Jaisalmer & Camel Safari

We woke up on the 15th of September curious about the 12h train trip that we had ahead. Will it be clean?! Will we have people bothering us all the time?! 12h seams a lot... we got our tuk tuk that left us at the train station door. The station seemed much more organized than the station in Delhi, less people and less confusion.. a police lady immediatly offered help to find our line number. Because we were curious and thought it would be very hard to find our line number, we arrived 1h before the departure so we sat on the half chairs between the train lines and observed the people. There were a lot of young guys cleaning the station, people laying on the floor, some people sleeping and families waiting for the train. We noticed that there are almost no trash bins, people throw garbage to the ground and railroad employees pick it up and put it in bags, the railroad cleaners were also wiping out the floor but curiously they wipe it and throw the dirt to the train lines instead of picking it up. Then there are other cleaners that pick up garbage from the lines.. it seems like a circle but at the end the station will always look dirty... Wouldn't it be easier/cheaper to place more trash bins around the station? Behind us was a family with three kids, all of them were small, the older was probably 5, the younger we guess he had 2 weeks, they jumped from lap to lap, from the father to the mother, to the ant, to the mother again, etc.. there were no baby trolleys. There were also two ladies and a baby girl that was maybe one year old, crawling through the station with her food on her hands, placing the food on the floor, eating the food, crawling a bit more... she also pee on the floor and everything is normal... We talked about the ways kids are raised in different countries... do we overprotect our kids or do this kids have lack of protection? For sure this one's grow stronger... maybe it would be nice to meet in the middle.

Finally our train arrived, we got into the carriage and started to look for our seats/beds, when we found them they were really dirty, some water on the seat, a lot of trash around it.. our faces were so clear that one passenger immediately told us not to worry, the guys would clean it. While the guys were cleaning it, an older man started to talk to us and asked were we were from.. as soon as we said Portugal he immediatly talked about Goa and that we should go there... we believe that the colonization era is still on people's minds. Our booth was cleaned, twere three beds on each side and 2 more in the corridor. We thought people would go to the ones assigned to them but a guy and a girl stayed next to us for a while, we wanted to sleep but we didn't know how to tell them that those seat were ours without being rude but we started to show sleepiness on our faces and they understood. We felt asleep for a few hours, obviously Kika slept more.. sleeping is not a problem for her.
During the train trip we ate our delicious cheese sandwichs, oreos, apple juice, digestives and some peanuts. We are proud of our preparation, we were never hungry. The hours went by and we did what we could to be entertained, we played a lot of solitary on our phones, read the rough guides and the book "Estrada da Revolução", listened to music, slept a bit more... Afraid of the unknown, Kika was avoiding to go to the toilet but at one point there was nothing she could do...
For the first time, Kika peed to the hole on the ground, in this toilet we could see the railroad at the end.. yes, people pee and poop straight to the railroad.
During the trip we noticed people jumping from bed to bed, there are assigned beds but people use them as they need... for them, a pillow is a pillow and a bed is a bed there is no concept of "my pillow" or "my bed", they leave in a community and use things as needed, always with respect and comprehension. The hours went by and finally we stopped in Jaisalmer where Padam, the owner of the guest house we were going to stay was waiting for us with a tuk tuk. Actually, the 12h train ride wasn't that hard...

When we arrived, Padam proudly presented us his guest house... he showed us our room and dinning/relaxation room and we couldn't believe what we were seeing... the walls were all painted with colorful drawings, the decorations was superb... at the end of the relaxation room a wonderful balcony over the city of Jaisalmer.. we were in a guest house but the walls and structure is really from the fort of Jaisalmer. We asked Padam if he wanted to do the check in and his answer was also great.. "you are at home now, you don't need to worry about that.. just take some rest and enjoy" it is not a common answer... Our excitement was obvious... instead of going to bed we decided to take a few pictures from the rooms and night view. We were wondering about what was waiting for us tomorrow...

We woke up on September 16th and our minds were in the Camel Safari, after a delicious breakfast in our wonderfull guest house, we decided that we should book our safari as soon as possible so that we can enjoy the rest of the day without concerns. After reading about several companies that sell Camel Safaris we choose to book with Trotters, a company that is rated with 5 stars on TripAdvisor. The safari would start next day at 6am and it would last until the following day at 11am.
After booking the safari we started to explore the city.. as any other Indian city, Jaisalmer is full of people selling beautiful clothes, fabrics, acessories, decoration pieces, etc but here the sellers make it in a different way... for example, in one stand that sells anklets, two ladies ended up offering one small anklet to Kika hoping we would come back to buy more... people here try to connect to us and even when we say "no" they always say "maybe later...".

The city is even better than we expected, now we understand why Jaisalmer is called the golden city... With yellow/golden buildings everywhere with an architecture full of details with mysterious sounds/music coming out of nowhere.. we were really impressed. We visited the City Palace and museum and it  was really beautiful. After the museum we went for lunch on the rooftop of the restaurant of the Hotel Paradise. The meal was good and the rooftop was really confortable. As usual, we couldn't walk between 12pm and 3pm so we laid down in the beds in the rooftop and enjoyed the amazing view... we might have slept for a few minutes...

