Saddle Up That Horny Camel! (India)
Mid February, 2006
Being a bit of a blog novice I only recently realised that people can post comments on your blog, and some of you have
done so on mine - thank you if you have! One comment, (hello Guy!), and an email, (hello James!), made the observation that I seem to have found some parallel existence, (possibly in my imagination), populated entirely by females. Well as if to dispel this idea, in Udaipur I spent most of my time with a male and a female, namely Andrew, (left, male, with facial hair), and Kimia, (left, female, without). They were from a place called Waterloo, which is somewhere in Canada.
I met them at Udaipur train station as we all sat on the platform working out what to do next. As it turned out, we took a tuk-tuk to a hotel, stayed there together and hung out for the next four days.
Udaipur was a breath of fresh air after Pushkar, literally and figuratively. It was cleaner, quieter, not so nutty-religious and quite a bit more laid-back. Having said that, cleanliness is relative and, this being India, the streets still had enough vehicle emissions and dust on them to give me a nagging sore throat for pretty much the whole time I was there. In response I bought a thin cotton scarf and wrapped it around my nose and mouth which helped, even if it did make me look like a Palestinian stone-thrower.
Andrew and Kimia had some great ideas for fun activities, which lead to us all attending 8:30 a.m. yoga classes every morning, and a tabla class! This may cause some dismay to those I share an office with, (good morning, Johnny Mole!), who I am sure would take the view that my tendency to drum on the desk and floor doesn't need any encouragement. However, I can now annoy my nearby colleagues with a whole new set of Asian rhythm patterns! An improvement, mais non....?
We also went to a showcase of traditional Rajasthani dance, and a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream which I greatly enjoyed, staged in the courtyard of the City Palace by an English theatre company resident in Udaipur. I don't think the Sikh gentlemen seated behind us thought much of it though. Their muttering grew throughout the first act until eventually they all walked out; I suspect the Elizabethan English was a bit much to follow! Fair enough. I doubt I would sit through much of a 400 year-old play performed in Punjabi.
Udaipur is built around a beautiful lake which has two islands in it, each island having a palace built on it. As the locals won't let you forget, scenes from the Bond film Octopussy were filmed there, and half the restaurants in the town show the film every night! I watched the first 45 minutes one night, and was simply reminded of how all the Bond films are formulaic crap after the first few that Sean Connery did. Certainly late-period Roger Moore, like Octopussy, is about as lame as Bond gets.......
Kimia was somewhat taken by Mr. Dasje, and spent considerable time and effort teaching him to get into the poses we were learning in yoga. I did sometimes wonder if he might mysteriously disappear on an unscheduled trip to Canada at the end of our time in Udaipur! However, I managed to tear Kimia and Mr. Dasje apart, and said goodbye to her and Andrew, I caught a couple of buses overnight to Jaisalmer which is in western Rajasthan on the edge of The Great Thar Desert.
On the way I met Barbara and Danni, a couple of
final-year medical students 
from Tubingen in south Germany, and John the Australian cabbie who was travelling with them. I talked to Danni for a while and we decided we would all take a camel safari together, (the safaris being one of the main reasons people go to Jaisalmer). We got settled into different guesthouses, then met up and decided the safari that we would go on - three days, two nights, sleeping under the stars. John decided not to go, but we were joined by Max and Espen, two guys from Norway, and Niki from New Zealand making six of us in total.
The camel trip was excellent! Camels are funny creatures, and after a while you could see the different personalities
of our individual animals. Mine was a ten-year-old male called "Lucky". This name was not without irony, as he was very much "in season" but just wasn't meeting the ladies. It wasn't for lack of trying though; he kept emitting his strange mating call, which started off as a rumbling from deep within him, developing into a bubbling noise as he inflated a weird pink sack out of the side of his mouth, subsequently sucking the sack back in. He was also somewhat unruly. When I was steering him he would sometimes just take off in the direction he thought might be more interesting to him. You're supposed to be able to pull the reigns, turn the camel's head and make it go in the direction its head is pointed. Not so with Lucky; he would just carry on trotting in the direction he wanted, his head at 90 degrees, (or more!), to his body!
We would ride in the morning and afternoon, stopping for a long lunch under a big tree somewhere during the midday heat, then camping on sand dunes at night. We had started the trek by driving 50km away from Jaisalmer out into the desert, so
we were a long way from any towns and the light pollution was minimal. It was incredible to see the night sky as it really is, particularly before the moon came up. I had never slept in the open before and I loved it, despite waking up several ti
mes to find a big dung beetle on my neck. Maybe after a couple of days riding camels and not showering the beetles were trying to tell me something. After the first day on the back of a camel my thighs were certainly trying to tell me something - like "For the love of God, STOP!" At camp that night I collapsed on my belly on the blanket and could hardly move for an hour or so, but I was soon revived by the camel men's cooking and Espen's bottle of whisky.
After the safari I decided to spend a couple of extra days in Jaisalmer to carry on enjoying the excellent company, then on the day I was supposed to leave I got sick, (again!), and couldn't face two days on a train going to Varanasi. So Max and Espen left for Delhi, Frau Doktor Danni left for Pushkar laving Frau Doktor Barbara with me to see me back to health! I actually got well again the next day, and was able to spend a really nice last couple of days in Jaisalmer before I finally got the train eastwards.
