In Which We Do Not Die By Swarming Bees

I know everyone was in suspense about whether we made it out alive or not. But never fear, dear readers, our night of "My Girl" terror ended peaceably, with the yellow bees keeping to themselves and our wimply little heroes definitely, definitely keeping to THEMselves, and awoke the next morning intact to the sounds of an already bustling household.

The most exciting part of the morning, by far, was bathing. It was a bucket-shower system, that had us hauling water from their cistern to the shower area, but it was glorious. And it turns out that my "tan" was actually a few layers of "dust" that quite gleefully washed away, back to whence it came. Ah well.

Roop Singh had left earlier that morning to pick up his next bunch of camel trekkers and bring them to the farm, so soon after breakfast a group consisting of two Danish girls and a Canadian with the name of Alister made their appearance. Roop was driving us to Jaisalmer that day (so we didn't get there so much on camel back as in the back of a jeep), and so set up the new group with Mohan and set them on their way. Soon we, too, had packed up, said our goodbyes and thank yous in the limited common language we shared with his family, and took off in the jeep.

We made a few quick stops on the way to Jaisalmer, if only to make the 5 hour jeep ride seem a little shorter. Our first stop was at a temple, and was also our first reintroduction to the crowded urban atmosphere we had so luckily escaped for the past few days. Far more than the temple I remember outstretched hands and the calls of vendors, and told myself to prepare for how overwhelming it all could be.

The second stop was at a bird sanctuary, or should I write, "bird sanctuary." It was little more than a dirt parking area with a slight mud puddle to one side and, which was kind of cool, a whole bunch of Siberian cranes you couldn't quite see roosting in its waters. I almost erased the picture I took of it the other day when scrolling through my trip thus far thinking "what the hell is THAT crappy photo?? It looks like I took a picture of a pile of dirt! Why did I DO that??" and then realizing that ah, yes, 'twas the sanctuary of birds, whom you could barely see waaaaay off in the distance.

We stopped for lunch soon after, at a place Roop knew of in the middle of nowhere and which was quite good, not to mention it held the first bathrooms any of us had seen in awhile, squat toilet or no. Fantastic! We enjoyed a lovely meal and were off again.

Somewhere along the ride we were stopped at a train crossing, and it soon became clear that the train was going to take a bit to actually CROSS where we were. Roop took a philosophical view and said "SITARAM! It is on India time. Just take a break SITARAM!!!!!" By this point his sitaraming had gotten a bit out of control and David, I think, was going a bit berserk. It didn't help that apparently Roop and Mohan had spent a good portion of that last day in the camel cart shouting back and forth "sita!" "RAM!" over and over, to the detriment of poor Dave's mental health. We entertained ourselves at the train crossing by singing along to "It's a Small World After All," which happened to be the song Roop's jeep played when in reverse, and which it happened to be put in for much of our train delay. David, being a musical genius, actually knows the words, so could do the verses whereas I only could join in on the chorus (which the jeep DIDN'T play, but which we decided to include anyway). At long last, the train made it's way past, and we were off again.

There was something incredibly cathartic about the jeep ride, and I had a great time lounging in the back and looking at the landscape as it rushed passed. We ran through the repetoire of songs we had, including some classic Simon and Garfunkle, Simon all by himself, Bon Jovie, and Aerosmith. We passed camels and busses, motorcycles and street-wandering cows, and became used to the slightly hair raising style of driving in India, though to his credit (or maybe because it was broken) Roop never used his horn, which seems to be all anyone else does.

We stopped for the sunset by the road and watched to see if there would be a flash as the sun finally dipped below the horizon (David insisted, even though he ALSO said it would only occur when the sun set on the ocean... but he's a scientist at heart, so I guess one could say it was a fruitless experiment...). Soon after, Jaisalmer, in all its golden glory, could be seen through the fading light, and we wound our way up its sand colored streets to the entrance of its famed fort, where Roop bid adieu to us for the evening and we autoed it up inside the desert citadel to the Paradise Hotel. Our room had retained its original stone walls (we got a cheap one, and they didn't plaster those over, and dang, it was the COOLEST ROOM EVER) so we, of course, danced around for awhile in our awesome fort digs (it completely, completely blew any pillow forts out of the water), found a delightful rooftop restaurant (all restaurants here, actually, seem to be rooftop), wound our way home, and fortily fell asleep.