To Live & to Forget in Jaisalmer

There was no mention of scorpions or huge white spiders in any of the brochures about the camel safaris. In fact, there was no mention of it in the guidebook either. When I felt something crawl across my feet I assumed it was one of the black beetles I had seen earlier, before it was dark. My heart jumped when I saw the small white scorpion make its way over my toes. The light of the headlamp helped to hurry it along and it scurried under the cot I was sitting on. My heart was to jump again a few minutes later when a very large white creature resembling some sort of spider crawled over my knees. I screamed and hopped and Max, a fellow safari tourist, yelled "don't move. I want to take a picture of it." So, I stopped and posed with the large spider on my knee and even pretended to kiss it.... Of course not! Meanwhile Aicha, whom I had met on the train ride from Delhi, laughed and laughed. The three of us ended up huddling on one cot in the dark. I guess we figured the scorpions and spiders would not attack us if we sat really, really close to one another.

The sunset over the desert had a simple sort of charm and I think the masala chai I was drinking atop the dunes helped make it more enjoyable dodging beetles while keeping an eye on the progress of the setting sun on the horizon. Once the sun was down, and we had our little scorpion experience, it was time for the spectacular lightning show in the black desert sky. An hour into the lightning extravaganza the wind picked up and we had to move camp to seek shelter from the sand storm behind a bigger dune. The sky out in the middle of the Sam dunes is filled with millions of stars. Looking up at the sky I resolved to learn more about the constellations. You can see them so clearly in the sky but it would be nice to be able to point at them and say "that is the big dipper" as opposed to "what's that one? You know the one with the three stars in a row and then the tail with three stars going the other way". Astronomy. It's on the list with learning the guitar, a great skill to have while travelling.


Jaisalmer's fort rises out of the golden sand like a sandcastle on a hill. The old city sprawls out beneath it. This vision evokes a 1001 Arabian Nights. Thousands of flies and hundreds of cows are among the inhabitants of this small town. In fact the flies greatly outnumber the human population. These days (in mid to late March) the tourists are not crowding the markets as the high season has ended and the heat is closing in on Rajahstan. It's a great time to visit the intricate havelis and carved balconies of Jaisalmer. Shopkeepers have more time to chat and joke around. Their sense of humor is mischievious to say the least as they constantly test the boundaries of decency.

Max is giving Aicha and I a ride to Jodhpur tomorrow. He is from Montreal. We met on the camel safari. Aicha is French/Italian, a philosophy student that wrote her masters thesis surrounded by buff chip and dale dancers in a small apartment in Chile. Apparently her boyfriend was the laziest one of them all. "At least the others were aspiring actors or robbing banks but he did nothing. I had to push him to even go to his job at night to dance." Ah, but he was a chip and dale dancer.