Day 9 - Desert

The train to Jaisalmer had all the ingredients to be a disaster.  As I mentioned yesterday, we were given side berths (supposedly shorter than the ones in the compartments we had been assigned so far) and the berths in front of ours were occupied by six loud Indian girls and one poor old woman, who at one point desperately muttered “it’s time to sleep!”. The first part was actually okay, as I just about managed to squeeze into my spot and had a decent night’s sleep - until I got woken up by the girls playing Ed Sheeran out load (Shape of You, in case you are wondering).

As we arrived in Jaisalmer after midday and the desert trip we wanted to do started at 3.30pm, we did not actually get to see much of the city before jumping on a 4x4. On the way, we stopped at a deserted village, whose inhabitants ran away after the Maharaj asked to marry one of their young ladies - if I ever propose and get rejected can someone please use this story to remind me that it could be worse? Anyways, we then briefly stopped at a gipsy village, where kids found it very amusing to throw a bicycle tyre at me and catching it when I threw it back at them.

All along, we were accompanied by a group of four dutch backpackers, who were staying at the desert overnight. The two guys and the two girls were travelling separately but had met in Delhi and happened to be on their way to the same few places. The two girls also did not know each other before this trip, and met after one of them posted the question “Does anyone want to travel with me?” in a group and the other replied “Okay”. I have an American friend who would think this is absolute insanity and that one of them will kill all the others with an axe before the end of the week. I hope she is not reading this.

Camel riding in the desert was not particularly inspiring, especially since it was the greenest desert I have ever seen, as it rained quite heavily over the last month. The sunset and the incredibly starry sky, on the other hand, were a pretty cool way to end a busy but mostly uneventful day. Now onto another one of our trademark 5am starts to check out Jaisalmer before boarding an epic 18-hour train back to Delhi...

Cheers,
João