Chal-oh Chal-oh Pak-i-stan!

Welcome back to Phases Crossed. Your faith, in returning to this website, hoping that our adventure might continue documenting itself, is appreciated. If only it would document itself. That would be nice. But we need to do things. We need to continue our search for Bin Laden. And we think, just maybe, the answer is camels. We think this is true because of messages from you, our expertly opinionated audience.



We have received many emails from our readers requesting us to include camels in our trip. Every blog, it seems, comes to a decisive moment where it desperately needs camels to maintain ratings, and our readers have been both sensitive and proactive on this front, beseeching us to locate the camels, and ride them hither and yon across epic desert landscapes. Worry not, fellow travelers. We have not only done this, selflessly sacrificing our delicate buttocks for our readers ecruitious desires, but we have documentation to prove our escapades. Worry not! We have no photographs of our sore anatomies. No. We still hold out for a PG-13 rating, maybe even an academy award. Is that too much to hope for? India Travel Blog Movie? It's possible.

The first step you need to take, in order to participate in a camel trek through the desert, is to acquire some camels. Where does one get camels? Good question. There are people, people who arrange treks in the desert. Much money is in play, so they all want to be your friend. First, we talk to Mr. Desert, recommended by the Lonely Planet. He is in the midst of dying his awesome facial and skull hair black, so no pictures just now, thank you. Then we talk to Ganesh travels, also suggested by the LP, who we decide to go with. In theory, Ganesh travels is a co-op, and it does seem to treat the camel drivers & guides really well, but I don't think it's actually a co-op in the sense that the workers actually own part of the company. Everyone offers "non-touristic" camel treks. After finishing the whole thing, nobody is quite sure what that means, exactly.

We book a day and a half trip. The next morning we get up early, eat a huge breakfast at the town's German Bakery (which has the best cheese omelet and apple pie eva), and pack into a jeep with our fellow adventurers. We've assembled a multinational team to find Osama. In attendence: an Italian man, two nice English ladies, a Dutch woman, and an Israeli couple. It's always a slight dilemma, and game, when we are in the company of Israelis. This is because I can understand most of what they are saying to one another, but I am usually going about everything in English. One must choose when to bust out the Hebrew and "I understand" cues. At some point a joke is made and I just laugh out loud, get some funny looks, and explain what's going on. We ride for about 30 minutes out into the desert, where we are deposited at the trip start location. There are camels and guides here, so we've probably come to the right place.



These are the camel houses, where the camels are kept. The long cylindrical forms are ideal for the extreme temperatures of the desert, and maintain a constant, mild, airflow throughout the space that makes it comfortable for pupal and gestating camel forms. The houses are multifaceted. They can also be turned on their sides and made into giant fans that help keep the desert cool.



Actually, they are windmills. I understand the windmills generate power used by the tiny villages we'll visit later. They enhance and complement the beauty of the desert, in my opinion, much like the Golden Gate Bridge enhances the beauty of the Golden Gate.



Woo! Camels! Here I am, sitting atop Michael Jackson. Yeah! That's his name. Why? We'll find out later, or at least we'll find out about my theories.

The blurred out finger smudge is absolutely ominous looking. Like a large fleshy comet is about to smash into me, obliterating us all. I think my camera should have some intense ridging or tactile feedback near the lens so people know it's there. The camera is so small, it's easy to cover the lens. Maybe some electrical shock feedback would do the trick.



Here are some camels. There are, as many people know, flocks of birds, schools of fish, and so on. Different animal types have their own special words for what a group of them is. I'm not sure why, exactly. Is English special? Not very polymorphic, right? So what is the corresponding word for flock, when talking about camels? Did you know that one speaks of a hump of camels? You can also say a spit of camels, though our camels definitely fart more than they spit, but they are not nearly as flatulent as we were made to expect. Actually, none of this is true. Except the part about the farting. And the part about "here are some camels."



Here is Sarah, one of our travel buddies, enjoying camel time. It's camel time all the time when you hang out with our guides, accomplished graduates of Thar's finest camel college. At right is Alex. I really wish his Burning Man cowboy hat hadn't been destroyed and discarded already. It would be perfect. Just perfect. Right now.

Riding a camel isn't as easy as you think. Your inner thigh muscles are exposed to a constant, large and active stretch, and their gait is funky, making balancing tricky, and requiring much core strength. Camels need to be goaded onwards, constantly, too, and steered in the proper direction. When we start drifting into the wrong direction we are goaded by our guides: "Where are you going, my friend? That way is Pak-i-stan!" "Challo, Challo, Pak-istan!" Challo, sounds like Yalla, which also means let's go, or onward, in Arabic and Hebrew. I love let's go phrases. A-yo (Indonesian). Yalla (Hebrew/Arabic). Challo (Hindi). Oniva & Vaz-e (French). Ayenu po (Hebrew: we were here), Alachnu (Hebrew: we've left), Zaznu (Hebrew: we've moved). Let's go. Onward. Ya. Many of these have a similar music to them, tone, melody, and rhythm.