Being a bit of a blog novice I only recently realised that people can post comments on your blog, and some of you have
done so on mine - thank you if you have! One comment, (hello Guy!), and an email, (hello James!), made the observation that I seem to have found some parallel existence, (possibly in my imagination), populated entirely by females. Well as if to dispel this idea, in Udaipur I spent most of my time with a male and a female, namely Andrew, (left, male, with facial hair), and Kimia, (left, female, without). They were from a place called Waterloo, which is somewhere in Canada.I met them at Udaipur train station as we all sat on the platform working out what to do next. As it turned out, we took a tuk-tuk to a hotel, stayed there together and hung out for the next four days.
Udaipur was a breath of fresh air after Pushkar, literally and figuratively. It was cleaner, quieter, not so nutty-religious and quite a bit more laid-back. Having said that, cleanliness is relative and, this being India, the streets still had enough vehicle emissions and dust on them to give me a nagging sore throat for pretty much the whole time I was there. In response I bought a thin cotton scarf and wrapped it around my nose and mouth which helped, even if it did make me look like a Palestinian stone-thrower.
Andrew and Kimia had some great ideas for fun activities, which lead to us all attending 8:30 a.m. yoga classes every morning, and a tabla class! This may cause some dismay to those I share an office with, (good morning, Johnny Mole!), who I am sure would take the view that my tendency to drum on the desk and floor doesn't need any encouragement. However, I can now annoy my nearby colleagues with a whole new set of Asian rhythm patterns! An improvement, mais non....?
We also went to a showcase of traditional Rajasthani dance, and a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream which I greatly enjoyed, staged in the courtyard of the City Palace by an English theatre company resident in Udaipur. I don't think the Sikh gentlemen seated behind us thought much of it though. Their muttering grew throughout the first act until eventually they all walked out; I suspect the Elizabethan English was a bit much to follow! Fair enough. I doubt I would sit through much of a 400 year-old play performed in Punjabi.Udaipur is built around a beautiful lake which has two islands in it, each island having a palace built on it. As the locals won't let you forget, scenes from the Bond film Octopussy were filmed there, and half the restaurants in the town show the film every night! I watched the first 45 minutes one night, and was simply reminded of how all the Bond films are formulaic crap after the first few that Sean Connery did. Certainly late-period Roger Moore, like Octopussy, is about as lame as Bond gets.......
Kimia was somewhat taken by Mr. Dasje, and spent considerable time and effort teaching him to get into the poses we were learning in yoga. I did sometimes wonder if he might mysteriously disappear on an unscheduled trip to Canada at the end of our time in Udaipur! However, I managed to tear Kimia and Mr. Dasje apart, and said goodbye to her and Andrew, I caught a couple of buses overnight to Jaisalmer which is in western Rajasthan on the edge of The Great Thar Desert.
On the way I met Barbara and Danni, a couple of
final-year medical students 
from Tubingen in south Germany, and John the Australian cabbie who was travelling with them. I talked to Danni for a while and we decided we would all take a camel safari together, (the safaris being one of the main reasons people go to Jaisalmer). We got settled into different guesthouses, then met up and decided the safari that we would go on - three days, two nights, sleeping under the stars. John decided not to go, but we were joined by Max and Espen, two guys from Norway, and Niki from New Zealand making six of us in total.The camel trip was excellent! Camels are funny creatures, and after a while you could see the different personalities
of our individual animals. Mine was a ten-year-old male called "Lucky". This name was not without irony, as he was very much "in season" but just wasn't meeting the ladies. It wasn't for lack of trying though; he kept emitting his strange mating call, which started off as a rumbling from deep within him, developing into a bubbling noise as he inflated a weird pink sack out of the side of his mouth, subsequently sucking the sack back in. He was also somewhat unruly. When I was steering him he would sometimes just take off in the direction he thought might be more interesting to him. You're supposed to be able to pull the reigns, turn the camel's head and make it go in the direction its head is pointed. Not so with Lucky; he would just carry on trotting in the direction he wanted, his head at 90 degrees, (or more!), to his body!We would ride in the morning and afternoon, stopping for a long lunch under a big tree somewhere during the midday heat, then camping on sand dunes at night. We had started the trek by driving 50km away from Jaisalmer out into the desert, so
we were a long way from any towns and the light pollution was minimal. It was incredible to see the night sky as it really is, particularly before the moon came up. I had never slept in the open before and I loved it, despite waking up several ti
mes to find a big dung beetle on my neck. Maybe after a couple of days riding camels and not showering the beetles were trying to tell me something. After the first day on the back of a camel my thighs were certainly trying to tell me something - like "For the love of God, STOP!" At camp that night I collapsed on my belly on the blanket and could hardly move for an hour or so, but I was soon revived by the camel men's cooking and Espen's bottle of whisky.After the safari I decided to spend a couple of extra days in Jaisalmer to carry on enjoying the excellent company, then on the day I was supposed to leave I got sick, (again!), and couldn't face two days on a train going to Varanasi. So Max and Espen left for Delhi, Frau Doktor Danni left for Pushkar laving Frau Doktor Barbara with me to see me back to health! I actually got well again the next day, and was able to spend a really nice last couple of days in Jaisalmer before I finally got the train eastwards.
posted by Badger at 12:14 pm
1 Comments:
how many humps did the camel get?
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