“I’m on the Camel!” - night in the dunes #1

We left Jaiselmer & all our new friends on 25^th July & drove an hour out to Khuri

Khuri is a dusty village of about 500 noble Rajput families & the same again of Pakistani Muslim refugees from the '71 war. The latter live in cowdung adobe huts – kitchen hut, courtyard, sleeping hut – while the Rajputs have stone & brick 2 room houses. There's a school for the locals but the refugee kids attend a hut school set up by a local charity.


We were there, as all tourists are, to have a short camel ride in the spectacular sand dunes 1km outside town. The whole area is in the National Desert Park aka the Great Thar Desert but is mostly arid saltbush scrub populated by camels, dogs, goats & peacocks. The sahara-like dunes only occur in a couple of accessible areas, here & at Sam the other side of Jaisalmer. Cashed up whiteys can do anything from a 12day Jodhpur - Jaisalmer trek to a simple joyride of a couple of hours. As I managed an Olympic botty rash record after only an hour on board I'm clear we made the appropriate choice.

Riding a camel as it lopes along & the cameleer whispers encouragement from the back seat is a dreamy experience, when he speeds it up to a canter it's a bone jarring, spine compressing advert for chiropractry. Not to mention the, ahem, testicular trauma & risk of disembowelment from the wooden pommel. It was wonderful, the dunes are dramatic & from 20m up above the surrounds the view of the flat plains & huge sky is inspiring. There were a few other people about & a couple of lads trying to get us to buy warm v expensive beer but nothing could ruin the atmosphere.