Random Notes from the Great Thar Desert

Currently writing from Jaisalmer, a city in western Rajasthan. This is a desert state and Jaisalmer, founded in the late 12th century prospered on the trade of gold, silver, sandalwood and opium. These days, it sustains itself on tourist and military spending. This is about as far west as most travelers make it in India. The Pakistan border is only a 100 km away - hence the massive military presence.

The main attraction for tourists like us is the massive old fortified city. It cuts quite a profile against the bleak Great Thar Desert. The fort and all the buildings in town are made of the same golden local sandstone much of it carved with fanciful natural and geometric detail. The oldest lanes of the city have the feel of something I'd expect out of caravan times.


If you look on a map, you can see it's isolated out here. At night the stars shine bright and luminous. There is a restaurant that serves passable Italian food - something we haven't had in quite a while. Their location is romance par excellence with seating along the top of one of the ancient walls next to the city gate. Last night, Tami pointed out a satellite cruising overhead as we ate.

People have been living here for a long time - not as many people as live here now, though. Their lifestyles have changed dramatically, too. Until fairly modern times (less than the last 100 years) people who lived in the desert made do with very little water. They cooked their vegetables in the same water in which they washed them. Any water that was left went to the livestock. Rajasthan is in a state of perpetual drought (the definition of a desert, of course). Nonetheless, the population is quite a bit bigger than California and it gets even less rainfall. Currently, Rajasthan has more than 50 million people and is expected to have 80 million by 2016.

Depending on the severity of the 'drought', on any given year over 1000 villages and more than 300 towns receive all their water via truck or train tankers. We saw this camel tanker yesterday. There was a little depot on the edge of town and four of them waited to fill up.

Camels aren't the only big animals out here. This being India, there are plenty of cows - sacred to Hindus. It's not unusual to see big ones like this girl below waiting at the door of a house waiting for any leftover "chapatis" - rounds of flat bread. They'll climb right up the stairs and wait for someone to feed them...and inevitably, someone does.

Beach Cow

Fourteen years ago I stumbled into Goa after two months of racing around big tracts of north India with my friend Sherry. She returned to the US to go to school and I headed south to a place where I'd heard that a traveler might be able to decompress from the craziness of the Subcontinent. I figured I'd stay for a few days or a week then head back into the fray. I stayed for a month....and still had to reluctantly drag myself away.

Me on Asvem Beach - Goa

This time around, Tami and I almost didn't bother stopping in Goa. The sad reality of the evolution of almost all travel destinations is that they almost never get better over time (see the country of Thailand or the city of Kathmandu as exhibits "a" & "b").

Tami with Vagator Beach behind - Goa

A good beach is just as much of a lifesaver as ever here, so we followed the advice we'd gotten from a handful of seasoned travelers and headed to a town called Gokarna on the coast of Karnataka State. The beaches were nothing short of epic and supremely relaxing. Almost all the development was low-impact bamboo and thatch but you could always get a cold beer or some decent dal and rice or a fruit salad.

Morjim Beach from Vagator Fort - Goa

We ended up staying for about ten days - a few days of which we spent checking out big festival in honor of the God Shiva. I was ready to head to Mumbai but Tami had heard me talk so glowingly of Goa over the years that she had to at least see it. We agreed to visit Chapora, the small village I'd stayed in in 1994.

Holiday makers on Asvem Beach - Goa

We ended up staying more than two full weeks and...."still had to reluctantly drag ourselves away." :)

Putting in on Kudle Beach - Gokarna

Goans and travelers have had a decade and a half of development to ruin things and, admittedly, some things are not perfect. On the whole, though, Goa is still one of the best beach scenes I've ever spent time in. Development has been kept low impact i.e. no high rises. The coast is breathtaking. The dance scene has plenty of energy. The people, especially Goans and the long-time visitors are laid-back and seem to be open to all kinds of lifestyles yet tourist culture hasn't overwhelmed the flavor of the place. The live-and-let-live attitude that Goa became famous for still flourishes.

Dog days on Kudle Beach - Gokarna

For the first time in more than two years we were able to dance - I mean boogie down for hours at a time. The vibe on the dance floor reminded us of the best scenes at home - everyone friendly and connecting.

Low impact development on Paradise Beach - Gokarna

Goa is one of the Grande Dames of budget travel. Backpackers have been coming here for more than forty years. The package tourists are here, too, but they stay to their own areas in central and south Goa. Backpackers still have some places (the best ones really) all to themselves. If you're willing to stay in a hut, get around on a little scooter or hump your pack down a ravine to the beach, you can get some quality solitude.

Backpackers trundle off Kudle beach to the road - Gokarna

And....one interesting thing about Indian beaches is that it's still India. You can never be sure what you're going to see.
Beach cow with a growth - Gokarna

Those Eyes....

A few days ago Tami and I bused it for ten hours from Patan in Gujarat to Jodhpur in Rajasthan. Sometimes, especially when you venture off routes not frequented by western travelers, you become a spectacle. You see it most at extremes. In Mumbai, we hardly drew a second glance. Mumbaikers (as the city's denizens are called) have seen it all, like people in any other world capital. It didn't take long after we left to feel the change, though. It's a safe equation that you can ratchet up your chance of drawing attention with every few kilometers you go into the folksy hinterland.

I think I've mentioned before that privacy is tough to find in India. Now, after three trips and more than a cumulative year in the country I see one of the things about traveling here that is most exhausting. If you've never been subjected to it for a prolonged period of time (and prior to traveling here, I hadn't), you don't understand that constantly being stared at is a form of psychological torture. It can make you CRAZY.

