Jaisalmer - Getting There By Bus.
Trip Start
Mar 03, 2005
1
25
235
Trip End
Ongoing
Jaisalmer,
India
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
On the way to the bus station, I dropped Denise at the train station, as she is heading north to Chandigarh, while I am heading west about as far as one can go in India, to the desert city of Jaisalmer.
I have been told that it recently rained in Jaisalmer - for the first time in 4 years. The scheduled weather is "Fine, 43 degrees". The city is 300 kilometres into the Thar Desert, a 6 hour bus ride from Jodhpur. Although I've booked a ticket on the best bus money can buy (all of $4, and quote "Deluxe Bus" unquote), alas it isn't air-conditioned. I may well have signed myself up for a trip to hell.
Seats are sold for bus trips in Rajastan, but they will also stop to pick up extra people along the way, who will stand for the duration of their trip. There is also room on the roof if needed, for some luggage or passengers. For an extra 10 Rupees the attendent placed my backpack in the trunk under the bus - I'm thankful because I had visions of my 'smalls' floating off one by one from the top of the bus, leaving a Hansel and Gretel style trail of underwear all the way across the desert.
Soon the bus is rollicking along and is full to the brim. I'm not sure if the roof is also in use at the moment, as I can't actually see much out the front or back. I do have a window seat, and the windows do open, but its mostly warm air rushing at you. It is merely a few minutes out of Jodhpur that you are in the desert, with sand and scrubby trees all around into the distance.
The bus doesn't actually go to fast, and that I don't actually mind, as Indians roads aren't known for their safety. I do manage to drift off to sleep for an hour or so before the first town, where there are many new arrivals and some departures from the standing room in the aisle. I am the only westerner aboard. A few of the locals are in western style clothes, but many are in traditional clothes - the women with colorful Saris and scarves over their heads (and in some cases faces) and the men long white shirts and Turbans, most with large pointy moustaches and withered faces. But I'm the one who sticks out from the crowd.
A few hours into the journey, and all I can see out of the windows are the low dunes, scrub, occasional camel, and herds of goats with their shephard and hut. The sky in the distance appears to be darkening a little, and soon enough we are heading into a minor sandstorm.
This means that the windows get closed so that the dust and sand doesn't fly in. This means that the temperature is rising in the bus. The vision out the front isn't too bad, but its certainly an unusual experience, as the sand starts to encroach onto the road area a little. I'm drinking bottled water but its like drinking hot tea with every gulp. My average at the moment is 6 litres a day, but I'm going to have to increase that, as I'm already feeling thirsty.
I'm starting to wonder whether I've bitten off more than I can chew doing this leg. Its the most inhospitable place I've ever seen in my life (apart from that one time when I stopped to eat at McDonalds Frankston....)
Six hours is a long time to be in that kind of bus, but I do make it to Jaisalmer and to a guesthouse, and even though I've drunk 2 bottles on the journey I'm not the slightest bit interested in going to the toilet. This place is a city in the middle of nowhere, with the Pakistan border somewhere over the dunes to the west.
Its a good thing I took the "Deluxe" bus and not the cheap one.
I'm sitting here typing this in someone's home, which is doubling as an internet cafe. A cow just walked past the door and looked in at me. Its night but its still over 37 degrees. Its a normal May night in Jaisalmer.
Tomorrow, they say its going to be 44. And sunny.
