JAILSALMER, RAJASTHAN | LETTERS & PICTURES FROM ASIA, 1988 | PART 15

In 1988, when I was eighteen years old I set off from New Zealand to Asia on an adventure. This is the fifteenth letter home, sent following a camel Safari in Jaisalmer

• Read the very first letter from Kathmandu here.
• Read the previous letter from Pushkar

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Jaisalmer, India
9 August 1988

Dear Everyone,

Right now I'm in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, having just returned from a four day camel safari in the desert. Jaisalmer is an oasis in the middle of the Thar Desert. It has a huge fort standing on the top of a hill overlooking the city, which is filled with crooked narrow alleys, a bit like Leh in Ladakh. It was a major place on a caravan route in the old days. Some of the old yellow sandstone buildings built by wealthy merchants are beautiful; everything is finely carved, the balconeys and the doors and windows. They are called havlis.

I am staying in a hotel inside the huge fort; right now I'm sitting looking out over the city and then the desert stretching away into nothingness. Everything is a yellow-gold colour.

In the streets the men wear bright turbans, have handlebar moustaches and sometimes carry swords. The women wear bright saris which they usually wear across their face. In the day the place is filled with bustle and at night the streets are empty except for the many dogs, cows and rats.

This place is like something from the Arabian Nights, a lost romantic desert oasis trapped in the past. It is certainly a long way from anywhere here.

So I went on a camel safari! An English guy called Simon who I'd been travelling with came as well. Two English girls and an Australian girl also came. One of the English girl's brother was meant to come as well, but he got sick. We went for four days except for Simon who went back early.

Jaisalmer, in fact Rajasthan generally, hadn't had a monsoon for four years, but unfortunately for us and fortunately for everyone else it came whilst we were on safari. It really rained hard and we got soaked; it was also very windy. Fortunately it didn't rain all the time so we could move between downpours, but this was not the way that I imagined it to be in the desert though! We had one big downpour in Jaisalmer before we left and it was like a celebration with people dancing on the roofs and washing themselves hoping that this was the end of the four year drought, which it is. It then started again at the end of the first day on the camels.

Coming to terms with camel riding is somewhat difficult as they are the strangest animals. I had an exciting introduction. You climb on board whilst they are in the sitting position, then they lift up on their front legs so that you nearly fall off the back, then they lift up on their back legs so that you nearly fall off the front, then they straighten out their front legs and they they lope their way off. Anyway, what happened on my very first ride was that when my camel was getting up into the standing position the camel driver, who sits behind you, fell off, hurting himself and leaving me trying to control a very bad-tempered camel who was trying to shake me off as well and make an escape. 

They are very hard to stop as they have such bendy necks, but I eventually managed to control him and bring us back. My camel was the biggest and strongest; we called him 'The Big C’. Eventually we got ’Big C' under control and off we went into the hot desert.

The landscape was mostly barren and dry with lots of cacti and other plants. There also seemed to be plenty of activity, mostly people, goats and sheep. It was very flat except on the third day when we got into sand dunes like a real desert.

We stayed the first night in an abandoned village, the story of which is quite interesting. A king from Jaisalmer wanted to marry one of the women from this village but she didn't want to marry him. Marriage between people from this village and people from Jaisalmer was forbidden because these people were Jains and the people from Jailsalmer were something different, I'm not sure what. The king said that in ten days he would return to take her if she didn't come herself. When he did return the village had been destroyed and was deserted, and has remained the same ever since. Apparently this happened about 300 years ago.

It had begun to rain by now and the only place to stay was in a small temple, already occupied, or in a small bandstand- like thing. I don't know what it was for but we slept there and got very wet from the rain coming in the open sides. It rained hard until about 3pm the next day, so all we could do was huddle around the fire. Slowly dry rivers filled, puddles formed and the desert became slushy.

(Note, this is the village of Kuldhara which has now been rebuilt and turned into a tourist attraction - I revisited this place in March 2020 - as can be seen in the below video)

In the afternoon we rode for a few hours to a village, arriving just after dark. Our guide and also hotel-owner is a very respected Brahmin and has some local royalty in his blood, so the villagers gave us a nice place to stay in. He is a really nice guy except that he was stoned out of his brain most of the time!

After a rainy night it seemed to almost clear a bit in the morning. Simon, who was sick, went back to Jaisalmer. We carried on crossing the sand dunes and some interesting scenery which reminded me of what some parts of Africa might look like. We slept the last night by a lake.

Some people had saddle sores, but fortunately I didn't, but I did have a bad back. I had a camel race with one of the English girls and I think that that was when I put it out. The camels went really fast and because they bump up and down so much it is really hard to stay on.

The last day seemed long and tiring. It was very windy with some rain, and we all got sunburned.

All in all I really enjoyed it despite the weather. We all could get along really well and the people were nice. 

Tonight I travel by train to Jodhpur and then catch a bus tomorrow morning to Udipur. You become so used to these long journeys that a 12 hour ride is considered short. I'm going with the brother, also called Simon, and the two English girls, Charlotte and Diana. They are all really nice and are the same age as I am. This is the first time that I have met anyone my own age since I have been travelling and it is really good to have some younger company.

Well, I hope Eunice and Roger are now in England and that things are going well for them. Simon, the guy who came on the camel safari, not Charlotte's brother, is from Shrewsbury and says that she will find it very different. He was surprised to find out that my mother was from there!

I've been having a lot of dreams lately, a lot about you all back home. I think that when you travel, stuff about your past comes up. Everything is totally unfamiliar to you, you never meet anyone that you have met before, you never see anything that you've ever seen before. Your life before just stops in its tracks and the onIy thing left is this writing on paper to each other. Nothing is secure because you know that it will just come and then go and that's the end of it.