Intimidation, Part Three: Desert

The last time we saw our heroes, they were boarding a train to Jodhpur. Or so they thought.

I think I should probably take a minute to explain the ambiguous concepts of "train," specifically the different classes within the train. There are four classes on the train, including two-tier AC, three-tier AC, Sleeper (three-tier non-AC), and General, going from most to least expensive. Two- and three-tier determines how many bunks are in each compartment. Picture a long hall with rooms without walls to your right. In two-tier, each side of the wall is like a bunk bed. In three-tier, there's an extra bed sandwiched between the two, which means that sitting up or drinking from a bottle of water is an Olympic sport. The AC compartments are air-conditioned, as is to be expected, which means that the windows are sealed shut. There are fewer people in the AC compartments since they're so much more expensive. Traveling Sleeper can be fun, since you can see and feel the countryside rushing by as the hours go on. We traveled AC three-tier for our first train from Pune, and it was pretty nice. However, in the interest of cost and romanticism, we booked Sleeper tickets for the desert leg of our journey, going from Agra to Jodhpur to Jaisalmer and then back from Jaisalmer to Jaipur.

Arriving at the Agra station, we quickly discovered that the tickets our travel agent had "confirmed" were actually not confirmed at all. Fortunately (really), our train was delayed by about five hours, so we had plenty of time to argue and whimper and charm and eventually pay three hundred extra rupees each to upgrade our tickets to AC two-tier so we could made it to Jodhpur. Vowing revenge and compensation from the travel agent, we hopped onto the train and entered the world of AC two-tier.

We'd figured it'd be similar to AC three-tier but with fewer people. Instead, we walked into swank. Heavy curtains closed off each compartment from the rest of the train. Clean sheets, blankets, and pillows greeted us on our berths. A smartly-dressed gentleman brought us extra pillows and then asked us if we would be requiring any more service before we "retired for the evening." I proceeded to get the best ten hours of sleep that I'd had in months. In the morning, I was greeted by a "bread omlette." Needless to say, we arrived in Jodhpur in high spirits.

We had about twelve hours to kill as we waited for our night train to Jaisalmer, so we shopped, wandered, and ate, wandering into the blue city. Jodhpur's Old City is entirely blue, supposedly to keep the mosquitoes away, or to announce its Brahmin heritage, or any number of reasons that I've heard. Either way, it looked pretty cool.

At the train station, we waited in the Tourist Retiring Room, a little nook tucked into the side of the station. The room, which was under construction, held a few surprisingly comfortable mismatched chairs. The attendant in the room was charmingly awkward, and apologized for the construction and the "rathes." Rathes? Then I understood, as I heard the squeaking and saw the little furry guys scampering around. I named the two that I saw the most Thelma and Louise.

We traveled sleeper to Jaisalmer, conking out again amidst crying babies and a family band singing and pounding out a rhythm on the seats and railing. The open windows brought in a nice breeze, and I feel right to sleep. Danielle woke me up around five for our stop. I sat up in my berth, clonking my head on the ceiling and causing a cloud of sand to rise up around me. Scrambling for my glasses, I almost started laughing as the half-inch of sand that covered everything came into focus. Well, we made it to the desert, anyway!

We made it to our hotel just as the sun was rising. We'd booked the place based on price, so we were astounded to find a beautiful little place in the middle of Old Jaisalmer, complete with a rooftop restaurant with an amazing view of the fort. After booking our camel safari for the next day, we set off for the fort.

The Jaisalmer fort is famous for its beauty as well as its shops of mini-mall-like proportions. Stalls dotted ever square inch of space within the gates, hawking everything from anklets to quilts to skirts to religious figurines. With a few hundred rupees burning a hole in my pocket, I strode confidently up to the first vendor and started looking through the beautiful merchandise with practiced disinterest. "How much for this? What about this? Oh, that's far too expensive." I offered a fair price, expecting a good round of bargaining that would satisfy each of us. Instead, the vendor just laughed. Uh... what?

Standing back for a second, I watched a blonde family of four walk up to the same vendor and buy a statue of Shiva for five times the price they would've paid after bargaining in Pune. I see.... so much for bargaining over here! As they day went on, Jaisalmer's talent with tourists became incredibly clear. Instead of the men shouting "Ay! Madam! Come here!" that you'd find in the non-touristy areas, the Jaisalmer shopkeepers knew what worked on tourists. Instead of yelling something about merchandise, they'd greet us with a soft-spoken, "Namaste. May I offer you a cup of tea?" It was almost impossible to not answer back. Fortunately, I'd already paid for the camel safari, so I couldn't do too much damage.