There's no doubt I'm more aware of it more because I'm traveling with Tami. She, draws far more stares than I do...but I see most of those and try to run interference when I can. Even on my own, though, I guess I look different enough to be the news of the day when nothing else is doing.

The guy at the photo above sat across the aisle from us on the bus ride I spoke of. He got on in some small town and COULD NOT STOP LOOKING. He gazed with such an absence of reserve that I am convinced he did not believe I was another human. For a long time I hid behind my sunglasses and tried to ignore him. I have no idea what he found so interesting but he sat with his head craned around for a solid two hours. Once in a while I'd look directly back at him and he would not flinch - not a thing in his expression changed. It was unnerving.

If I made a note in my journal, his eyes followed my hands like they were going to burst into a shower of gold flakes. If I reached into my bag for gum, he watched every move - from pack to mouth. I took the photo above by taking my camera out of my bag while it was down between my legs. I never looked at him - just pointed the camera at him because I knew he was staring and fired.

Finally, I started writing about it in my journal. This....I can only guess...what too much for him. He actually offered his seat to a man standing next to me and stood in his place looking directly down on what I was doing. I lasted about two sentences and folded up shop. No one else on the bus (except Tami, who'd gone completely incommunicado behind her shades and I-Pod) showed any sign that they thought it was weird. And why should they, many folks here stare. They don't care that some stranger stares at a foreigner.

Thank heavens he got off at some other small town. He left without a word but kept glancing back right until he stepped off the bus.

Bye, bye...

Hooray for Bollywood

Been off-line for awhile. This being our home stretch (in a quite literal sense) we've been moving and seeing things at a brisk pace. We were in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) recently. Mumbai is the main home of the Indian movie industry usually refered to as "Bollywood". They make a lot of films in Bollywood - upwards of 800 a year, I believe. For reasons I don't fully understand, the makers of films in India like to have non-Indians appear as extras. This is so common that the Lonely Planet guidebook even has some pointers on places you might get "discovered".

One recent day, Tami and I were walking into our guesthouse and a man asked us if we wanted to be extras. Tami hesitated b/c she had to replace her camera that had just died. I thought, "Why not?" and arranged to be picked up the next morning at 6:00 a.m. From the very first, it was clear that this was not going to be a...glamorous endeavor. You see, three or four blocks up the street is the Taj Palace, the nicest hotel in Mumbai. We saw Westerners of all stripes coming and going through the Taj's noble portal every time we passed. No, to find his Euro/North American faces, the casting agent came instead to the small cluster of guesthouses (some might call it a ghetto) frequented by backpackers. I guess when you're in the background it's not so important that you have long straggly hair or haven't shaved in weeks (as did the Argentine who was with us). They just want folks with round eyes and light skin.....that, and they only want to pay 500 Rupees a day (about $15). Whatever, it wasn’t about cash. The 500 roops didn’t even cover our room. I figured it might be worth some laughs…and it was….for about two or maybe three of the nineteen hours.

I and a couple other sleepy looking scruffs piled into a small bus with about a dozen people of various national origins but all uniformly European. No one talked except for one, probably over caffeinated young woman from Buffalo, NY who announced to her friends that it was “croissant time”. Where she got one in Mumbai I do not know. Our shuttle driver sped off through pre-rush hour Mumbai with speed being the operative word. We bumped and turned and jostled on roads I’d have driven at half the speed and that in a sports car. He clearly had a deadline and in this case the operative word, I hoped, wasn’t going to be dead. We only got stopped by one cop. I watched the driver not so slyly slip him a handful of bills and we were rolling again in less than two minutes. It took us a full hour to cross Mumbai, 100% of the way by surface streets. It’s a BIG city. At last we wound our way through a very stinky little slum then a line of trees and finally out to the edge of a broad beach.

All the accoutrements I would have expected were there – generator truck, props, cameras, lighting equipment, tents, etc. It was a real production. The “white folks” first stop was at our canteen setup. Breakfast on the beach was a decent way to decompress from the terror of the breakneck Rally of Mumbai.

Most of the people just nibbled but I dug right in and piled my plate high. Something instinctive told me that there were no guarantees when I’d get a chance to eat again and thank heavens I did. With about 150 people trying to coordinate shooting on a beach, take after take pushed lunch from noon to one to two and so on. Almost all the extras were moaning with hunger (and boredom) by mid-day. The “stars” had their own little table with snacks and tea and coffee but it was made clear to a couple of the riff-raff that we weren’t supposed to touch it.

They hustled us through breakfast to "wardrobe" where we were fitted in whatever passed for the Indian idea of beachwear for westerners. The girls got a lot of floral print things that hid skin and the guys got shorts and singlets that made us look like strongmen from the early 1900's.

Work commenced. It turned out we were shooting a "two-fer" that day: one commercial for Sony Handycams and one for an Indian bank - both themed with families at the beach.

It was also fun to see the production assistants run and jump...and splash...to get the shots. I'm glad I don't do this for a living.

The best part was undoubtedly hearing the director shriek at his assistants on the loudspeakers in his mix of Hindi and English. As the tide receded from the prepared set, "WE'RE LOSING THE F*CKING PANNI (water) MAHESH! IF WE DON'T GET IT THIS TAKE YOU CAN KISS YOUR OPENING SHOT F*CKING GOODBYE! CELLO!! CELLO!! (go!, go!)"

My role was supremely easy. I got placed next to the lovely Genvieve from Montreal. Our background roll was to make conversation and look like we were having fun at the beach. Not the easiest fifteen bucks I've ever made but certainly not the hardest.