I have to admit that the photographs in this trek are absolutely not in any kind of exact temporal order. They roughly follow a kind of temporal logic that maps to real life in certain kinds of ways, but not others. Our editor thought it best to do this. He's new here, and I don't know him that well. Certain similar events have been conflated, and others picked apart. Dramatic compression, or something like that.

The desert is actually mostly hard earth, rocks, and so on, which is surprising to some people. I was cleansed of this misapprehension many years ago, when I first trekked around the Negev in Israel. The picturesque sand dunes are just the camp site we trek out to, and watch the sunset from. Did someone say sunsets? Indeed. Read on.



We stop at a couple very small villages populated by, who I understand to be, of the Dalit (a.k.a. Untouchable) cast. These houses are awesome. Unlike the hill tribe people of Thailand, these folks haven't had the decades of experience necessary to make the exploitation happening here a full two way street. We are offered expensive sodas, sometimes, but they are rarely cold.

When we book the trip, Ganesh (the company owner, not the God) gives us plastic baggies, and tells us to please help keep his desert clean. That's cool. When we leave a spot, I pick up a bunch of trash, but I can't comprehend how clean the desert is. It's so clean when we get somewhere, especially given how many little bits of trash are discarded by us during an hours rest, and how meticulous our guides aren't. Truly a mystery. Later, our guides tell us that Ganesh hires the villagers to help clean the desert. Makes sense, I guess, and explains the mystery of the clean desert.



Children always make for winning pictures, even if they aren't smiling. This picture has already won numerous awards, but that's not the topic of this blog, so I won't bore you with the details.

On our second village visit, on the way back to Jaisalmer, the dutch Sarah shares her camel with a sick girl who needs a ride towards the hospital. The girl's younger brother is terrified to see her go. Her father walks alongside, but doesn't want to ride. We're like the regularly scheduled bus. Yeah. Of course, this doesn't stop the girl from asking Sarah for money.



People certainly know how to dress around here. Our western worlds are so dull and lifeless by comparison. This creates a certain hazard in buying clothes in India which we'll discuss in a future posting.



Camels are mammals. They are pregnant longer than humans, about 13 months. They are carrying all our water, blankets, bags, and food.



The desert is hot, and the sun will burn you. Sunscreen and shade are crucial, and resting in the shade around noon is essential. The longer the rest the better. We sit and eat on these desert tables. If the wind blows wrong, your food gets covered in sand. Not to worry, one of the guides assures me, it's desert sugar. Delicious.

Sometimes there are goats hanging out with us when we rest. They can behave like really aggressive pests at times, going after our bags and food. The upside is that if we want Chai, the milk can be really fresh. A guide grabs a goat, steers her over to the kitchen setup, and milks it. When he's done, he slaps her, and she runs off. It's a fair trade, I guess, for the food and leftovers they get from us.



This is the parking lot.



Above, some Israelites, taking a break from their desert wandering. I take this long break as an opportunity to buff up my Hebrew. Some Israelis would rather talk to me in English, but these two are quite patient, and happy to talk to me in Hebrew. Overall, India is a great place to practice your Hebrew.

The guides know a fair bit of Hebrew. They even sing some Israeli children's songs. It's pretty remarkable. The whole trip I keep hearing "Ma, baya, ma?" from one of the guides. And the Israeli dude keeps saying "baya," too. "Ma" means what in Hebrew. "Baya" means problem. We're always talking about problems. Most of our pidgin conversations involve some kind of problem. Finally, I have to ask, and it turns out that "baya," in Hindi, means brother, informally, like bro. It all fits together. The Israeli guy also keeps asking to be taken to meet Bin Laden. "Is that possible?," he keeps asking.

There is a certain irony is all this. I'm tickled that one of our guides, for example, a young Muslim man from a desert village of maybe 40 people near the border of India and Pakistan, is something of an international culture and language expert. He speaks bits of many different languages, and can impersonate Japanese people better than anyone I've met. It's strange, and very funny. He cooks shakshouka for breakfast. Apparently, it's not exactly right, but it is a nice try, and delicious on its own terms.

