Stunned and Stunning

Jaisalmer is both beautiful and disgusting.

The smell here is rank, like nothing I’ve ever smelled. Cows and shit and wild pigs and urine and rotting trash and bad body odor. And you’re barely able to walk around it all and keep your shoes clean. Yet, you can turn a corner and the air is clean again.

The mornings are cold and our breath made puffs in the chilly desert air while we ate breakfast in hotel’s rooftop restaurant. We wrapped our hands around hot cups of tea and hunched into our sweatshirts and watched the town come awake while waiting for our eggs. The bent old women unwrapping burlap sacks filled with shirts and sweaters to sell on the street. A young man pushing a cart filled with small cauliflower, dirt covered carrots and tiny shiny eggplant. A group of three dogs barking furiously as they chase two rival dogs away from the territory. And the worst job in the world: the trash collector, a young man who looked like 25 but was probably 16, scooping up cow shit with a metal pan and his hands. We stopped watching that long before our breakfast arrived.

We toured the fort today; it’s the only fort in the world where people are still living. We were glad to have our guide because it was a maze of narrow alleys that we never would have ventured down alone. The entire fort is a warren of intricate carvings, entire facades covered in scrolls and shapes and Jewish stars and swastikas, which were a symbol of peace (and still are) throughout Asia hundreds of years before Hitler stole it to symbolize evil. One building will have a dozen balconies, all chipped away into delicate and symmetrical designs, while down below pigs and cows are eating from a garbage heap.

Our guide, Prakesh, was in tight jeans and a form fitting sweater. I correctly guessed he worked out when later, he told us his dream was to visit World Gym in America and that Arnold Schwarzenegger was his hero. He was helpful and charming and friendly and helped me bargain down the cost of (yet another) bed spread by more than half. He also walked us past where all the other tourists were gathered for their view of the city to his cousin’s hotel, where we had our own spectacular private view from the rooftop. Later, he took us to the private home of a silver jewelry maker who poured out hundreds of earrings and bracelets and necklaces for us to look through. I must say it was the most fun I’ve had shopping for jewelry! But unfortunately, India is turning out to not be as cheap as we had expected, so we only bought one piece of jewelry each. But the jewelry maker’s mother did make us a cup of the best Indian chai tea I‘ve ever tasted, spiced with ginger and masala.

As sunset approached, we dropped off our guide and headed into the dessert with our driver. I was about to see my first real dessert sand dunes, and thoughts of Bedouins and ancient spice routes filled my head. The reality was a bit different. Picture hundred of tourists arriving on camel-back and crowding onto the highest dunes to watch the sun set, gypsy children running from tourist to tourist asking for candy or money to sing and dance, and little boys selling beer and soda and chips like on the beach at Coney Island! I sat on one dune and let my legs hang off the edge, my sunglasses pulled tight against my face and my scarf wrapped around my head and mouth to keep the blowing sand out. Some camels looked bored as they sat on their long, folded legs, slowly blinking with thick eyelashes at least four inches long, while others galloped across the sand, their young turbaned riders bouncing in the seat. It would have been nice to have silence up there for just minute, to just listen to the wind softly blowing and breath an air not polluted with camels (which smell badly and fart a lot!)

Still, we were only 50 miles from the Pakistan border. It was the closest I was probably ever going to get to that part of the world. And with soft sand rolling away from us for miles of golden waves, it was a little scary. But also exciting and thrilling and magical.