The Lonely Traveler - Desert Safari

The Safari day began lazily. I woke up early but didn’t really feel like getting out of bed. This was my first sane sleep in the past 4 days. I finally brushed my teeth and headed for breakfast and tea. Quite expectedly, the imaginary English girls were not going for the Safari and I was the lone guy out there. I was prepared for it.

The camels were supposed to meet us at Amar Sagar. I had quickly bought a desert safari dress with turban for 400 bucks and headed in the jeep towards Amar Sagar. A small teastall was the rendezvous point for the camels and the jeeps. The ration was loaded, Liyaqat Khan introduced and I happily bade goodbye to Little Johny as I finally embarked on the camel safari.

Liyaqat Khan, the camelman, was a tall, lean figure with a face that seemed to have wrinkled and hardened by the vagaries of life. He wore a long Pathan suit and spoke comfortable Hindi, fluent Marwari dialect and comprehensible English – quite a must for all camel safari guides. He belonged to a village that was about 3 kms from the first source of water – a source that was a man-made pond about 20 mts in length 10 mts in breadth and might be a meter or two deep. The amount of dark brown water in the pond depended solely on rainwater. The camels, humans and mules drank side by side – heights of equality, or was it just an irony.

First few hours of the ride took us through scrub and cacti vegetation and a few ponds, one of which was surrounded by a gypsy settlement. The Rajasthani Banjarins are considered to be adorned with the most colorful dresses and ornaments. You would inevitably find them wearing colorful printed red ghaagras and cholis with borlas. The bangles are generally huge and with different designs, so are the nosepieces and necklaces. They would invariably call every tourist on desert safari as a ‘gora’ or a ‘gori’ and would expect some tips from you.

Our first stop was for the sake of our camels. We stopped near a pond for filling the camel’s water sacs, while I was nursing my cramped hip joint. And this reminds me, I did not really find riding a camel to be an easy job. Although a folded cotton mattress is placed over the saddle, it doesn’t prevent the deep insides of my hind to get badly cramped up. Eventually, I imitated the camel man who was sitting with both legs on one side. Although scary and prone to falls, the posture, no doubt, is more comfortable.

An hour or two after the first stop, we decided to rest for lunch. Liyaqat unsaddled the camels and left them to feed on thorns. He meticulously laid down the mattress for me and set out to gather dry twigs and branches for the fire. We were about three hours from the dunes and I preferred escaping the hottest part of the day by laying down in the cool shade of the lone tree in the vast expanse of short cacti. I ate potatoes, lentils and half-an-inch thick chapattis (or probably tried to eat them). Another small nap and we started proceeding further west. After crossing a small hillock, we reached one small set of dunes which, to me, seemed exquisite. This might sound geekish and irritating, but the look of these dunes immediately reminded me of the default Microsoft Windows Desktop image of picture perfect sand dunes. Another hour on the camel and we were at our destination. I waited for the tea before heading out on the dunes for all the fun.