Jaisalmer

The 3 days in Jodhpur had already given us a taste of how scary the rising temperature can be. We barely survived through the heat in the city bordering the Great Thar Desert and the thought of going into the actual desert city itself seems intimidating.

The train ride to Jaisalmer took about 6 hours. By this time, i dare to say i m already fully 'India train-trained' and nothing will make me anymore uncomfortable than sleeping on dirty trains and having indians stare at me like i m not wearing anything. Like i said, travelling in India is not a holiday but an adventure. And taking a train in india is like going for war. But what i hadn't expected was the mini sandstorm brewing ahead and hitting us unknowingly in the train. We got a taste of the desert itself on the train. Within 20mins into the journey, we were both covered with sand, in our faces, mouth, shirt, even inside shirts (oh crap), backpacks, everywhere. Literally everywhere.You name it. And it was as if a mini Tsunami was hitting upon us on the train.

The train arrived at the Jaisamler train station at about 5am and as usual there are already about 564886 touts waiting outside the station, waiting to pull you up their vehicle to go to their hotel. Something different to note about the hotel touts here from the other cities was that they might charge you peanuts for the rooms, but beware that later that they would pressure or even threaten you to sign up the Camel Safari tour with them, or there is the possibility that they might throw you out of their hotel in the middle of the night.

We have chosen the Renuka Hotel from the good reviews we read that they will not try to hard sell their Camel Safari at all.

The highlight of this city is the Camel Safari, which i was really looking forward to. I mean, how many times in your life will u get to ride on your camel through the Great Thar Desert?!!! We signed up for the tour with the reputable Sahara Travels with a particular Mr Desert who has won many good reviews on travels forums and so forth.

There are namely three types of packages available for the camel safari:

3pm-9am next day for 1000 Rupees
9am-12pm next day for 1200 Rupees
9am- 6pm next day for 1400 Rupees

We took up the 9am-12pm package for the next day.

Its the the World Cup finals today! And fortunately for me, Hotel Renuka is bringing the only TV of the hotel to the outside of the building to show the match live. Yeshh!