Jasailmer

gotta love india!

My god the indian sleeper busses....i had my own really cool compartment we could just peep out to chat then pull back the glass window and curtains to sleep, however the bus drove at speeds im not used to going on land! The bad condition of the road and driving about 150 miles and hour ment i spent more time in the air than on the bed, with the occasional slamming on the brakes making me fly over to one corner of the tiny compartment. If i had had a vallium or two and something to strap me to the bed so i cant fly up in the air i might have slept very well indeed! I dont think i slept a wink but no worries we arrived in one piece and thats the most important thing!

We were staying with a couchsurfer for the next day or two, he took us to his guesthouse that was in the middle of Jasailmer fort. Wow so lovely! The fort is built with kind of a yellow stone and any new construction near it must be in the same style and stone.


Jasailmer seemed to be a very touristy place, the type of tourists with the huge zoom lens camera hanging around their neck, onto their Ralf Lauren T-shirt, kacki coloured shorts, white socks with sandles and absolutely no idea they were being totally ripped off! This made the town quite expensive and constant 'want something.....one hundred rupies only.....lady...100....lady, lady...100....ok 80 rupies....' and this was from if you just walk past and dont even glance their direction! But its not that bad, its easy enough to ignore but its not the india that i really like. When you go to parts that arent so used to tourists the people are more shy and more amazed to see a white person than thinking about a white person as a way to get money. I didnt feel a lot of love for this place, i think the character has been destroyed by tourism and the locals there are die-hard sellers its hard just to have a friendly chat without 5 minutes later their shop being brought into the subject.

Anyway despite that we did the most touristy of things to do here which is taking camels into the desert and sleeping there for a night! With the group of us all still together from shooting the movie this would be good fun. We got up early and set off on a jeep for about an hour into the desert until we met our camels. It was not desert like i had imagined, more barron land with a few bushes and wiry plants and tumble-weeds blowing around! But thank god not too hot as there was a nice wind blowing.


Some of the camels were in a bit of a sorry state, one had paralysis down one side of its face and another a big tumour hanging out of its cheek. I dunno its not the thing for me riding on a camel but as ive never even been on a horse sure why not give it a go! It wasnt too bad at all to steer the camels this was going to be fine!


After an hour or two we stopped under a shady tree, and the local guys that owned the camels cooked us a nice lunch, curry, chappatis and fresh papaya, we put on some music and chilled out under the tree to pass the time while the day was at its hottest. I stepped out from the shade and my god it was hot!



After that it was back on the camels again for another hour before stopping at a really remote village. It was crazy that people could live here. It looked like a half finished construction site, the houses were rectangular and in the same colour stone as the sand. There was nothing else in the villages not even a tree and the wind swept through it picking up dust and blowing tumble weeds around it. From a distance the villages look like abondoned houses but when you come closer the people emerge!



The villagers owned a camel and when it saw our camels it broke free and started running away! The villagers and our camel guys started fighting! We had no idea really what was going on! The next minute the village kids started grabbing the bags off our shoulders and trying to take anything they could pull from us! We were trying to walk away the best we could but we'd left our shoes on the camels then they started throwing stones! Anyway after all that excitment it was back on the camels again for another hour or two until we reached supercool sanddunes where we would be sleeping. By this stage my legs and ass were so sore it took me ages before i could walk properly after getting off the camel. It was funny but very painfull! Imagine sitting on a hard seat, your legs spread almost 180 degrees and hanging down loose, bouncing up and down with the camel ... for about 6 hours.


It was worth the pain though! When we arrived there was a guy waiting there with cold beer and cocacola he said it takes him an hour and a half to walk here from his village. I remember someone telling me they bought 2 cocacola from a guy like this in the desert, they drank one and saved one for the next day, and the next day when they got up the guy was still there, he said he was waiting for the empty bottle! When i heard this first i thought it was very funny but now im realising more and more everyday how poor people are and the lengths they go to.

We had travelled quite far into the desert just 30k from the Pakistan border. The camel minder guys started making dinner while we cracked open the wine and put some music on with an mp3 speaker. There was absoltuely no other sound around but us. The sunset was lovely the sand turned from yellow, to pink then to grey. After the sunset it got dark pretty quick and a little chilly but really nothing like my bedroom back home!

