Camel Safaris

The safari is over but the pain continues.  
I finally achieved my goal of going on a proper camel safari. Three days balancing precariously on top of a camel just in front of its hump and bouncing across the desert.  It was an experience not to be missed and probably not to be repeated.  
The trip started with a jeep ride out into the desert to meet the camels and the camel men.  I joined a group of two Danes, two Frenchmen and two Dutch people for the adventure.  We rode through the day and slept under the stars at night.  The days were burning hot and the nights cold but, with enough blankets over me and my wooly hat clamped firmly on my head I survived.  At night after the moon disappeared the stars shone so brightly. The trip was worth it just for that.

Camels are strange creatures. They have long articulated legs that fold completely flat.  You climb on their backs and they launch you ten feet into the air as they unfold first their back legs and then their front.  You are thrown forwards then backwards before being perched above the rocky desert with nothing much to hang onto as they set off.  hours.  They regurgitate their food and chew it over and over again all day and smell bad. My inner thighs are still sore with the stretching that they recvieved but on the plus side I can now sit  cross legged for hours.

The desert was harshly beautiful.  A fragile landscape of tough bushes and clumps of indestructible grass.  Somehow birds, foxes and antelopes live wild out there surviving on the leathery foliage and the little water that falls during the monsoon season.  Farmers make some sort of living off goats and sheep but fewer do now than before.  The camel men said that it rains less and less these days and that wells have to be sunk 600 meters into the ground before water can be found.  In the hot season the temperature rises above 40 degrees, no tourists venture out then.  

Our camel men fed us well on chapattis and vegetables and eggs and we chatted amongst ourselves swapping traveller stories whilst not being bounced about on top of a camel.  It was nice to back amongst Europeans after so long.  
After three days we returned to Jaisalmer tired but happy and for me at least with a resolve not to go near another camel again.  Well not for a while anyway.