoned village. Nobody knows for sure why the village was abandoned. History books say that there was a water shortage, but the people living on the edge of the Great Thar Desert are no strangers to water shortage. On the Audio Tour at the fort, they said that some children would not see their first rain until they were seven years old. And no other villages were abandoned, so that theory doesn’t really hold any water. (Yes, that pun was intended.)
The locals tell a different story. The Prime Minister of the first Maharaja of Jaisalmer, the one who’s Haveli Mom and I visited the other day, was a powerful, bvut cruel man. One day, he paid a visit to the village we were in, where he met a beautiful girl. He told the village headman and the girl’s father that he wanted her for his wife. And, although he had 6 wives already, they said yes – because, as Mr. Desert said, “in those days when a Maharaja or Prime Minister or someone like that asks for something, you can’t say no”. After the PM left, the news was broken to the girl. She refused to accept her father’s choice because the PM was cruel and had so many wives already. They tried to convince her to change her mind, saying that they had already promised, that he was a powerful man, that the entire village would suffer. But still she refused. So, after careful planning, every single person in that village left on the same night. They were business people, made rich because of their location on the Silk Route, and after they escaped Jaisalmer, the village broke up – going to Delhi, Kolkatta, Mumbai – and set up new businesses across the country. And all of them vowed that they and their descendants would never set foot in Jaisalmer again.
The village has been declared a World Heritage Site and conservation work is being done there now. Two of the buildings have been fixed up and painted to look like they once would have, but the rest is a crumbling ruin of houses. But “slowly, slowly” it is improving.
After the village we met our camels – my camel’s name was Lalu. He was an old man, he knew what he was doing, where he was going, and if I wanted to pretend I knew what I was doing with the reins, well then, that was my problem. He scraped against bushes, left the trail, complained loudly, stopped dead, munched on passing bushes, and absolutely refused to do anything faster than walk. And I loved him. By the end of the trip I felt as though we had reached an understanding, although what that understanding was exactly, I couldn’t tell you.
It was wonderful to be away from streets and honking rickshaws and shouting shopkeepers again. The desert may be barren, but it is peaceful. We stopped in some dunes to view the sunset, but we’d gotten there early. After rolling down a dune with Mom (and face-planting really, really hard) I wandered off by myself for a bit. I walked far enough away so that I couldn’t see or hear anyone anymore. I had not been alone, outside of the occasional 10 minutes when I was in the hotel room and Mom wasn’t, in 3 months. What a relief!
Mom found me though, of course. I did give her a bit of a hard time of it though. It’s usually really easy to track someone across sand, but I was practicing walking without breaking the thin crust. It still left a track, of course, but a much lighter one. And then I found a stretch of sand that was different than the rest – it was filled with shells from some ancient sea. Why they had congregated in one spot, I do not know, but there they were. I walked as lightly as possible. Apparently when Mom got there she didn’t know quite what had happened for a minute. She even wondered if I’d back-tracked in an attempt to outwit her. She did find the tracks though, and came to sit next to me. Which was fine. When Mr. Desert joined us, though, I made my excuses and wandered off again and did not rejoin the group until the sun had set.
Dinner was delicious, but the real treat of the night was to sit under a cloudless sky and stare at the stars. The milky way was visible. It is a breathtaking sight. Every time I see the stars – really see the stars, I mean, without any interference from electrical lights, I am taken aback by their beauty and reminded how small I really am. Little annoyances seem so important when you’re wrapped up in your own little life, but looking at the stars, it’s easy to realize that they’re actually just little annoyances. I also got to see four shooting stars, a rare treat.
The following morning, we had a late start. The collective we, that is. Without light to read by and an exciting book to keep me awake, I dropped off quickly and sloe soundly. I was awake at dawn. Seeing no reason to lie in bed, I got up and walked around into the dunes a little way and sat down to watch the world waking up around me. (I kept in sight of the camp this time, just in case, but I didn’t see anyone.) After about an hour, I got cold so I went back to get out my extra shawl. (If you remember, I brought 2 sets of clothes, although the second wasn’t needed – hooray. The shawl wasn’t much, but I suppose two thin, cotton shawls are better than one.) My rummaging in my backpack woke mom up. She joined me on my little dune lookout; she was clever and brought her giant fluffy blanket even though it looked a bit funny, sitting in the desert wrapped up in a cocoon of fabric. After a little bit, we were joined by the two girls. The Australian couple and Mr. Desert had gone back after dinner. We watched the newly risen sun light up the desert. I can’t say we actually saw the sunrise because there was a haze on the horizon. Then the girls went back to bed. One of them was sick and neither had slept well. Mom and I went to the campfire where we joined the guide and the two boys who had just risen and were starting breakfast. We had a nice chat while they boiled eggs and toasted the bread in a frying pan. I’m telling you, this is the way to camp – fresh vegetables and eggs, a cast iron pan, and you don’t even have to carry it. The camel does all the work!