We sat and ate and drank and listened to the music until we noticed one girl, Lydie was missing. It started as just a few of us walking around shouting her name and when there was no sign after a few minutes we started getting worried! We stood on top of a big sanddune waving the light on our mobile phones, shouting her name, the boys minding the camels made a big fire on top of the dune, everyone was going mad looking for Lydie, running up and down the dunes grabbing anything we could set on fire, frantically running around hoping to hear her shout. Her phone had gone dead and she had no shoes with her. After about 3 hours we got a call that she had made it to a village 7 kilometers away!! Some of the guys jumped on camels and eventually found her. Wow it was a crazy night, after we found her we were all too tired to do much else than sleep! She had lost the cap covering the lens of her camera and had gone to look for it ....and in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep i felt something hard under my head and sure wasnt it the cap from her camera it was exactly where she had been sitting before going off to take a picture! Again never a dull moment in india!

I woke up many times during the night, i couldnt sleep. It was so so quiet, not even the plushest hotel room would be so quiet and the sky was amazing... just stars! Even the dark spots between stars was filled with more tiny stars i just lay back staring at the sky until it started to get bright.

The sunrise

Mornin!

We had breakfast of omlette, chai, biscuits and fruit...really not bad for the middle of nowhere! Back onto the camels it was and the day had started to get very hot. By 10am it was roasting, there was no cool wind today. I was getting used to riding the camel and i could go a bit faster on it. This ment more pain on my ass as i was bouncing up and down harder, but it also ment getting there faster to end this pain! Unfortunately after a few hours i just couldnt take it anymore and through half crying half laughing i shouted at the guy 'i need to get off the camel please quick!!!' I hopped off and the guide hopped on, he quickly jogged ahead with the camel before i had a chance to get my bottle of water! It was so hard to walk, the easiest way was to take big strides with my legs wide apart just as wide as when i was sitting on the camel...yes it would have looked very funny but i just couldnt walk properly for a while!


Wow SO SO hot about 40 degees, the ground was dry, rock hard and full of cracks, you could see the air waving above the ground. I felt so thirsty i had no saliva left in my mouth and the sun was heavy, heavy on my head, i felt like lying down and giving up...ha ha how dramatic! At the time it was not fun! I eventually made it to the tree that we were stopping to have lunch and collapsed in the shade. I felt very sick, i couldnt eat a thing. I think i had a bit of sunstroke. A lot of the group were feeling they had enough of the camel too so thank god we managed to get picked up a few hours later at this lunch place! Im not sure i could have made it another 3 hours walking in the desert its just not right for an irish person!!

The camel guide

The next day we decided to get to the cooler mountains asap!! No more camels riding for me!

Puskar

This blogspot program is very annoying it has a mind of its own it takes 20 times longer to stick a few pics up than it should. Writing the blog is beginning to be a race before i get pissed off with this program god damn!!!

anyway......HELLO!

Wow Jaipur was crazy i didnt mention we almost got caught up in a jewel scam! This lovely friendly guy who 'sold' precious stones said he does a lot of business in Europe, the problem is that he has to pay huge export tax on these so he frequently flys european tourists to France or Italy and gets them to bring the jewels for him using their tourist quota for bringing gifts out of the country and the toust gets a nice sum of money for it. It seemed a good plan, i could pack the jewels myself and makesure there was nugs and i thought ohmygod i could squeeze in a visit home if i got as far as france i really wanted to visit home!! Anyway it seemed dodgy i just googled it out of interest the next morning and saw its the biggest scam going in Jaipur! If anyone is stupid enough the next step after agreeing to do this is that they charge a E5,000 deposit on your credit card for 'security' for the jewels...come on how stupid would someone be to do that! The next day the guy was calling us and calling us asking why we dont want to do it....and so we hopped on that bus to Pushkar and escaped all that sillyness....how funny, mad, strange! Never a dull moment in India...never!

The bus stations in India are so chaotic and these days anything chaotic-indian style makes me laugh a lot! Nobody really knows whats going on at the bus stations you have to be more carefull keeping out of the way of the crazy bus driving than getting the wrong ticket! The best way to find your bus is just to walk around shouting the name of the place you want to go to anyone who looks remotley like a bus driver and eventually you'll get sorted. Dont waste time looking at the timetable its probably just for decoration.

I like the local busses here. You always get wedged between a funny old man who burps a lot and who wants to keep borrowing your book despite not speaking english and the other side a lady with loads of kids who keeps plonking them bare-bottomed onto your lap while she piles more kids onto the bus! The busses also seem like there is a competition to win the best prize ever if you can make it to the destination faster than the last time! Although the bus we were catching left every FOUR minutes the men were going mental to cram us on and right NOW!!!!! wow they were really panicking! then the bus took off like crazy, reckless driving and speeds so fast i could hardly see what was going past out the window. When the bus started off i was wondering why there is a bar on the back of each seat, after a few major bumps i realsed they are to hang on with! Although a dirty indian man beside me thought he'd help me out with the bumps by holding me by my boob whenever the bus launched itself off the road...or else he was genuinely holding me back...mmm i dont know....anyway! The indians also found us hilarious when we said 'ohhh' and 'ahhh' every big bump!

