When in Jaisalmer, do as the tourists do: book a camel safari. We are lured by advertising—what was that focus group like?—and of course tempted by by the fetching fashion options.
John nixes the deal, however, when he notes the price of the pants Kate is considering rise by 100rupees in the course of negotiations. Savvy bargainers that we are, we sense something is amiss and move on. How do you choose when everyone we pass offers us “best safari ever” and warns us about their unscrupulous competition. Having heard horror stories about rip offs, groups bigger and food worse than advertised, trashy dunes, surly guides with no English, and hoards of tourists and hawkers, we finally go with the guidebook—it had steered right with Chanda, afterall—and head off the next afternoon with Adventure Camel Safari and low expectations for a night on the desert.
It pays to use a guidebook, and we’re thrilled to find we are the only two in our “group,” the 2 guides speak reasonable English, the only people we see the entire trip are subsistence farmers and another camel driver who pops by for dinner. And now a word on the camel. These ships of the desert seem prehistoric from a distance, and up close, it’s not at all clear how they work. Gangly legs that seem to bend backwards, giant callouses on the bottom of their bellies, enormous two-toed, soft padded feet that work like shock absorbers, sinuous necks, bad orthodontics…and then there’s that hump thing. Walking is like riding rough seas, trotting is bone jarring, and galloping is life threatening. Had we gone for more than about 2 hours a day, we might have opted to walk—can’t quite imagine what one family from London was thinking when they signed up for a 20 day trek from Jaisalmer to Birkaner, never having sat on one of these beasts before! Ah, those plucky Brits!
Just as we’re getting the hang of camel management, we come to a farm.
Three small children bring us watermelon which our guide cracks open by rapping on the sides with his knuckles, and we each enjoy a sloppy half.
We then wander into one of the local villages—a 3-family compound of about 30 people.
Around the campfire, as Ishmael is cooking, we hear more about desert life from our guides and a boy we met in the village that afternoon who is home from university for Diwali holidays. Hamit is 29 and his wife is expecting their first child next month; needless to say, he’s hoping for a boy. Ishmael, 18, is due to be married in about a year and a half to a girl who is 9. Yes, that’s NINE… of course, she’ll be 10.5 at her wedding, so there is that. Arranged marriage is the only marriage in the village, and since the villages are so small, the tradition is to set up matches with families who live several km away. Once the girl marries, she moves to her husband’s enclave, and we are told that this is the logic behind hoping for sons: once she’s married, and her parents lose a caretaker for their old age. Many of the workers we’ve met—drivers, waiters, and camel men—work several states away from their wives and children, sending money home and visiting a couple of times a year if funds allow. We don’t quite know how to make sense of the apparent contradiction: family means everything to the Indians, but so many Indian men spend most of their lives separate from their wives and children. A stock character in every Indian TV drama, the “evil mother-in-law” may find her roots in a system where a young daughter-in-law has little access to her family of origin or her husband, and is expected to cook, clean, birth boys, and care take for a woman she may have met on her wedding and whose son she has taken. There’s a theory that Indian mothers are overly bonded to their sons in part because they have been left by their husbands for such long stretches of time, often in hostile territory. And how are you supposed to navigate all of this when you marry at 10?
The sunset and sunrise are spectacular, food delicious, and sleeping arrangements most comfortable. Our camel men set up our beds--metal frames which hold us off the sand with mesh webbing--on top of our own dune, away from the fire where they’re up for hours chatting and singing. We watch as they unfold our ready-pack beds with clean sheets, thick blankets and comfy pillows all tucked inside.
The stars have never been so breathtaking.
Call me Ishmael. Lawrence of Arabia!
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