11.10; jaisalmer

I had to run for my bus, literally, because i mistook my bus station for another. and buses in india, they don’t so much as stop for passengers, instead they slow down enough for you to run after it. i don’t know what’s the rush about, but i don’t know too many things in india and i’ve given up and come to accept everything that i don’t understand. i hopped on, settled in and started reading my new book – Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari.

Paul Theroux is perhaps, my favorite travel author and it was after reading his other work, ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’ that I started taking interest in long haul overland train rides. It was also due to this novel that I became interested in the Tran-Siberian railway. Dark Star Safari sees Paul travel overland through Africa from one end to the other, north to south, Cairo to Cape Town. Somewhere, I caught this quote from the book. A Sudanese man was having a conversation with Paul and he said: “The criterion is how you treat the weak. The true measure of civilized behavior is compassion.” It struck me instantly and I liked it. It was funny yet interesting, for being civilized to most of us meant wearing proper clothes, being educated, having proper manners, and well, behaving in a civic manner. This Sudanese man must be reading a lot of Dalai Lama’s books. After some chapters and a few naps in between, I reached Jaisalmer.

For the first time since I’ve traveled, I had someone waiting to pick me up from the bus station, an eager Indian holding a blank piece of paper with my name written on it. Another novelty. My guesthouse in Jodhpur recommended and referred me to another guesthouse in Jaisalmer, he called and I made a reservation, and that was how I had the privilege of feeling like a guest when I arrived. Besides, the room was cheap, the location was central and I couldn’t ask for any more.

Sufficiently rested, I walked around a bit, checked my mail and found that Gil was also in Jaisalmer. I found him at his guesthouse, had dinner and discussed about how we would go about going on a camel safari – whether we join a package tour or just take a local bus to one of the villages. In the end, we decided to take the local bus and take it from there.

The next day, I woke up early and visited the markets and Jaisalmer fort. I was pleasantly surprised to find the market much like that of Varanasi; narrow winding streets flanked by shops on both sides, cows and dogs wandering around and leaving their shit all over, the overbearing heat trapped within the streets, the touts. It was as if I had stepped back six weeks in time and transported back to Varanasi. I spent some time milling aimlessly around the fort as well and bought some food for the upcoming camel safari tomorrow.

I met Gil in the morning and we found the bus to Khuri, a small village 45kms away from Jaisalmer. The bus, was by far, the most shabby and broken down scrap of metal I’ve ever sat in in my entire life. The interiors was dark and filthy, like a cave carved out from a heap of rusted metal and with seats thrown in for good measure. “Let put on some wheels and call it a bus!” The foam from the seats had been peeled off, the wooden base was a torture to sit on for long, as the bus lacked suspension and the roads were bumpy. But I took comfort in reading my book.

Reading Theroux’s journey through Africa while looking through my dusty window into the arid desert plains, dotted sparsely with low shrubs and the occasional sand dune, I can’t help but to muse: “This could easily be Africa.” Well, except for my fellow passengers were all Indians – chain smoking men with red turbans and women with saris of electrifying colours.

In Swahili, the word safari had no connection with animals, land cruisers, tourists dressed in helmets and khaki adventure gear at all. To be on a safari simply meant that one is on a journey, out of touch and unobtainable. I enjoy the idea immensely, for after all, I was going on a safari to a place where my cellphone won’t work, where no one knows who I am or where I come from. There will be no STD/ISD phones to call home, no internet and no form of connection with anyone I know. And I loved it.

We arrived at Khuri shortly before 2 hours and easily found a place to stay. Or you can say the owners found us instead. Either way, just after 2 hours from leaving Jaisalmer, we now have mud huts with straw roofs as our homes and were going on an overnight camel safari.

We departed at 4pm as a entourage of 4 camels, 1 camel herder, 3 youths as helpers, a Korean girl, Gil and myself. We rode out to the desert, traveling away from the setting sun and into sand dunes and plains. It was like traveling back in time, into the golden era of overland trade routes, where camels carrying goods ply through deserts and fields, traders brave the elemental dangers of the fickle nature to bring their goods to a foreign land. These camels were known as the ships of the deserts, and rightfully so, for without them, trade through certain regions would never be possible in the past.

