Khuri Village

Camel Safari

We left our luggage in our  "Maharaja"  bedroom in Jaisalmer and drove about an hour to Khuri Village in the Thar Desert, where the safari was located. This town has a lot of safari tour places.  Around 4:00 we headed out to find our camels and camel driver. We got on our camels (no instructions, just lean back they told us) and headed out to the sand dunes. These dunes are not big like the sand dunes in the Sahara Desert and there is more vegetation in the Thar Desert. We rode the camels for an 1 1/2 hours and arrived at a high dune where we dismounted the camels and waited for sunset. We had a chance to walk around the dunes and were disappointed with the amount of trash littering the whole area. There are local people that bring beer, chips and candy up to the dunes to sell to the tourists. Everything is thrown on the ground when finished. We got to see a beautiful sunset, got back on our camels and headed back to camp.

Jane's camel driver and camel.

  

Camels have names but we could never remember them because they were in Hindi.

Sunset

Local musicians and a dancer performed while we waited for supper.

After supper made by the women of the town and a performance by a group of locals we headed to the sand dunes.  This time we boarded a camel wagon which had our bedding on it.

When we arrived at the dunes the camel driver spread quilts on the sand and piled on more quilts. Our room under the stars!! Our driver lit a little fire and he tried to tell us some Hindu stories about the gods in his limited English. Charlie helped fill in the information as we had heard some of the stories from our driver. The sky was clear and it was pretty cold so we snuggled under the quilts with our sand pillows and went to sleep under the stars. We woke early in the morning and the stars were super bright as the moon had gone down. The Big Dipper was just over our head. We got up, watched the sunrise, got back on the camel cart and went back to camp. Another great adventure.

We had breakfast and then we walked around town. I had colored pencils with me and handed them out the children. Word spread fast through the town and I was over run with kids. We walked on and met our camel driver from the day trip and he took us to his house. There we gave pencils to his children and others. He gave us a town tour, introduced us to his parents and walked us back to camel head quarters, where we met Anil and drove back to Jaisalmer. A once in a lifetime adventure!!