The process with which we were assigned our camels was a little like the "sorting hat" of Harry potter, but more of a turban. I was matched with Julian, a good-looking and sturdy camel.
The children of a local village were as welcoming as a kick in the balls, demanding pens, rupees and adoption. One relatively cute child had an injured foot, and so we gave him a bandage - one of the more cunning kids then asked for a plaster and proceeded to pretend to have a similar foot injury, hobbling around asking for money.
We continued across the desert. Scrubby plants and cactii scraped against our legs as our camels brushed pass. People say riding camels is fantastically painful, because it is so - it's like some form of ancient torture weapon, leading to "scrambled eggs" as named by my camel driver.
At lunch we ate by an oasis (no water) under a large tree, as the camel drivers cooked. An ancient local farmer turned up with his female camel, hoping for it to be mated by one of the rare dark brown camels - we watched with horror as "Victoria" proved he should in fact be named "Victor", engaging in lunch time camel sutra. The old man ate some of our lunch, smoked some weed, and left, thoroughly contented.
After a siesta we tramped onwards, straight into the sinking sun. The sand dunes lurked far over by the horizon, somewhat spoilt by the looming wind turbines - the desert is host to countless turbines, which power the Indian army presence. Eventually we arrived at our resting place - settled on top of a bank of sand dunes with only dung beetles to keep us company.
And the beer boy: mid-evening on the isolated dune a lone local boy appeared from nowhere with a bag of cold beers for sale. He'd walked several miles from his village - fantastic form.
"I'm a camel man, in a desert land, it's so sandy, it bloody crazy" sang the camel drivers in a twisted rendition of barbie girl, using an empty water canister as percussion. We ate under the vast spread of desert stars as they sang their versions of western classics - "no woman no cry, no chappatti no chai" was a favourite.
We then headed to bed, "bed" consisting of a blanket lain upon the sand, and the sky above. An occasional camel grunt would interrupt the otherwise silent night. We awoke at sunrise, remounting our camels and feeding them - Julian kindly decided to share some of his grain with me, spitting it all over my head.
Riding for several hours at pace was fairly brutal, but I maintained a collected, Lawrence-of-Arabia image - fortunately I opted against the turban, I may have looked like a bandaged sore thumb.
The jeep stole us away from our humped friends, returning us to jaisalmer. There we spent the remainder of the day (before catching a 5pm sleeper bus to pushkar) with astrid and Josephine, our new Danish friends.
With love
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