We rode up and down dunes and across plains, spotting wild deer, asses and an occasional jackal. It was strange for a place, so extreme, like the desert to be so immensely beautiful. It has come to me, after Ladakh and now, the desert in Khuri, that in the most inhospitable places on earth is where you will find the most beautiful of nature. I was satisfied and glad to be breathing, alive and kicking and riding my camel across the sand dunes.

We stopped to camp on one of the higher sand dunes at about 6pm. As the camel herder and the youths started cooking dinner, we gathered at the edge to watch the sun set. I never had time, or rather, the idea of watching the sun set back in Singapore. It was always cloudy and you can never see much through the forest of urban concrete, unless you are say, in west coast park. So sitting on sand, looking at the sun setting across the endlessly clear and cloudless sky was poignant. It was poignant and painfully beautiful.

Dinner was a plate of mashed vegetables, curry, rice and chapattis. It would never catch my eye or whet my appetite back in the city, but in the wilderness like where we were, it was everything of sumptuous meal. Having the sumptuous meal under the moon and stars made it even more memorable. We slept shortly after, on the fine sands of the dune and under a blanket of stars.

I woke up in the morning even more dumbstrucked than the previous night before. I didn’t have my glasses on and when I rubbed my sleepy eyes and sat up, I saw the most intense of colours in front of me. I had just woke up in time to catch the sun rising. The first thought that shot through my mind was the inevitable cliche: I must be either dreaming or high. But it was everything beyond the wildest of dreams, and even saying so, I doubt that dreams come in such a beautiful spectrum of colors. There was a kaleidoscope of blue and purple, reds and yellows, orange and gold across the sky. I’m not a bit ashamed to tell you that I was grinning silly and had a few tears in my eyes.

We had chai and some biscuits for breakfast and rode back to the village. The previous afternoon, we took 2 hours to camel-saunter our way to the dunes, but it was a totally different game in the morning. The guides decided that it would be fun to race our way back, and so we did, in a pretty hurting manner. Our camels galloped at what speed they could manage, and we were bouncing up and down the seat while desperately trying to hold tight to the reins and not fall off. I’ve always wanted to ride a galloping horse (one of the many crazy ideas i have), and although a camel doesn’t come anywhere close for speed, it was still extremely fun. Extremely fun in a masochistic thigh-bruising sorta way.

We got back to Khuri within an hour and were just in time to catch the bus back to Jaisalmer, but I was in no particular hurry and decided to stay in the village and laze around for a bit. I finished the Dark Star Safari, ate lunch and sat around like a bum on his wicker basket chair. Strangely, during there and then, in the midst of nothingness, I missed work. I miss being productive (if you can regard work to be a productive use of time), miss learning on a day-to-day basis and miss being busy. As much as I enjoy the art of sweet nothingness, the ‘dolce far niente’, as imparted to me by Miguel and Sofia, I missed work and honestly, I feel eager to return home to start on another small part of life.

But there was no point in hurrying or rushing in a small village like Khuri. You know what they say, that patience is a virtue? Well here, and more importantly in most of other parts of india, patience is a necessity, its a survival skill and its a way of life.

Dinner was the usual indian thali fare with a surprise addition – chicken grilled over fire, kampong style. It was pleasant to eat on a picnic mat, infront of dancing flames from the pit, surrounded by mud huts and once again, under a blanket of stars. I felt like I was part of the life and history, that has been unchanged and ongoing for centuries. It could be 10 years, 20, even 100.. and everything would have been more or less the same. Later at night, I moved my bed out to the courtyard and once again, slept under the open skies. Being a child of an urban concrete jungle like Singapore, I think I really enjoyed every moment that I’ve spend close to nature, and close to something that is so different from what life is in Singapore.