On the second half of the day we opted by walk through the tiny streets of the fort until we found a massage shop.. we looked at each other and thought "why not?! India is known by excellent massages... we are on a budget but we only live once... and we can save the money on another day..." and there we go... the most relaxing 60 minutes of our trip... we choose the 7 chakras massage. Still stunned by the massage we walked to a viewpoint of the city and not even 30 seconds later, two Indian guys started to talk to us... they were curious about our culture, our country so without noticing, we talked to them for almost 1h.. at the end we were around 7/8 people, some other Indians, also curious about different cultures ended up shyly joining us. It was a good moment... during that time there were no tabus, only a bunch of people asking/responding to questions..
When we looked at our watches, we realized that it was almost time for the sunset so we said goodbye and walked straight to one of the wonderfull rooftops of the city and we happily watched the sun hiding on the horizon while drinking a delicious cold coke... life is good...
Since we are accommodated in one of the best viewpoints of the city, we had dinner in our own rooftop, while waiting for our meal we watched HUGE bats (almost like eagles) flying over a tree right next to us. At the beginning it was a bit scary but then we realized that wouldn't attack us so we relaxed a bit. As soon as our meal arrived we felt some water drops "wait... is this rain?!?!" We thought.. "maybe is just a cloud..." WRONG... in just a few seconds it was pouring rain... we ran to the dinning room with our plates in our hands and as soon as we sat............NO LIGHT! We thought the light would come back really fast but we ended up having dinner with a flashlight it was ok but we were starting to get nervous because if the light was off, we wouldn't be able to charge the phones/cameras and the go pro for our amazing safari on the next day... "wait.. did we say amazing safari?!?! What if it rains tomorrow?!?!?" We were really concerned but suddenly the light came back... "ufffff...". Padam, showed up and we talked for a while, he explained that when it rains heavily, the city cuts the power down because the systems are really old and it can become dangerous. We also learned that most of the people from the desert don't know their age because they are not registered so we guessed that Padam is about 33 years old. He also told us a bit about his life and that this guesthouse was painted by him and his friend. It is nice to know people like Padam...