We got to Pushkar eventually and it was nice to experience how good gravity can be! We settled into a supercheap really lovely guest house and into a super cheap really lovely bhang lassie and slept well.

WOW Puskar is amazing. Its a little village on the edge of the desert, with picturesque, crumbly old buildings, narrow windy lanes full of cows, surrounded by hills with temples on top and this was set around a holy lake in which people prayed and bathed. There was a positive-thinking, energetic, fun vibe about the place and i just loved it!

Although Pushkar was very touristy the it was quite peaceful around the lake.

The Ghats

Very peaceful watching the sunset

The monkeys

Watch out Gardiner!

Cleaning the cow

The little monkeys!

Come on at least 3 more people can fit on that bike! Indian style

The time we spent there gosh probably just less than 2 weeks flew by. We didnt really do much in particular which was actually very nice for a change after the maddness in Jaipur. We spent the days chiling out at our lovely guesthouse, walking about the place doing nothing at all, since there was such a big group of us all from the movie it was like being at home everywhere you walked you met someone you knew!

Andrew and Julien at the guesthouse

Michelle


Puskar seemed to have some kind of festival or wedding going on everyday! You couldnt walk down the street without hearing drums made from bin lids being slammed, bells ringing and trumpets blowing. And we were also in Pushkar for the indian god Shiva's supposed birthday. This involved mad statues and people going down the streets on trolleys, flowers everywhere and ten times the music. Often if you were just walking past a procession you would be roped into the dancing! Its so funny these things in India you see everyday, your mind never had to process such a sight before!

It was so sweet, wedding parties on the street everybody giving it socks! Dancing with their hands in the air just to the jangling of bells no shame at all....this i dont think would happen at home unless massive amounts of alcohol were involved....although there was a lot of bhang to thanks to mr Shiva....

Oh my god did i not mention the cows in this entry yet?!! Im sure it is the biggest cow in india that lives in Pushkar...a massive black cow that always seems to be chillin out in the same area. HUGE thing. I never got a picture of it though. Anyway heres a much cuter little thing.

Get out of the way cows!

Puskcar had a cow over population problem in my opinion the streets were narrow enough and there were always a few cows chillin out! When we were leaving Pushkar we were driven all the way back down a narrow lane because an angry cow wanted to go that way! Only in India!

I also did some yoga classes, one guy was excellent but the moves were a little too advanced for me! The other guy was quite an elderly man with a MASSIVE big stomach and he couldnt do a lot of the moves because his belly was getting in the way. He also had a huge flatulance problem so although the classes were held in the most beautiful temple i couldnt help getting a little distracted with the frequent 'paaarrrrrrp!' He he he at least i gave yoga a go! Hopefully more in the future.

The temple where the yoga is held

Puskhar is a very conservative and religious town and so its officialy alcohol and meat free, and possibly dairy free. When you look at the menu a beer is put down as 'cold coffee' and fried eggs as 'fried eggplant'!

Cant get more conservative than that!

Some very nice sunrises and sunsets in Pushkar. The town had two hills with temples in top. First we climbed the smaller of the two to catch a nice sunset and view of the city.

And after a good few failed attempts we managed to get ourselves out of bed at 5am one morning to climb a mountain in time to see the sunrise. It was a good hour journey so we stopped for some sweet chai on the way. One thing about India is Tourist Price, there is one price for indians and one for tourists (which is about double or triple the price) however the indians are lovely, lovely folks with great sense of humour and an example of this is when we got this chai the guy said 10 rupies each (tourist price) we said no we'll give you 5 and there was just laughter no argument. Imagine in ireland saying 'mmm no i'll give you E5'!

Still dark when we reached the top

The temple at the top of the hill

Ive seen so many sunsets (and really began to appreciate the sunsets in india!)but the few sunrises i've seen have mostly been on the way home from a crazy night out in which case the sunrise is bad news! Anyway wow the beauty about climbing at sunrise is that you cant see what is around you until you are at the top and when the sun rises then its a huge surprise, and at 5am my legs where climbing but my head was still completly asleep so it seemed like a rather painless climb! The sunrise was so beautiful it just peeped over the mountain opposite and rose so fast it was all over in a few minutes. There was also a nice temple on top.

Friends from the movie shoot, Courtney, Julien, Lydie, myself and Gardiner.

Colourful India

Wow so i cant remember what else i did in Pushkar but when i looked at the calender i realised the days had slipped by and it was time to leave. Off to the desert near the Pakistan border to spend a few days before heading north to nice cool mountains.