He tells us a story about one guest who got his food, which they work very hard to make, but isn't terribly fancy, and said "What is this? I want mango lassi. I want Nan. I want blah blah blah," and threw his food into the desert. What can you do, he says. You have to laugh. And it is funny.

And there is the story of someone who kept asking for "peepee," a word they didn't know. Or they thought they did, as peepee can mean something else that isn't in the desert, though I don't remember what it is. "There is no peepee here, my friend, this is the desert." He was told. After many hours of this the dude just did it on the camel.



Camels need to rest, too.



Camels, like all photosynthesizing life forms, needs lots of water. They have a special kind of brown chlorophyl. Weird, huh? Biology and science are stranger than fiction. I learned this on a PBS documentary that may or may not be real.



I've never seen so many flies in my life, concentrated in one place. Incroyable. Maybe we saw a ton of them around the Taj Mahal, which is part of what makes the Taj one of the wonders of the world, but this is a whole new level of insect life. It's like all the airborne insects in the entire desert between Pakistan and India have converged right here, at water time. Why not?



We wander around in the desert some more, which I can't imagine doing for forty years, with or without camels. Above is the English Sarah, the other one being Dutch.

Camels can walk. They can sit. They can stand. They can carry you. Camels can also run. A running camel is an interesting thing. You bounce around. They have funny, long, oddly jointed legs that create weird gaits. When they run, it's exciting, like an amusement park ride. And then, it begins to hurt. You have to take the basic camel riding hurt, the one which bows your bones away from your hip sockets, and stretches and kneads your inner thigh muscles out without end, and turn it up to 11. Now all this is happening in a much more intense way, and all your assets are being pounded into chapati. This goes on for a while. We have places to go. The camel drivers even have a song, a ancient little funny sounding song they sing to the camels, that causes them to ride and ride and ride. I try singing the song, which kind of works. It's like a camel trance. The pain. The pain is intense. I think I know now why the camel named Michael Jackson, my camel, is named Michael Jackson. Each camel footstep is like a small, bumpy, death. We enter a kind of camel purgatory for hours. I assume contrived postures on my camel, postures designed to protect some valuable assets from harm's way. Postures I would only assume given the pain I am in, and the balancing skills acquired from rock climbing. The drivers may not understand exactly how hard this is for us. It is.



Food time is fun time. Using only basic technologies, elaborate 12 course meals are prepared for us. Servants spring forth from nowhere. Mango lassis magically materialize. We eat from jewel encrusted plates. The desert is a marvelous place. All one needs is a magic lantern.



Here are our mighty steeds enjoying a well deserved meal. Camels have the craziest looking tongues you've ever seen in your entire life. It looks like they are vomiting out a bunch of internal organs, but, in fact, they are licking their lips, or something. No visual documentation here, thanks. My camera might crack in half. Michael Jackson, my camel of choice, has some kind of eating disorder. He often stops to snack when we're in transit. I feel bad, robbing him of some choice desert greenery, but I goad him on, when we're in transit, reluctantly.



Finally, we rest. It's tiring to be carried all day by a large mammal in the sun.



Here we are, resting after a hard day of camel driving and dune climbing, enjoying a sunset we have come halfway around the world to see. We leave our camp and climb the highest dune we can find, which is not as easy as it sounds, given the state of our bodies. It's a great time, but nobody is smiling, since we're so tired. Ugh. You also want to see? Oh, sure. Just look down.



Don't worry. That's a not a nuclear bomb going off on the horizon, it's just the sun. I guess it's still nuclear. Like a submarine, but without the submersability. My word processor doesn't think that's a real word, but I do.



If you climb dune after done, you get as many sunsets as your legs can keep up with.

We return to Jaisalmer, and plan for the next stage of our journey. All over India I've been wearing my funny turban, dhoti, and funky hippie India shirt. It's all very functional. And I am made fun of. Kids in the city say I look like a farmer. Nobody dresses like this, see. It's all about the modern western shirt, which you can then wear with whatever you want. I finally put it all together. The nice white button down shirt, and the white dhoti, which looks like a skirt for men, and the nicely colored turban.

I am complemented upon now, by everyone. At the guest house, I am taught new words, like teek (ok), and am given the Indian name Ramu, which I am proud of. Ramu is a God's name. A powerful name. For the rest of the trip I introduce myself as such, and people think it's the funniest thing. That's right. Later, back in Berkeley, Shalin tells me that Ramu is always the servant's name in Hindi films. That's why it's so funny.

But what is this? We have an important phone call. Calls of international importance. The Dali Lama has just sent word that he needs us up north, near Dharmasala. What can we do? We make all the necessary arrangements, and set off to the Himalayas. Besides, it's hot here, and we need some AC au natural.