In the end we decided to do the desert safari through the hotel. It is a little more expensive (3,600 rupees) but is more convenient; we have a hotel room on our return and we don’t have to move our luggage. There are five of us on the safari today and it’s a bit of a squeeze in the small jeep along with all the food supplies. We are travelling with a young French couple, Marie and Stefan, and a Japanese student whose name alludes our ears. We stop on the way to look round the royal cenotaphs and the rebuilt Jain temples at Lodhruva. The hillside cenotaphs are in a rather sorry state of repair and the Jain temples although pleasant enough, bear no comparison to those in the fort at Jaisalmer.
A short drive further on and we meet up with the camels and their drivers. We are on a non-touristic safari which means avoiding the well-trodden routes and other groups. It transpires that it also means not visiting anything very interesting in the way of villages or monuments and sticking to the scrubby desert. We ride the camels for about an hour before stopping for lunch in the shade of a tree. We rest and chat whilst the drivers prepare a meal of vegetable curry and chapatis all prepared and cooked over an open fire. We stop for a couple of hours during the heat of the day, water the camels and relax. There is something rather majestic about the camel with its haughty and inscrutable expression and its stoical manner. They are seriously uncomfortable to ride being particularly hard on the buttocks and hamstrings. But I’ve discovered that it is much more comfortable to sit with one leg bent so that the foot rests on the camel’s neck or a bag hanging from the saddle. All the camels are strung together and I’m at the back although my camel wants to be up at the front which means my leg is continually being trapped against the camel in front.
The Great Thar Desert is flat , sandy and surprisingly green, with a few trees, bushes and a green, weed-like covering. Despite the aridity of the area, the villagers grow a kind of red berry that is used medicinally and herd sheep and goats. We also catch a glimpse of a desert fox and deer. After another couple of hours riding we camp for the night on the sand dunes that cover a relatively small area of the Thar Desert around Sam and Khuri. The sand is silky soft and golden blown into geometric crescents with steep leeward cliffs and rippled windward slops. But even here there is some vegetation growing. There are also numerous dung beetles scurrying around or buzzing overhead. When not busy rolling balls of dung they are either fighting to defend their prize possession or burying it. Fortunately they don’t seem interested in us and never encroach on our mats. The camel drivers prepare another freshly-made vegetable curry and chappatis and ply us with sweet chai and fruit while we wait for dinner to be served. The sunset is disappointingly unspectacular;’ in fact we haven’t seen a decent sunset since we arrived in India. But the night sky is wonderfully clear and bursting with stars.
Dinner is served in the pitch dark and I have to tie a torch to my head so that we can see what we’re eating. After dinner our Japanese companion takes a walk over the dunes to answer a call of nature and doesn’t return. It’s not until one of the drivers hears his calls for help that anyone realises he’s wandered far away from the camp, become hopelessly disorientated and lost his way.
By 9.30 pm we are all settled down for a night under the stars on thin mattresses, a rolled blanket for a pillow and heavy eiderdowns for when it turns chilly. Later we are woken by the hobbled camels shuffling passed inches from where we lay. By this time the waning moon has risen and the landscape is bathed in a bright silvery light.