By Camel to Jaisalmer, Rajasthan

Off into the Thar Desert, Rajasthan

The shadows were lengthening when we reached the small desert village of Nachana. Here we were introduced to our allocated camel, along with the ‘driver’, a local Rajasthani who would ride behind each of us. This would be our only means of transport for the next five days. To the accompaniment of much bellowing and groaning from these cantankerous beasts, we each clambered onto our camel saddles. This was always an interesting excercise. First, scrambling onto what, by our standards, is an uncomfortable saddle, Then there is a three-way motion as the animal stands up and we had to be prepared for this. Fred Burnaby aptly describes this motion in A Ride to Khiva: ‘they go something like a pig with the fore, and like a cow with the hind legs. The motion is decidedly rough.’ With much roaring and protesting the camels finally stand up.But to top in all off, camels smell at both ends – halitosis at one and flatulence at the other!

The gait of each camel can be different. Some were bearable when one got used to their walking gait, but were unbearably uncomfortable at a trot, others were the complete opposite – and with all camels, when they had been coaxed to a gallop, the rider had to hang on grimly to the saddle to stay in place. After dismounting you then walked funny, and painfully, for a couple of hours afterwards. As St. John Philby in his book The Empty Quarter, describes it: ‘It is quite extraordinary how camel-riding calls into play nerves and sinews which seem to lie idle in all other occupations.’

A couple of camel-carts, carried our luggage, tents, food supplies and a tank of fresh water. Our cooks, Sherpas from Nepal, in their happy-go-lucky way were quite happy riding on these service carts. If we were able to entice them onto a camel it would, after much laughter, only be for a short time! They weren’t stupid!.

The shadows of our camels as we make our way into the Thar Desert

Once everything was loaded, we set off to ride to our first overnight camp near the small village of Satya, between one and two hours away. This first stint was really just an exercise to get everyone used to their camels and to let them know what they were in for over the following four days. We reached Satya just on dusk. The Sherpas had gone on ahead with the luggage and had set up the camp just outside the village. They were now preparing the evening meal.

It had also been time for us to get to know our camel ‘drivers’, usually the owners of the individual camels. They were an interesting bunch. Most of them did not speak any English, but were always friendly and certainly tolerant. There were some interesting weather-worn faces – typical of the Thar Desert. One of the older ‘drivers’, I was told, had served with the Jodhpur Lancers in the days of the British Raj, but as the Lancers had been disbanded a couple of years after the end of World War One it was far more likely that it had been his father who had been in the regiment.

The interesting faces of our camelmen - the supposedly former Jodhpur Lancer is on the left. 

The Sherpas were likeable young men who turned out amazing food, usually cooked over the coals of an open wood or camel-dung fire. My first Camel Safari was over Christmas 1982 and on Christmas day the Sherpas presented us with a traditional Christmas fruit cake, baked in the embers of the campfire. They had insisted on getting to camp a little earlier on Christmas afternoon and had been very secretive with their cooking and after the main course, proudly presented us with the finished product, much to the surprise and delight of everyone. A couple of local Rajasthani musicians also accompanied us; they rode on the camel carts with the Sherpas. In the evenings their music would attract the male villagers over to our camp. The villagers, their faces lit by the glow from the campfire, listened entranced to the music. This was one of the unforgettable memories of the Thar Desert. Occasionally, just at the peripheral edge of the fire-light, we would catch a glimpse of colourful sari-clad village women.

Villagers sit around the campfire, entranced by the music of our accompanying Rajasthani musicians

On our first morning in the desert I tried, not too successfully, to encourage the group to get up early to see the sunrise over the Thar Desert sand dunes near the village of Satya. It was quite cold just before the sun rose, but would quickly warm up. To me a sunrise in the desert was always a special time of the day when everything was quiet and still. The sun’s radiant disc would appear on the horizon, rising slowly into the hazy atmosphere, illuminating scrubby bush, sand dunes, then our tents and the mud houses of the village in an ever-warming glow.

The rising of the sun across the Thar Desert from the village of Satya

After breakfast we packed up and led our camels into the village of Satya for a look around. Satya is just a small cluster of mud-brick huts, immaculately kept by the village women, and a rather large complex for the village headman.

The headman's complex, Staya Village, Thar Desert

The men and children were watering the flocks of scraggly black-faced sheep, white Brahma cows, camels and donkeys, before taking them into the sparse desert scrub where somehow they found enough to eat. This was an age-old scene and having been used to the rich green pastures of New Zealand and England it never ceased to amaze me how these animals found enough to just survive, let only thrive in such an environment. Although Satya was accessible by a rough vehicle track there were no motor vehicles in the village.

