Jaipur and Jaisalmer and Udaipur, oh my!

It's been too long since my last update and a lot has happened since then. This time I'll just post some of the highlights and consider myself caught up.

Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan, one of the most well-traveled regions of India. It's another big, crazy Indian city, but the walled, old city was the big draw for us. Most of the business done in the old city comes from local crafts. In fact, the city is divided into specific craft sections. In one area you can watch stone statues being carved, in another textiles being weaved, bangles being made, etc. It was great fun just to walk around for a while, getting lost in the small alleys. We also visited the palace, an observatory, and other major sites.

One of the most enjoyable things we did while staying in Jaipur was take a day trip to nearby Amber to see Amber fort. The fort itself was magnificent - simply huge with beautifully decorated rooms and courtyards. But the views of the nearby mountains, each with their own fort on top, made it that much better. There were incredibly long walls leading from the bottom of each of these mountains to the each fort at the top. While we were there a Bollywood movie was being filmed, so we got to see some of the brightly colored costumes and dancing associated with Indian film. After a short stay in Jaipur we continued on by train to Jaisalmer.

There was a fortress and plenty of temples here, all worth seeing, but the reason we came to this city is because it is one of the best starting points in India for camel safaris. Our safari was only two days long, with one night spent sleeping under the stars in the desert. The first thing you notice when you're looking at a camel that you're going to ride off into the desert is camels are really tall! They aren't like horses at all. My camel in particular was especially tall, maybe the tallest one there. I am quite tall myself by Indian standards, but even though they kneel down for you to get on I had to jump and struggle to get on top of mine. I felt a great sense of relief when I was finally in my seat, but the fun wasn't even close to over because after you get on, the camel has to stand up.

This probably doesn't sound like such a big deal, but that's just because you've never ridden a camel. You see, for camels, standing up is a process. They stand up with their back legs first and later, when they are ready, they stand up with their front legs. This is fine for the camel, but if you're sitting on top you have the harrowing experience of trying to hold on while the camel remains for several seconds at a 45 degree angle before standing up the rest of the way. This might have been easier if it had been expected, but none of our four guides warned us.

Another way that riding a camel is not like riding a horse is that your legs ache. You got used to this after a while, but it was still a few days after the safari before I could walk completely normal again. Besides these challenges, the whole thing was an amazing experience. We walked most of our time in scrub desert, but we spent the night by the most beautiful sand dunes. Our guides cooked us some simple Indian camping food and we spent the evening singing songs around the campfire. We returned the next day happy we had taken the safari, but also happy to be finished riding camel.

There were no trains we could take to Udaipur, so instead we traveled via sleeper bus (man I wish they had these in Ukraine). It was bumpy, but far better than riding a regular bus. The biggest site in Udaipur is a beautiful palace sitting next to a tremendous lake. But at this point we were pretty tired of doing the tourist things. We went on the camel safari and had gone to countless palaces, forts, temples, etc. by this time. All of them were great, but we were just really tired and wanted to do something else. Our budget was also stretched to the limit from all the tourist stuff we'd done in the previous week. So we didn't even go into the palace.

Instead we went to a youth festival that was happening far from the tourist area. There were free concerts going on and we got to hear some traditional flute and drum playing. It was nice to relax and listen for a while and as a bonus, we were the only white people there! After listening for a while we went to see some traditional dancing and a puppet show at the cultural center. Both were spectacular, but the Indians really, really loved the puppet show! They were cheering and yelling throughout the whole thing, I had no idea a puppet show could incite such excitement! After a relaxing time in Udaipur, we hopped on a train for Delhi!