Saturday, April 17, 2010

We made it to Amritsar and the Golden Temple is incredible, it looks like it is floating on the water.Amritsar itself is not a very appealing city, am glad however we made the effort to go to see the Golden Temple, it was well worth it. We then took the train from Amritsar to Delhi and met back up with Kim in the afternoon and took the train that day to Jaisalmer, a bit of a long travel day, we started off at 5:30 am and did not arrive until the next morning.Spent the morning at the Fort, it is really beautiful but maybe in serious trouble, erected on a base of soft clay and sandstone, the foundations of Rajasthan's citadel are rapidly eroding because of the huge increase in water consumption. At the height of tourist season around 120 liters per person are pumped into the area, 12 times the quantity used only a couple of decades ago. For that reason we opted not to stay in the fort itself. We stayed in a nice little place just outside the fort and it even had a pool!  Temps are still around the 40 degree mark, so the pool was a necessary luxury. We took our camel trek here,and it was terrific. We drove a couple of hours into the desert and met up with our camels at 5:00pm. OMG it was hot, I am certain the water in my bottle was actually boiling. We rode for about 1 and half hours and then setup camp, seriously a little guy from the travel company walked into the desert and we actually had cold beer, nothing has ever tasted quite that good. After the beer we had dinner and then just laid out on our blankets and star glazed.. There was no one else around and it was magical, shooting stars and not a cloud in the sky. It did cool down for a short time and I actually had to use my blanket. Then breakfast and back onto Duke, Cornelius and Humphrey, yes we actually named our camels. Lara was in the lead on Duke, followed by Kim on Cornelius, then Sir farts a lot carrying the two guides and Winn bringing up the rear on Humphrey. Seriously camels do fart a lot, but it was so much fun and is definitely one of the high lights of the trip.We then took the afternoon train to Jodhpur, an easy journey as compared to some.  All are well, more to come..

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