Desert Camp in Jaisalmer

12/6
Today we left our hotel in Jodhpur to drive to the tents at the Desert camp in Jaisalmer. There weren’t any major stops on this trip until the end but it was still an exhausting day of course!
We were told it would take us something like 6 hours to get to the tent. Everyone on the bus passed out as soon as we got on it. We’re pretty much halfway through this trip and everyone is pooped from all the traveling. Throughout the trip we stopped a number of times to go to the bathroom, and when I say that I mean we pulled over on the side of the road and peed by a bush. I’ve done this so many times on this trip its pretty funny now. I did it twice and some others three times today. The first time I didn’t even realize until it was too late that there were houses pretty close to where I was (my bad!).
We stopped at lunch at a place that was such a tourist trap. The food was so expensive, not even by India standards. I can’t complain though because they had scrambled eggs and that’s all I ever need to be happy with a meal! They also had Oreos and Pringles and stuff like that but I’m trying to be good and I didn’t get anything but gum.
We continued on the bus and got to where we need to be around 2:30pm. We are told at this point that it’s too hot to ride the camels, so they need us to kill some time. At this point we found a cute lake to hang out by for a little bit; a few people and myself just sat by the lake soaking up some sun, others rented a paddleboat to go out on the water, and some others went shopping. It was a nice mental break from everything we’d been doing. It finally got cool enough to go out into the dessert, and we paired up and got on our camels. I went on mine with Clara, which was great because the two of us are both into taking pictures and we have pretty much the same camera, so we looked awesome with our SLR’s together. The camel was pretty nice, and the dessert was really cool. It had more bushes than you would expect from a normal dessert, but it was what you would expect in terms of lots of tall sand dunes. People were trying to sell us stuff the whole ride, which was pretty annoying; we kept telling them we don’t want and we don’t have any money but that wasn’t good enough for them. We stopped for a little bit to watch the sun set which was nice. People were also having a lot of fun being on the sand dunes, and some people even fell down them, which was hilarious!
Eventually we got to the camp, which was different than I pictured. There’s about 30 two-people tents shaped like a U (how appropriate!) and a fire circle in the middle of them all. The tents are pretty cool: they have beds, and electricity, and a bathroom with running water! For dinner it was typical Indian food, but I’m honestly so sick of Indian food so I ate a Luna Bar. I feel bad because I feel like I should be eating the food of this country, but I can only take so much spice after so long! At dinner there was a band troop playing folk music and there were female dancers, which were really cool. I really enjoyed this since I’ve been studying Indian music, but it was tough for me to analyze because I didn’t study much about folk music. A girl on my trip was talking to the musicians and they told her that most of them are untouchables. This is the first talk of caste we’ve heard from any Indians on this trip and I was surprised that they were at such a low caste. They said they live day-by-day and travel with their music and all take care of each other. One of the dancers was a 9-year-old girl without parents and they all rotate taking care of her.
In the morning we’re going to wake up up and watch the sunset. Shouldn’t be too hard considering I’ve been waking up so early on this trip. Should be interesting how Jet-lagged I am when I get home from this trip!