Romancing the desert

The afternoon drive to our desert camp was short and soon we could see camel-wallahs sitting right next to the road, and seeking customers to ride their camels. But we had instructions to drive right up to the camp on a dirt track. The camp was quite huge, and we had a nice big carpeted tent, with running-water tiled bathrooms and even a rajput warrior-helmet shaped lamp. I was not expecting the camp tents to be so large, complete with a wooden table and chairs, let alone provision of electricity. But since this was turning out to be a royal luxury trip anyway, I decided to be pleasantly surprised, instead of putting across a characteristic crib about the facilities being an over-kill and against the spirit of adventure. Actually I quite loved the camp.

Soon I found myself mounting Rocket, our camel, to take us to the sand dunes, with Anurag sitting right behind me, and Anuj and Manish on Rocket's brother behind us. We had a camel-of-a-time during the short half-hour journey to the dunes. Contrary to popular opinion, I find the camel quite an amusing and entertaining creature in its own way. The perpetual smirk on its face and couldn't-care-less attitude makes it quite a case study. It's bite on being irritated is said to be quite painful though...

We reached the dunes when it was still some time to sunset. So as a pasttime, and on suggestion from our guides Sattaarbhai and Saif, Anuj and I decided to race our camels. Now this was adventure! Rocket huffed and puffed, and I wildly went up and down on his back, with his rein in my hand, as he raced quite comfortably in the sand. One can compare it to sitting on horse back, only this horse has a huge hump, is fifty percent taller and attempts to throw you in each and every different direction with every step he races. Of course all guidance to the camel and crucial pulls on the rein were coming from Sattarbhai sitting behind me.

After these thrills there was time to enjoy some folk music and dance, A group of local musicians wanted to put up a performance and we readily obliged. So we listened to some earthy folk as two cute kids danced in their traditional ghaghras, and soon Anurag couldn't resist joining them for a thumka or two, and all of us cheered on excitedly. As the performers left us cheerful and happily singing our favourite songs, we sat back and waited for the fast approaching sunset. I looked around the sand-dunes and noticed they were not really big as compared to the ones we watch on TV, but those are the ones from bigger deserts like Sahara. I'm sure even the Thar would have really large dunes, but only if one ventures quite into its interior.

The sun soon turned into a red ball, and sat nicely as a beautiful red globe on the horizon, soon slipping into oblivion, and left us sighing with the romance inducing enigmatic imagery in front of our eyes.