Rajasthan: Sandcastle City and Camel Safaris

When Kim and I decided to travel together, we agreed on Rajasthan and figured we'd start far west and work our way back toward Delhi over the course of about three weeks. So a 19-hour train ride later, we ended up in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan's sandstone city that looks like one giant sandcastle - crowned with the Jaisalmer Fort city which is a bustling town that grew up within the walls of Jaisalmer's fort. Kim and I, along with a few new Australian buddies, found ourselves a place to stay at the (rather shoddy but cheap) Hotel Rajdhani.

After a long walk around the city and through the fort, past many of Jaisalmer's famous (and gorgeously) sculpted havelis (former residences of rich merchants), I realized why people loved this town. It is small, sleepy, and exists now almost entirely to service the fast-growing tourist industry that centers around the 3-5 day camel safaris that every tourist (including us) takes part in.

We departed on a camel safari arranged by our hotel owner (they're all in the business of selling safaris, too) for 3 days. That was about two days too many. After having seen endless sanddunes that really do stretch as far as the eyes can see, Rajasthan's Thar Desert dunes were, well, uninspiring. The clear nights did make for beautiful views of the sky filled with millions of stars, but the most memorable experience of our safari was the freak powerful rainstorm in the middle of a desert during Rajasthan's dry season. Who would have guessed?

Needless to say, our camel safari guides were utterly worthless - taking the waterproof rain coverings and synthetic wraps for themselves and leaving us with the stack of wool blankets that were soaked in 5 minutes. So the 3 Aussies and Kim and I put our brains together, used the camel saddles for windbreaks, and buried ourselves in the sand behind them in our sleeping bags with the wool blankets piled thick on top of us. We stayed warm and dry for the most part and had a good laugh about it the next day. We must have done a good job because our camel safari guides were coughing up a storm the next morning and we were just fine. We were miffed though and did not want to pay the full amount for our safari since our guides were, well, worthless. That and another guy with us (an Argentinian) paid a lot less, too.

We decided to head over to Jodhpur the next day, but not before some shenanigans with our hotel owner who was furious that we didn't want to pay up, insisting that he was in no fault whatsoever. This was despite the fact that he insisted that we pay only 50% up front and not pay the rest if we were in anyway dissatisfied. Our attempt to pay Rs. 500/- per night (about 85%) was met with angry yelling and the owner slamming the hotel door shut and attempting to lock us in. It didn't help that he had been drinking too much. So we gave him an extra Rs. 100/- a night ($10 total for a lot of peace of mind is a good deal in my opinion) and left.

Sigh... why is it that India is so great, then in a split second can absolutely ruin itself? Well, we were in for a pleasant surprise with the next two weeks, staying at lovely, great-value guesthouses that were, well, ridiculously cheap, too. More later.