Jaisalmer And Camel Safari

G'day peeps, hope yo are all well and good. Its currently 3.30pm in the afternoon and i am in my hotel room, in bed. After 4 weeks of travelling with lots of annoying energy (according to peeps on my trip) I am finally shattered, tired and feeling a little worse for wear. Perhaps the Camel Safari and sleeping in the desert last night didn't help too much but i think early starts, late night drinking and not being able to sleep on any kind of transport has taken its toll on my ever so ageing body! I realised yesterday how much i miss swimming everyday, playing football and going to the gym, so much so when i got lost in Jaisalmer town yesterday on my own i decided to run back to the hotel, its the first bit of exercise i have done in 4 weeks, i must admit it certainly felt like it too, though the humidity and heat does you no favours and it took nearly 20mins after the run just to stop sweating. Anyway, So the night before last we arrived in the desert town of Jaisalmer. A relatively small town in comparison to some town's in India hosting only 60,000 people. The hotel is lovely and again i am sharing with Warren and Goon bag, the room is huge and plenty of space for all 3 of us, we have free WIFI  and the staff are amazingly friendly and helpful. We arrived at around 5ish and agreed to meet for dinner on the roof top terrace for 7.30pm. So we just chilled out in the rooms, caught up on emails and of course Facebook and skype'd family and friends. It was a great couple of hours for me, after checking my on-line banking and realising that some compensation money that i was sceptical about getting finally found its way to my account, i danced around the room like an idiot and announced drinks were on me that evening. We all met for Dinner at 7.30 and for a change there was no waiting for the food, the hotel had put on a buffet for us, which included Pasta, everyone was over joyed, the buffet as much as you could eat was 250 rupees, which is around £4. Bargain. I ordered a bottle of whiskey and Vodka to celebrate my win fall and bought beers for those that didn't want spirits and soft drinks for those that didn't want alcohol at all. We drank, chatted and drank some more. The bar tab came to around £70, that included a bottle of whiskey, a big bottle of Smirnoff vodka (which is usually very expensive as its imported) quite a few beers and same amount of soft drinks, if that was England i am sure the price would have been 3 times as much, good night was had by all.

I awoke the next day at around 7am, after passing out at around 11.30ish, apparently anyway, according to Warren who took great pleasure in telling me all about my drunken antics the night before, which i had to cringe at and hang my head in shame and perhaps make a couple of small apologies, though it was all taken with a pinch of salt, luckily they know me and my drunken antics by now. At around 11ish after chilling and getting come breakfast myself, Warren, Jodie, Claire and the new Katie headed in to the centre of town and also to visit the huge fort which stood high on the hill overlooking Jaisalmer. We grabbed a tuc tuc and headed for the fort, which was actually right next to the main town centre. The fort wasn't really a fort any more, but was almost a mini city within a fort, it was pretty cool, with narrow streets, hosting small shops selling the normal Indian favourites, Sari's. silk scarf's, woven bed spreads, jewellery, post cards and such like. I up to now hadn't done any shopping but felt like getting in the mix and getting involved in some bartering. I picked up a nice white 'Lawrence of Arabia' shirt and a couple of scarf's for the desert in case it was windy and the weather was hot. We walked around the 'Fort city' for a couple of hours, it was nice and had some cool temples. Cows as always mixed with humans along the narrow streets which for me the novelty has now worn off and they can be quite annoying and dangerous, the night before when we had popped out to look for an ATM, poor Caz who was still traumatised from the rat running over her foot earlier that day was actually rammed by one with horns in the side of her leg, luckily it wasn't too hard. With cows all around, this means cow shit and with cow shit comes flies, Indian's are not the cleanest anyway and even without the cow shit there would be plenty of flies, with cow shit its ridiculous, there annoying and dirty and yesterday i was really starting loose my rag with constant flies, buzzing round me. After the fort we headed into the town centre, i had decided that i needed a haircut, barbers are plentiful but not all had electric shavers as i wanted my normal short back and sides, i eventually found one, the guy did a great job and finished off with a relaxing head massage. On asking at the end how much, i was amazed to hear that it was all of 40 rupees, which is around 50p, tell me anywhere in England or the rest of the world you would pay that.. bargain!! 

As i mentioned earlier i ran back to the hotel, showered and grabbed some lunch from the hotel. At 3.30 we headed out to the desert for our camel safari. It was 1 hour by Jeep and then an hour so by camel to the where we where camping for the night. The Jeep's were un-comfy and squashed, we had 2 for 13 of us an we really could have done with a 3rd. we arrived at the Camel's and headed off trekking through the desert to the camp site. I had never ridden a camel, so loved the experience, we had one each and luckily they were saddled, a lot of the others found it uncomfortable and held on for dear life, though it wasn't the most comfortable form of transport i found it pretty easy going, i think my many hours of cycling sat on a razor blade saddle had toughened my ass and legs up. The weather was over cast which was nice and made the ride more enjoyable than blazing sun. We arrived at the camp at around 6.30 just before sunset, which i was looking forward to, however due to cloud cover we would miss out on sunset in the desert. Beer and soft drinks had been brought in with the Jeep's and i had still some whiskey left from the night before which i had brought with me. We were then treated to some local singing and dancing by some Indian gypsy villagers, we joined in the dancing and had enjoyed the local entertainment. Dinner was served, Thali was on the menu, which is a mixture of curry, Dal, Roti and rice, this was fun as there was no cutlery, i am sure you can imagine eating curry and Dal with your hands is messy but there was plenty of  Roti (which is a kind of bread) to help mop up. After dinner we had more entertainment and the we sat sharing stories of travelling fun, mishaps and shannanigans. At around 10.30ish we all found our places in the sand dunes and under the bright moon which lit up the night sky and dark desert and stars got our heads down for the night. Not having a sleeping mat or sleeping bag, as it had been stolen in transit to Kathmandu , myself and Caz grabbed a couple of blankets for laying on and one to put over us, it still wasn't cold and but would shield us from bugs and the like. Neither of us slept well, i got bitten to shit by mozzies and by now have realised that I react so badly to them that i get huge welks which itch like mad. We awoke at 5am feeling now that we just wanted to get back to the hotel shower and get some sleep. I really wasn't feel good this morning and decided that i'd walk back to the Jeeps and give the Camel's a miss, Carlotta also not feeling great with a dodgy stomach also decided to walk, it was just over an hour to the Jeeps, we squashed ourselves back in them and we were back at the hotel for 10am, were I promptly got my head down (as did most of us). We now have the rest of the day to ourselves chilling and sleeping if you wanted to (which is exactly what i am doing) or heading into Jaisalmer. 

Tomorrow we leave for Jodpur, Jaisalmer has been really good and despite mozzies and not feeling the greatest, Camel Safari was awesome. Keep well all.