Been through the desert on a camel with no name...




Jaisalmer is an amazing town about 100km East of the Indo-Pakastani border in the Great Thar Desert, renowned for it's stunning hill top fort. Amongst the backpacker community however it's best known for camel safaris, and missing the peace and tranquility of the mountains I was in town looking for some quiet and calm and hoping to find some in the desert.

The heavy rainstorms that were hitting Mumbai and Gujarat brought cloudy skies to Jaisalmer as I squashed into a jeep with Amanda, (who i'd met on the train), Christine (who I met in Jodphur and turns out to be a neighbour in Paris!), and a couple from Oz & the UK. After a couple of hours of rough roads and a side-trip visit to a Jain temple we climbed aboard our camels and set off in a train across the barren desert.

Climbing aboard is much easier when they're sat down ;-)

Once I'd got used to being up so high, the sway of the camel's gait and their smell I started to relax and take in the scenery around me. Finally, there were no horns honking, traffic noise or pollution. Just huge skies and calm; that is until panic broke out at the rear of our camel train.

All our camels were roped together with the last camel being a young female in training and carrying all our food for the next 2-days. This young novice was now quite literally untrained having broken free of her rope and cockily trotting off across the desert, evading all attempts to be caught and deaf to the guides cries and whistles. The whole thing would have been quite comical had it not been for her precious cargo and it took a good 10-minutes to capture her and rope her securely back to the pack, where she spent the rest of the day stamping and snorting.

'Johnny' sets off at a trot to capture the rogue beast (and our supper)

Around midday we stopped and whilst the guides cooked up a lunch of veg curry, dahl and chapati and we stretched and snoozed, grateful that the sky was still overcast and we were spared the midday sun. Lunch over we hopped back aboard our desert ships and continued on, the scenery sometimes rocky, sometimes scrubby but always arid. Although this wasn't the great peaks and rugged hills of the Himalayas, as the hours past I slowly found that inner calm and space to think that I seek in the mountains, and, surprise suprise, I discovered my 'inner Bedouin' was just as at home in the desert as in the hills. Having tweaked America's lyrics to suit my situation, I had 'A camel with no name' on my 'inner ipod' as the day's soundtrack and despite the chaff of the saddle and aching inner thighs I was loving every minute of it!

Sleeping off lunch

Late afternoon we entered a region of soft undulating dunes and found ourselves in the deserts of Hollywood with the wind etching patterns in the sand. As the sun set we unloaded the camels and set up camp and the animals, hobbled with knotted ropes , lopped off across the dunes in search of scrub and trees to eat.

What most of the desert looks like

What we expect most of it to look like

The evening meal was pretty much the same as lunch, although accompanied with cold beer brought in by a jeep, along with a group of people who wanted to skip the saddle soars but bed down along side us under the stars. Despite the feeling of remoteness the beer delivery and distant lights indicated we were not that far away from civilisation, and the occasional fly-by from a military aircraft served as a reminder that we weren't that far from the Pakistani border either.

Dinner over, camel handlers transformed themselves from chefs into musicians and with one guy drumming on a plastic water container and another playing 'high-hat' on a tin plate the third started singing local songs in a high warbling voice; a haunting melody desert, a lulling tune to sing to a woman that's just given birth and a fast, funky number to play at weddings, the catchy chorus of which we were soon all joining in with.

Music proving once again it can fusion all of languages and cultures,
especially around a desert fire with a couple of beers ;-)

As the fire burnt down the temperature dropped and the padded blankets that had cushioned the camels back against the wooden saddles were unfolded to become mattresses and pillows on the sand. Although I'd mailed home my Gore-tex jackets and fleece I'd kept my down sleeping bag with me and was grateful it would now protect me from the chill air and the reek of camel! Cocooned in my bag with just my eyes and nose peeping out I remembered how much I loved camping like this, without a tent, without a ceiling, walls or floor, and watched the sky for a while, tracking the progress of the Seven Sisters,Orion and the Great Bear across the dark night before falling asleep.

The good life

I woke early the next morning to find our camp enshrouded in fog. The cold air confronting the warmth of the sand formed a thick blanket of mist that hid the camels legs so they looked like they were swimming and left everything about us damp. Once sunrise came though the brume quickly burnt off, and without yesterday's clouds to protect us we were soon at the mercy of the desert sun. Scarfs were wrapped around heads Lawrence of Arabia style and shirt sleeves were rolled down as just three of us (the rest having succumbed to saddle soars and hopped in the jeep) saddled up again and lopped off West for another day in the wilderness.

They really looked like 'ships of the desert' as they swam through the mist

Sunrise, with camel saddles

With the sun on our backs and a vast array of nothing in front of us I once again 'zoned out' and found the peace and solitude I seek when I travel, and before the day's end I'd promised my inner Bedouin we'd be back in a camel saddle and once again in the desert just as soon as I could make it happen.

At peace with my inner Bedouin ;-)