Travel Stories

February 11, the Great Thar Desert, India, by Xerxes Marduk

Part 2

The orange rays of the setting sun turned the beetle's shiny black body into molten gold. Its mouth pinchers slowly dismantled the piece of dung, as its forbears have been doing for centuries before it. To what mysterious purpose it was all alone out in the desert seemed very interesting to me. Maybe it could explain my own purpose for being out in the desert all alone, I thought. Dusting my hands off and blessing the beetle for good digestion, I tromped back to camp, just in time to see the fire being lit as darkness quickly approached.

The campfires light created a small sphere of yellow warmth to which all members of our band clung. Beyond the fires light our camels ate their dinner out of canvas sacks. Occasionally one would rise up its noble head to look in our direction and I would see the reflections of the flames dancing in its dragon like eyes.

Sleeping so close to the eight camels made me wonder what would stop them from standing up in the middle of the night and stomping on one of our sleeping forms. As far as I could see they were not tied down in any way, just hobbled.

The camel drivers prepared us a hearty supper of chi, chapati, and curry. It was no culinary marvel, but after six hours on a camel nobody cared. After we ate our dinner sitting on plastic tarps in the sand the camel drivers all gathered to one side of the fire and started singing songs in a language none o us could understand. I wondered a bit pessimistically if their out burst of song was motivated more by the ancient traditions of their ancestors living in the desert, or their desire to see a bigger tip at the end of the ride tomorrow. Regardless, two Danish girls had a heated sing off with the camel men, trading song for song until the lead camel man said, "Enough, its time to sleep now!" Think of this, if you didn't speak Hindi or Danish, like me, you would have had absolutely no idea what was being sun for that hour and a half out in the desert that night. We said our good nights, and some of us challenged each other to wake up early enough to watch the sunrise. I had strategically positioned my sleeping bag in the middle of all the others; that way, I reasoned, I would be awakened by the blood curdling screams of those on the outside as they got trampled on by the camels in the middle of the night with enough time to flee to safety. Fortunately no such scenario happened, at least not with our group. Who knows what dark secrets the desert holds.

I awoke a few hours later as the sky started to show signs of getting light. I climbed sleepily across a few dunes and sat to watch the sunrise chase the shadows across the desert landscape. Apart from me only a young French couple roused themselves from slumber in time to see the sunrise. For all their idle bluffing the night before everybody else slept right through it.

Read more CircleThePlanet: Travel Stories