Sand on my skin

Sand on my skin

Yesterday I rode into the desert with a guide. The driver helped me to wrap a turban from my long scarf which also wrapped over my face, Arab style. The only way to go to protect the sun from burning my skin and the fine sand from getting everywhere. It still gets everywhere, your ears, your face, all over your body...so the scarf wrapped around your head is the perfect way to go, sunglasses etc. would not work.
My camel was cute, I loved his funny face, his little ears, his name was Lalu. On the way we passed through a kalbeliya gypsy village and the women came out and performed a song and dance for me and asked for a tip.
When we arrived at the camp they prepared some chai and lemon water and fruit and then they all looked at the sky, took out their mobile phones, kept looking at the clocks and waited until it was exactly 7pm, then said some prayers, blessed the food and then we ate together. It still is Ramadan, and many of the people in Jaisalmer are Muslims.
At night we saw some folkloric performance in the Thar resort, musicians that looked like the Maharaja band with their orange striped big turbans, and two gypsy dancers. They were not bad, but they were also not really into the dance, I could notice when they danced with me later. No comparison to Queen Harish. But anyway, I have them om film. We were served some peanut biryani, and then we drove in the jeep back to our camp, where we put two beds right out onto the dune and the guide and me slept side by side under the milky way after he served me some chilled beer and clumsily smoked a cigarette with me, like a teenager who had never smoked before....
The desert is so vast and quiet, it does something to your mind. It just expands and goes quiet. I found it very hard to take when I came back, the city seemed twice as noisy. going back again tonight.
The photo is the view from the walls of the Fort, you can see the desert behind the city.

Wed, September 16, 2009