Camel Safari

The day started very early, we slowly got out of the bed and started our way to the meeting point (Trotters shop), we had to be there at 6am... we were the first one arriving, with the minutes passing, the rest of the group started to show up... first, one guy (Tim) then, two girls (Flora and Emma) at the end another two girls (Sham and Catherine). We got into the Jeep and started our way to the desert... we were all sleepy so the conversation in the Jeep was almost none. Suddenly the Jeep stoped, we all got out and started to see a few camels and our guides. They told us to seat on a blanket and started to serve us breakfast (toast, jam, bananas and obviously chai).. with the energies and the excitement reaching our bodies we all started to meet each other.. Tim was from France (he doesn't look like a typical french..), Emma and Flora are from UK and Shan and Catherine are from New Zealand. We finished our food and our guides prepared all the camels, we could see that we were all nervous about riding a camel for the first time.. before jumping on the camels, our guides gently made us a turban it was really nice, with a turban on our heads we feel like real desert people so riding the Camel will be easy.. we finally jumped to the camels, at the beginning it was hard.. every single move we were afraid of falling but with time people got used to. Kika's camel was Djura, Pedro's camel was Rocket. Pedro went on one camel that was a bit more nervous than the others so he was bit distant from the group... Kika's camel was attached to Tim's camel so during the morning they got the chance to meet each other. Tim is 21 years old and left school, his school is travelling.. he hopes to open a hostel one day, we  hope he can do it... we would definitely go there. It was nice to share experiences with him, he has travelled a lot and we all learn from each other.
After more or less 3h of camel riding we stopped under a tree to take some rest, the guides gave us some snacks and started to prepare our delicious lunch. They are able to prepare a complete meal, mix of veggies, rice and chapati in the middle of the desert. We ate and talk a little bit more and he could feel the heat starting so we stayed under that big tree for a few hours so that we don't ride under the hard sun. Some took a nap, others talked and the guides played cards. More or less around 3pm our guides started to prepare the camels again, now there was no fear..  we were all confortable with our dear camels. The afternoon ride was longer than the morning ride so this time, the guide would go on a camel as well instead of walking as they did in the morning. Because of that, I had to change to another camel so I went on Rocky, he was also a nice camel... Djura was going to be used by the guides. We rode for more or less three hours, it was a really nice feeling. When we are on the top of a camel and when there is nothing around us our mind is cleaned.. it is a really relaxing activity where we can think about our life or we can think about nothing and simply enjoy the great view. The only non relaxing part was if we decide to think about our legs, the pain that we were all starting to feel and the crazy sun that was showing us how powerful he is. During the day we drank several bottles of water but not the water we are used to... it was HOT, hot as tea water but for us it was the best water in the world... one more time, India is showing us how important water is. Most of our path wasn't in sandy desert, there was almost always green around us, maybe because the rainy season was over a few days/weeks ago so we were all wondering if we would ride on sandy desert as well, we all hoped for that but as the path was getting closer to the stopping point the sand appeared.. we rode a bit on the sand until we found some nice dunes... that was our stopping point, we were going to sleep on the dunes. We were all exhausted but even so we all explored the dunes, some guys from the Camel company also met us there and we took really nice pictures. But before..... COLD WATER!!!! It was the best water we have drank in our lives.
The guides started to prepare our dinner while we were all sharing our thoughts about the riding and also some stories about our travels. We could see that some dogs were getting close to our group, they are desert dogs but they were not agressive, they wanted food and company.
The dinner arrived but the sun was gone, so we all ate our food with our flashlights  on but we quickly realized that the bugs (flying beetles and locusts) loved the light so we turned them off as soon as we finished eating.
We all laid down and started to look at the sky, there was some clouds and we all remembered the night before... "will it rain?" We were all hoping the clouds would leave, we wanted to see the stars... slowly, the clouds started to move and the stars started to say "Hi!", we were all amazed by the silent and the sky that we had in front of us.. we could clearly see the milky way above our heads... it was a moment that we will never forget. During that time we thought we had no problems at all, we were only enjoying the moment.. well, Pedro had two problems... there were two huge flying beetles jumping to him all the time but we all believed those were minor problems.. just kidding... we considered those two bugs as problems but Pedro saved the girls from panicking several times, sending the big bugs away.
With the time going we were all trying to fight the sleepyness.. we didn't want to close our eyes... the stars were so magical... but one by one we all started to fall asleep. Everything was fine until the dogs started to approach us.. one of them wanted to sleep with us and the others were all barking at that dog.. it was really scary at the begging because we were all relaxed and sleeping and suddenly a bunch of dogs started to bark and growl a few centimeters from us... it was moments of small "panic" but only a few seconds later we were all sleeping again... it should have been recorded by video... jump, scream, sleep... jump, scream, sleep... When we woke up, early morning we finally understood what was going on with the dogs.. the one that wanted to sleep with us was the only female dog so she wanted protection all the other ones were male and we all know what they wanted... we felt sorry for the female dog but there was no way we could have guessed that before..
We were all SUPER SORE from the Camel riding, in one way we wanted to ride the camels again but on the other way our body was in pain... but we all jumped on our camels again... even with all the pain in the legs, butt, abs and back we happily rode the camels on our way back to the jeep. If we stopped thinking about the pain, the journey was really nice.
When we saw our jeep waiting for us, we all felt some relief.. we would be finally able to rest our bodies...
Before going home, we still had the ghost town and the natural oasis to see.. we enjoyed the Jeep ride, some girls even went on the top of the jeep... really cool! The oasis and the ghost town were ok but at that moment we could only think about a nice and cold shower. One really important thing that we learned is that people in the desert use the water from the natural Oasis to drink, we think we went throuh a lot during our desert safari but we had water whenever we wanted.. we just needed to ask for it.. ok it was hot but it was water... this people don't have that.. the water they drink is the same water where our guide cleaned the jeep...
When we arrived to the city we exchanged contacts and said bye... maybe we will meet again in the middle of our travels..
We both dragged ourselves into the hotel, we could barely walk... every single movement was hurting. We took our showers and went for lunch in a rooftop, we needed energy so we had pasta and chowmean, after lunch we went back to our hotel an immediately felt  asleep. After waking up in the middle of the day, we still didn't have the energy to be walking around so we decided to stay in our guesthouse and relax in our wonderfull relaxation room... we can't get tired of it.. it is really confortable. We wrote, read, played solitary, talked about the Camel experience... pure relax. We had an early dinner and quickly went to bed.

After ten hours of sleep we woke up for our last day in Jaisalmer. We decided to visit the city outside of the fort, still sore from the Camel Safari we walked through the streets of Jaisalmer until we stopped at Shree Bikaneer Reastaurant for lunch.. it was a place full of local with authentic Indian food. After lunch we started to walk again but the sun and the heat were unbearable so we stopped on the shade and stayed there observing the people. After a few hours in the same place, we felt strong enough to walk to the lake next to the city. The lake offers a nice perspective of Jaisalmer, we were able to relax far from the crowd while enjoying the wonderfull view of the fort. On our way back we started to feel the heat and we got really tired again... by the time we reached the fort, Kika couldn't even speak, we went on a rooftop just to see the sunset and to have a coke and a Fanta. Afterwards we went back to the hotel to relax and have dinner.

Now, it is time to prepare our backpacks again... tomorrow we will be on the 6am train to Jodphur... another adventure is waiting for us... good that this time, the train ride is only 6hours.