Ah, yes, the camel safari. We departed the next morning in a Jeep, driving through scrubland past children herding goats and women dressed in colors so brilliant they'd seem to glow. We arrived at our camel stand (ha) around nine AM, and the desert sun was already sweltering. I wrapped one of the cotton scarves that I'd bought in Jodhpur around my head, turban-style, and made sure that my sunscreen and water were within each reach. My camel's name was Kalu, and he greeted me with a boisterous "ARGOOOGHHHARGHHHHH!" and a glare that nearly stopped my heart. Good camel... nice camel...

Kalu and I ended up getting along fairly well, and he shared my ambition for side trips and sudden bursts of trotting. He also enjoyed playing bumper cars with the other camels, which was fun in a bruising sort of way. We rode for a few hours until the afternoon heat forced us to stop for lunch. Our camel driver guides cooked for hours, making us chapattis and subji, a mixture of vegetables, broth, and enough spice to clear out my sinuses for a week. Instead of continuing our journey after lunch, our guides signaled us to lie down for a nap in the shade. Lying on the ground, ants crawling around me, the desert heat and food in my stomach lulled me off to sleep. Sara walked around our temporary campsite, collecting some of the tiny shells (huh?) that were scattered everywhere.

After our nap, we continued on to the sand dunes. We'd been traveling through scrubland and small trees, but all of a sudden, we stepped onto nothing but soft sand. Kalu's footprints were the only disturbances in the sand as we rode into the sunset. We reached our campsite just before the sun went down, so we all ran around snapping pictures and just staring. We ran down the dunes, buried each other in sand cocoons, and danced in the rapidly cooling air. We asked our camel drivers where we were.

"Oh, about twenty kilometers from Pakistan only."

Of course... we should've known. Regardless, we were the only people around for miles. When darkness closed in completely, we collapsed in the dunes under the brightest stars I'd seen in my life. Up in Canada, I'd seen some amazing celestial displays. However, we were so far from light pollution that the stars stood out in a way I never thought I'd see. We lay on the sand, watching half a dozen shooting stars as our camel drivers prepared dinner around a fire. They brought us chai that tasted deliciously smoky from the fire and we sipped in silence.

After dinner, we spread out blankets on the sand to sleep. Around three in the morning, I woke up to a tingling in my right hand. I figured that my arm had fallen asleep, so I sat up to shake it out. When I finally opened my eyes, I saw that my arm hadn't fallen asleep.. there was a dung beetle the size of my thumb crawling on it. Looking around our blankets, I could see hundreds of little black shapes teeming everywhere. Oh God.

Naturally, my reaction was to fling the beetle as far away as I could. That didn't turn up to be very far, however, as it landed on Sara's face. She woke up, and I quickly filled her in about Operation Beetle. We decided that there wasn't much we could do about the beetles on the blankets, but the ones under the blankets and in our clothes had to go. I used my glasses case to flick them onto the sand, but in the darkness without our glasses it was difficult to figure out what was what. Danielle woke up briefly during the beetle war, and merely grunted and turned over when we told her what was going on. As she brought her arm down onto the blanket, I heard a crunch. She didn't seem bothered.

Sara and I ended up giving up, exhausted, and gingerly lying back down. I covered my head and face with a scarf, but that didn't block out the scritch scritch scratch noise that the beetle legs made as they crawled across my pillow towards me. I kept sitting up and flinging beetle everywhere before I eventually fell asleep, trying to ignore the beetle legs tickling at my toes.

I woke up when the sun rose, disturbing a few beetles as I sat up. Putting on my glasses in the early morning light, I watched as the beetles burrowed into the sand as the air started heating up. The sand was completely covered in their tracks, looking as if a really, really tiny monster truck derby had taken place last night. There wasn't an inch of smooth sand left for at least twenty yards around our blanket.

Stepping into the now beetle-less sand, I watched as the few remaining beetles battled over the last bits of uncollected camel dung. One would be rolling a ping pong ball-sized piece towards a burrow when another would come and tackle the first. After a few seconds of crunching shell and flailing legs, one would triumph and the other would run away to sulk.

Danielle and Sara ran across the dunes as the sun came up, making tracks of their own amidst the snake, beetle, camel, and fox tracks in the sand. I walked up to the top of one of the dunes, taking pictures and trying to convince myself that this was real.

Love,
Sarah!

iPod: "Cross Out The Eyes," Thursday, "Surprise, Surprise," The Starting Line