Sulnday 12th october - day 51
jaisalmer
Miraculously, we make it to the station alive, bags and all. The hostel are there to pick us up too which is good.
Josh a guy we met in jaipur and bumped into in pushkar got the death bus with us and is just as traumatised as us.
Jaisalmer, the golden city - characterised by its golden yellow sandstone buildings - is more of a small town located in the remote Thar desert. Once a flourishing trade centre where the entire town population lived inside Jaisalmer fort, it is now a peaceful place full of splendid palaces and havelis.
We've booked straight onto the camel desert treck for 3pm today, and thankfully, the hostel let us have a spare room to catch up on some sleep before we leave. The hostel is in a great location and the rooftop restraunt looks out onto Jaisalmer fort.
At 3pm we head off via jeeps into the desert. We stop first at an abandoned ghost village - kuldhara. The story is, nearly 200 years ago the entire village was abandoned in 1 night.
The residents - Paliwal Brahmans had resided there for about 500 year, however, the ruler of these villages - Salim Singh - pounded the Paliwals with heavy taxes and treated them very inhumanly. He threatened the village with grave consequences if they did not adhere to his wish of marrying one of the brahim girls. Instead of submitting to the order of the tyrant, the Paliwals held a council and people of 85 villages left their ancestral homes and vanished in a single night. When the Paliwals left the villages, they left a curse so that nobody can ever inhabit the villages. Residents of Jaisalmer say that there have been some attempts by some families to stay there, but they did not succeed and reports of ghosts are many.
The desolate village is quite eerie - tumbled down ruins of houses with missing roofs, rooms with red handprints smudged along the walls and a temple now home to bats with spooky pitcutures and paintings inside.

Next stop is an inhabited local village of wooden huts and tumbled down brick buildings. The kids are super friendly and show us their tribe of baby goats - one nips me on the chin the little s***.
Back into the jeeps to the last village (where the kids are all asking for pens for school, wish I would have known so I could have bought some boxes of pens) and theres a load of camels waiting for us. All packed up with supplies for our night in the desert - blankets, water, food etc, we pick a camel, swing our legs over and grip onto the sadle while it stands up. The camels are connected to each other by rope and metal hooks through the noses - forcing them to walk in line otherwise face having their nostrelL ripped out.
We begin our treck through the desert, its starting to cool down now its evening but the air is so dusty and hot I'm drinking water continuously. The ground is sparse with cactus, desert bush and various animal skeletons. Theres a few deer and goat roamimg around too. The desert streches as far as you can see with the golden dunes rising up in the distance. The camel ride isnt too uncomfortable, but my legs and bum are aching slightly. My camel is quite well behaved, but alicia's (girl from sydney) keeps licking yasmins camels bum and drinking its wee. Nice.
We've also got a younger camel who follows us and walks side by side with mine as they are all apparently family and stay together. Its quite cute until he continuously bangs into my leg the entire way. Anyway, after an hour and half we arrive at the dunes as the sun is starting to set - turning the dunes a dark golden colour. Huge dunes rise up and sink down covered in wind ripples. After some daft pictures and me spotting a dung beatle pushing some camel crap across the dunes, the sun sets and we settle down for food. Curry (bland) and rice is served and some musicians have been arranged for us as its such a large group. Food, beers, live indian music and dancing under a the stars.. absolutely amazing.
Its pretty much pitch black until the moon rises and the stars and milkyway look unbelievable. A good group of us stay up finishing the beers and then pick a good spot on the dunes tp settle in our sleeping bags for the night.