Village girls chatting in the sun, Satya village, Thar Desert

In a sandy clearing near the centre of the village were a number of small sandstone cenotaphs, or chhatri. These are built on the cremation sites of the village headmen who have long-since passed on. Sati, or widow-burning, was not unknown in Rajasthan in the past and some of these chhatri had images of women carved into the soft sandstone next to the image of their husband. These represented the wives who had immolated themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre, thus joining the ranks of the divine and becoming sati mata or sati mothers, fertility goddesses.

Chhatri, or sati stones, in the cenotaphs of former headmen, Staya village

Once away from Satya, we were into the desert proper following an indistinct track through a sandy waste of stunted acacia scrub and other hardy desert plants interspersed with the occasional rocky outcrop. After an hour or so, one became used to the ship-like motion of the camel and as confidence grew, there were races where we coaxed the camels into an uncomfortable gallop. When we came upon a desert watering hole, we would take a welcome break while our camels 'refueled'.

'Refueling' at a desert watering hole.

Late afternoon on the second day we reached the village of Tadna. This small village was one of very few in India in the 1980s that had no vehicle access at all. Tadna was a cluster of mud huts surrounded by thorn-bush enclosures within which the villagers’ livestock would be kept overnight. It was an age-old scene; men and camels hauling water up out of the village well, pouring it into troughs for their animals to drink and women with clay pots balanced precariously on their heads fetching water for the days’ chores. As I wandered around the village I came across a coy young lady leading a small donkey, laden with decorated clay pots, heading towards the well. As I looked at her, the modern world felt so very far away which, in reality, it was. I could hear the soft hum of voices in idle chatter along with the bleating of sheep and the soft lowing of cattle, interrupted with the bad-tempered roar of a camel or the loud braying of a donkey.

The coy little village water-carrier, Tadna village

Tadna did have a small school-house and the next morning a class of enthusiastic children, each with a writing-slate, were sitting outside in the early morning sun, watched over by a flock of lethargic black-faced sheep.

Tadna village school, watched over by black-faced sheep.

The third day of the camel safari was the longest and the most monotonous. The barren desert scenery was, by now, beginning to wear thin and although we saw the odd herdsman with his livestock, there were not any villages on this section of our route. In the late afternoon we arrived in Sri Mohangarh, a small town dominated by a fort, said to be the last built in India. The battlements gave good views over this dusty desert town and there were two rather imposing white marble elephants above the entrance. Houses in Sri Mohangarh were larger, built of bricks and of less traditional design than those we had seen in the villages, and motor vehicles were not uncommon. We camped in an open area not far from the fort.

White marble elephant looks down from the fort in the desert town of Sri Mohangarh

Shortly after leaving Sri Mohangarh we passed a couple of more traditional mud brick villages before coming to a salt lake in the middle of the desert. Here nearby villagers collected supplies of natural white salt from this large evaporation pond, and most was sent to Jaisalmer which was now only about 40 kilometres away.

The small salt lake in the Thar Desert near Sri Mohangarh

The last night of the safari was spent near Hada, a small village of basic mud huts, several with elaborately painted entrances, and a small but impressive mud fort which was unfortunately, locked.

The small fort at Hada in the Thar Desert

The little houses in this village were interesting. One was occupied by a shoe-maker. He was, I was told, a Moslem and so was able to work with leather as the cow is sacred to the mainly Hindu Rajasthanis. Through another doorway I could see two children using a traditional spinning wheel for spindling wool. Against another hut was a stack of decorated large wide-mouthed pots for fetching water. This small village, with its fort and artisans premises, was indicative of the traditional Indian way of life, unchanged for centuries, which was now fast disappearing.

A painted mud-brick dwelling in the Thar Desert village of Hada

On the afternoon of the last day the ‘fabled’ city of Jaisalmer appeared on the desert horizon. There was always something romantic about the first sight of the yellow, crenelated towers of Jaisalmer when first seen from the desert vastness. This view reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft’s description of Kadath in his short story, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath: ‘All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens…’

Approaching Malka Pol, the northern gate of the 12th century fortified city of Jaisalmer

Still riding our camels, we entered Malka Pol, one of the ancient gates in the outer wall of the old town. This outer wall denoted the extent of Jaisalmer to the north. In the 1980s there was very little motor traffic in the narrow streets of the city and we were able to ride our camels to the hotel which was quite an experience. We felt like real travellers of old coming in off this extension of the old Silk Road. Our hotel was the Jaisal Castle Hotel which was in the old fort, within the walled city. It was an overwhelming experience to ride our camels through the town, up cobbled streets and through the massive reinforced gates of the old fort into the courtyard by the hotel.

There was certainly something magical to be able to walk through the narrow cobbled streets within the fort, to stand on the battlements and look out across the newer city to the outer walls and beyond to the cenotaphs of Badabag and the stark Thar Desert which we had got to know intimately over the last four days. The Thar Desert camel safari was an unforgettable experience.

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