Into the desert of india

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  Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, India
Saturday, December 23, 2006

It has taken me a long time to finally get to India.  It has always been a mystery to me, and somehow a place I never had at the top of my list.  I have to say, after being here for almost a week up here in the desert, it is reminding me ALOT (landscape, mud houses...)of Mauritania. All the busy streets and the amount of people everywhere make me realize how lucky we were in Mauritania to experience a place untouched by tourism.
I have signed up on  a group tour, which I have never done before and I was a little apprehensive about it, being carted around from place to place with a bunch of strangers...but, happily, I really like everyone on this trip, it is actually a very pleasant surprise.  The trip itself is pretty laid back, not running you all over the place, today we had the day to ourselves.  There are people from Canada, England, Ireland, and Australia, and they range in age from 25 to 66...so it is a nice mix.
We started the tour in Delhi, which is really just a busy city with no sidewalks so you are constantly dodging rickshaws, bikes, cars, people, big scary gutters, piles of unknown stuff....so I was happy to leave.  We took the overnight train to Jodhpur on Christmas and managed to entertain ouselves singing christmas carols.  Then we went directly to stay in a village in an old heritage hotel.  There are a few places like this, former homes of the local royalty who have now turned their big houses into hotels.  The place was great, in a village called Chandelao, really, just like a mauritanian village, mud walls, mud patios, lots of sweeping in the morning.  The kids are a little more aggressive though, actually reaching into your bag for stuff which surprised me.  But most people seem to really like having their picture taken with a digital camera because they can see it immediately on the camera.

01- christmas on the overnight train from delhi

So I have alot of very posed pictures, luckily you don't have to see them all!
We then headed to Jodhpur for a night and visited the fort and saw all the blue houses in town.  spent some time in the market and just strolling around avoiding cows and their droppings.
The next day we headed out on our overnight camel safari.  We rode camels for about three hours and then arrived at our camp, rode three more the next day and landed in Jaisalmer, another city with an amazing fort full of sandstone carved buildings.  I really liked being on the camel, but I have to say my butt is killing me!  I don't know how people do that for a week.

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02-porters at the station in jodhpur	03-old man in pottery village	04-nice village house near chandelao	05-lady of the nice house, lower right
06-little girl at the water cannisters	07-ladies on their way to the well	08-breakfast is served in chandelao	09-front gate to the hotel
10-view of the memorial in jodhpur	11-inside the jodhpur fort	12-view of the blue city	13-picture of a random family (they asked for it)
14-father and son and their blue house	15-jodhpur street	16-Mr. Ba, my camel driver	17-our campsite, cool tents
18-our group leader, Hemong	19-on the camel with Mr. Ba	20-prince of the desert (mr. puri with my glasses)	21-long moustache man in jaisalmer
22-jaisalmer street with carved buildings	23-cows in the fort in jaisalmer	24-view from inside a haveli (merchant's house)	25-another street view in jaisalmer

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