Camel Safari and Jaisalmer

Another early morning start, this one was 5am wake up call to leave on the 5.30am bus to Jaisalmer. The bus was running late which was good as the hotel did not have our packed breakfast ready. Once we boarded the bus we found it was a sleeper bus which has 2 levels, seats below and ladders up to a second level with sleeping compartments. Luckily these buses have wider isles than the regular buses as our luggage was in the aisle. This is a shot of Rich backing into his seat with the sleeping compartments above.
We saw many interesting things on our journey such as the wind farms with their huge turbines and many army bases as this area is close to the Pakistani boarder. There was a guy on the bus playing his Indian music so loud on his mobile phone for everyone to hear, both of us put on our noise canceling headphones to drown the noise out. Once we arrived in Jaisalmer we caught tuk-tuks to the haveli where we had a day room and were able to pack our overnight bags ready for the camel safari. We had lunch in the roof top terrace restaurant and at 3pm we set off in a jeep for the 30km ride to the staring point of the camel safari. We all chose a camel to ride, Catriona was in one behind Rich and Terry was behind, David was on a camel called racer with Marcus tied on behind. We set off at a leisurely pace with the camels being led by a man. We rode for 2 hours passing a small village where the women were collecting water from the water hole.

We took so many amazing photos as the scenery was lovely and we were having such a good time on the camels. When we made it to our camping spot we were a little early so the camel drivers took us for a walk around the sand dunes, again we took many photos and back at the campsite we walked to the top of the dune and took pictures of the sunset. We had chai and some nibbles and then we had a Kingfisher beer each (you can get it riding a camel in the desert), followed by a visit from some gypsies. There were 2 men who played instruments and 2 women who sang and danced. The women also pulled us up to dance with them.

After a lovely dinner we settled into bed to look at the stars. The clearer air in the desert let us see thousands of stars and as we had our binoculars we were able to see many more than we would have been able to see with the naked eye. We slept under the stars and woke up many times during the night to look at the changes in the sky. It was absolutely magnificent, and something we will never forget.
In the morning we watched the sun rise from the top of a sand dune then had breakfast before setting off on the camels for another 2 hour ride to meet the jeep that took us back to Jaisalmer. We were allocated rooms and as we had a free day were asked to meet at 4.30pm to walk up to the fort to watch the sunset and have dinner. We managed to charge up the PC and the ipod and get all of our photos onto flickr as the wi-fi reception was good. We had lunch in the hotel restaurant then wandered around the streets of the old town. At 4.30pm we met up with everyone and Badam took us for a walk through the narrow streets to show us some of the havelis that are open for public viewing that we could visit the next day, then it was up to the fort for the sunset. The streets inside the fort were steep and made of cobble stones that were very slippery. We were stopped many times by merchants trying to sell us quilts, scarves or cushion covers, all of which were very lovely. The view from the restaurant was spectacular and we enjoyed watching the sunset and our dinner. While we were eating loud music started again, in the direction of our hotel. Then there were fireworks which we had an excellent vantage point to watch.
So once again we set off to bed with music blaring loud and fireworks going off intermittently due to a wedding that was taking place close by to our hotel.