Jodhpur and Bikaner, India

Emily found winter. As I am typing this I am wearing wool socks, hiking shoes, wool long underwear, knit pants, a fleece, a down sweater, jacket, winter hat and if I could type with gloves on I would be doing so. Oh, and there is no heat in this part of the world- silly of you to think that. So, when I go back to my room here in a bit I will keep all of these clothes on until I am ready to get into my down sleeping bag and then I will pull it completely over my head and dream warm dreams. But before I write about Amritsar and northern India I should probably follow up the last several days. The camel safari never happened and I'm not completely sure why. I booked it with the guesthouse where I was staying in Jaisalmer and was all ready to go when they randomly postponed it a day for no real good reason. I'm in no hurry, so that wasn't a problem, I was under the impression that the "German couple" wasn't able to go that day and we needed to wait. Well, I was up at 7am and all packed and ready to go the day of the trip, headed down to the office area a half hour before we were supposed to leave and the guy looked at me and said that everyone already left. I told him I was a half hour early and he said no, no the safari was at 8am. This was all too fishy especially since the guesthouse is really small and has thin walls and I heard nobody at all that morning even though I'd been up since 7am. Plus there is this thing called "Indian time" where nothing happens on-time and certainly never earlier, so it didn't make sense. I am wondering if maybe there never was another couple going, or another group for me to be with. I do know that I made the mistake of hanging out for half a day shopping inside the fort with the guesthouse owner's 22 year old (unmarried) brother. Sometimes being nice and being a female traveling solo is a bad idea because he dang near proposed marriage by the end of the day and his uncle made some sort of comment along the lines of, "if no group for safari, you go with my nephew. good man." hahahahaha. I made it clear that I would only go with a tourist group...I guess I will never know if they were giving me BS so I would end up going into the desert with the kid, which would make me want to marry him, have 8 Indian babies and spend the rest of my life cooking rice and dal, sweeping the floors of my hut, fetching diseased water from the local canal, and sleeping on a rock-hard bed. I wasn't willing to stick around for another day, even if to book a safari with another company, so I got my money back, grabbed my bags and hopped on a bus for Jodhpur. Yes, I have already been to Jodhpur, but I wanted to go back because there was a little shopping to do and that town had some great shops. The bus was nicer this time and I was really enjoying the view until the kid in the seat in front of mine started barfing out the window and all of it blew onto my window. So much for that view, but I didn't care because all I know is if he hadn't stuck his head as far out the window as he did, all that barf probably would have landed on me since the draft blowing in was so strong. I got my shopping in Jodhpur done the same day with plans to mail the parcel the next day before heading to Bikaner by bus. And the next day was Sunday. dang it- I never know what day it is anymore, and the post offices are closed on Sundays here, just like home. I still needed to get my bundle packaged- even a task like that is so very different here. I took my souvenirs back to the store where I made the purchase and they stuffed it all in a plastic bag for me. Then they brought me some chai while I waited for the tailor to come over from across the alley. He runs in all barefoot and wraps the bundle in twine then takes some measurements and runs back out of the store. A few minutes later he comes back with a white cloth bag that he just made and as I sit drinking my tea I watch as 4 grown men try to shove the bundle into the cloth bag. It took like 15 minutes, then the tailor took some string and sewed the top shut and then he sewed all of the corner flaps down. wow. And that thing was heavy, I think 6kg, which I now had to lug with me until Monday when the post office would be open. Off to the bus station, caught one that was just pulling away and headed north to Bikaner. The trip was about 5.5 hours on a government bus, desert scenery, which is just brown and dry and monotonous, but it makes such a great backdrop to all of the women in their bright saris. It's like a desert full of rainbows because the women walk in groups and I have never seen such colorful clothes, fuchsia is a popular one in this part of India, but I would say every color is represented well. And I can't get over all of the camels here. The cows don't faze me anymore, but seeing huge camels pulling carts down the street is crazy. Some of the camels are really tall- I could seriously walk under some of them without bending over. Anyway, touts and rickshaws aren't usually waiting for foreigners at the government bus stations because apparently I am the only one taking these buses, so when I got to Bikaner I was kind of on my own for a minute wandering down the street with my 2 bags and a heavy package to carry. Finally a rickshaw picked me up and took me to a hotel that an American couple had referred me to. Heck yeah, hot water forever. Which means I did laundry, which I love doing by hand now cause I get to see how dirty the water gets in the bucket. This load (ALL 7 articles that I have) made MUD. I guess from being in the desert and on the dirty buses. So far on this trip I have learned many things. One is that different soaps really do have different jobs. Shampoo is great for my hair, but does not clean my clothes. A packet of Tide Jasmine with Dirt Magnets really cleans my clothes. Too bad they never dried fully before getting packed in my bag and now all smell kind of moldy. Bikaner was a dust bowl and the post office was a trip. I had to fill out a flimsy piece of paper for customs and tape that on the outside. Which meant running across the street to buy tape and a magic marker to write the address. Apparently no one likes to queue up at the post office, so I had to throw a few elbows to make it to the window. I hope everything was filled out ok. It sure wasn't a very official process. I chose to have it shipped by sea which will take about a month. I watched as the guy chucked my bundle on the floor and couldn't help but wonder if I will ever see it again. After that I had a rickshaw drop me at a local bus stop and took one about 30km down the road to the Karni Mata Temple in Deshnok. This bus ride was funny because when it is just a quick, local jaunt they pack that thing til it is bursting at the seams. I had to stand in the aisle totally smashed on all sides. I was like the mayo in an Indian sandwich. I didn't even have to hang onto anything cause there were so many bodies. No biggie- quick ride. But getting off of the bus was the hard part. It was like you have to move limb by limb- push one arm toward where you want to go and then follow with every other body part through the sea of people until you pop out of the bus. Here is why tourists go to Karni Mata Temple...it is The Temple of Rats. The holy rodents are considered to be incarnations of storytellers and the temple is a major pilgrimage site. Visitors line up inside where they are anointed with ash before paying respect at the inner shrine. Just to the side of the enclosed shrine was a man with scissors that would chop off a good size lock of kids' hair, but I'm not sure what was eventually done with this. The rats were small, but ran around everywhere, a bunch were rimmed around a huge milk bowl, and many were feeding on chunks of yellow sugar balls that the pilgrims buy as an offering. I'm sure I had quite the look on my face the whole time I was in the temple. I was the only foreigner when I was there and I just had to laugh that while everyone else was there to worship the rats, I was doing everything I could to stifle little yelps when one would run toward my feet (no shoes in temples). It was so bizarre. I tried to get some good pictures, but those guys are fast, so we'll see what I came up with later. Anyway, this is getting long. For those of you worried about my proximity to Pakistan, don't. I am as safe in my little sleeping bag each night as you are in your fancy American beds. India and Pakistan don't really get along, but there isn't tension along the border where I am traveling currently, and it wouldn't be a secret if there was. I am on a VERY well-worn tourist trail right now and if you all want something real to worry about it should be that I get run over by a rickshaw or scooter. It almost happened in Jodhpur- it would have only hurt a little (ok, a lot), but to think that the reason he almost hit me was because he was swerving out of the way of some trash in the alley....huh.
I'm freezing, I gotta go- will write about Amritsar later.