jaisalmer cont'd...

The above photo was taken in the middle of the desert about 45km outside Jaisalmer. I don't know what to say about it... good advice, I guess? India is weird, haha.

I am currently in Jodhpur again, stopping over for a few hours on my way through to Mumbai. I just left Jaisalmer! What a strange place... the hotel owner was telling me that Jaisalmer (along with Varanasi, and two other places I forget) is one of the places in India that foreigners apparently come to with the specific intention of hooking up with locals. That might explain why men there were sleazier than usual. Everywhere I went, guys were saying hello, grinning at me, trying to chat, saying things like "Hi sexy", etc. I mean, you get that everywhere but Jaisalmer was excessive. Hotel guy says this is for 2 reasons: firstly, they all watch alot of western porn and think that's what western women are like, and secondly, because there are a ridiculous number of women (mostly older, middle aged) who come to Jaisalmer and stay with "friends" in the town... I didn't believe him at first, but it made sense after a few days. Men kept asking me "Do you have a friend in India?" It took me like 2 days to clue in to what that implied. I kept saying "Sure, I have lots of friends" which was the wrong answer since it made me sound like a whore. Oops. When I was going for a camel ride, the camel owner approached me, leaned in really close, asked the "Do you have a friend in India?" question, and when I said no, he smiled this creepy smile and said "You like Indian men?" What a creep. The guy that takes the cake though is the one who rode past me on a motorcycle and called out "You want a ride?! I fuck you!" Which marks the first time I've been unable to stop myself from giving someone the finger in India. I have no idea if that gesture even means the same thing here, haha. Oh well. It's not just women who go there though. The man in the hotel next to me was an extremely flamboyant gay man from the Netherlands who has (according to hotel guy) six boyfriends in Jaisalmer, so he visits several times a year. He was... a character, to say the least. Anyway, to deter these potential "friends" I've concocted a story for men who do talk to me - I've been married for 3 years, my husband is travelling with me but he's back at the hotel lying down with some stomach troubles. It usually gets them to back off.

There is one big plus to being a girl on my own - queue-jumping! They have separate line-ups everywhere for men and women, and the women's line is always empty, which means I go right to the front and get served ahead of the men's lineup. This comes in handy at movie theatres, train stations, etc. In Jaisalmer, there was only one reservation counter and the lineup to get a train ticket was over two hours long. But, being a solo woman, I waltzed in to the front of the line, and was in and out in 10 minutes. One man in the lineup, another tourist, was very vocal about how unfair this was. I felt kind of bad for him, because it does sort of suck to be a guy in line, but women get so much crap in other ways. Let us have this small compensation. I mean, sure he might have to wait in line awhile longer, but he doesn't have to worry about stuff like this:

So funny... I know it's a religious thing, but still. Amusing from my western viewpoint. Also amusing - I rode a camel! Not very far, only about 5km. I wanted to go out to the sand dunes to watch the sunset, and the trip involves a brief camel ride so I went with it. It was pretty fun, even though my butt hurt the next day. My camel's name was Rocket. He was very handsome. I dropped my sunglasses somewhere in the dunes though. I realized I dropped them within 2 minutes but they were gone when I went back (I was walking around at this point, not on the camel) so I am thinking someone swiped them. There were about a million people on the dunes, actually. This certain part of the desert is so touristy that there is nothing remotely remote about it. There were still children running around trying to sell me things. Fun experience regardless.





Last day in Jaisalmer I just wandered around. I bumped into the Australians again, that makes it 4 times now. It's getting eerie. We were even on the same train last night. I also think I saw the people we took the boat ride with in Varanasi. So random. Last night was both good and bad... bad because I got into a fight with a shopkeeper. He was showing me some scarves but was refusing to bargain on the price, saying it was fixed. Which is untrue, none of these things are fixed price. One time in Jaipur a man told me something was "fixed price" and I walked out of the shop, asked someone on the street what they thought I should pay, and it turned out the alleged "fixed price" was about 4 times the real price. So, I always leave if they won't bargain, in the interest of shopping around to figure out what it should cost. But this guy got SO mad that I didn't buy anything, he said I didn't know what I wanted, and I shouldn't be wasting people's time going into shops and not buying things. It was such a load of crap. Shopkeepers are crazy here... sometimes they chase you yelling things like "Madam! Please buy something!" This guy was a huge jerk though. I told him I'm not obligated to buy anything, I'll look at whatever I want to, and in this case I'll take my business elsewhere and then I left. Then I was disgruntled, so I went to get some cake, and I was sitting in the cafe reading my book, when a nice man sat down with me and saw my book. He had read it already and we had a great chat about Stephen Hawking, and other books, and Bollywood. So I left Jaisalmer undisgruntled, in the end. :) It was nice to have a conversation with someone who didn't try to proposition me. (Even the jerky shopkeeper asked if I had a special friend in India, ugh.)

Other random encounters in Jaisalmer: A funny old man befriended me on the train, telling me stories about how camels are dangerous in December because that's mating season and they are looking for female camels and get angry and bite people's heads out of frustration. I also met a bunch of cool people near Jaisalmer's lake. An old man named Babu Singh who had a cool arm tattoo, crazy hair, and used to be a beggar until he worked his way up to selling souvenirs and putting on puppet shows for tourists near the lake. He also takes care of this blind lady who he pushes around in a little cart everywhere. And I met this guy named Ravi who is the town history teacher, who was actually really nice and remarkably attractive. He invited me to his house for tea, which I declined because common sense says going to men's houses is a terrible idea, even though he was cute and non-threatening. This was probably a good idea, because after he left, two different guys in the street asked me if I was Ravi's "friend" and if I was going to his house. And we all know what "friend" means here.

In any case, I survived Jaisalmer without making any friends (except for Rocket the camel). Mumbai tomorrow, to seek my fame and fortune in Bollywood. This time next week I should be starring in several films, and engaged to Shah Rukh Khan.