When I was eighteen, I had a simple theory about driving: we
are all going to crash eventually. The best thing to do, I thought, was to get
it over with early – get shaken up and then smarten up. I figured a car
accident was, so long as you survived it, the best way to become a good and
safe driver for life.

This was a convenient theory because I had recently rolled
my father’s 1987 Chevrolet Celebrity into a ditch near the cottage, in
sufficiently dramatic fashion that the wreckage had to be hauled away on a flat-bed
tow truck. And telling myself that the crash meant I would now be accident-free
for life – knock on wood – was probably the only way I could convince myself to
get behind the wheel again.

The convenience of that theory notwithstanding, I have since
come up with another one: as travelers, we are all going to fail eventually.
Not only will a trip sometimes be a disappointment to us – this much, I think,
is obvious – but at some point in our careers we will each and every one of us
be a disappointment to ourselves.

And luckily enough, this is another once-in-a-lifetime
mishap that I can happily check off my list.

In July 2004 I spent three weeks in India, alone. I was twenty-two
years old, and hovering uncomfortably between ‘inexperienced’ and ‘experienced’
when it came to international travel. I had visited my father, temporarily
residing in Kuala Lumpur,
four times. I had traveled with him to Singapore,
Thailand, and Vietnam, and on my own to New Zealand and Australia. I had also survived a
high school graduation trip to Acapulco.
And so, on my final visit before my father’s return to Canada, I deemed myself ready for
something a little more challenging.

Two pieces of advice had been most frequently offered to me:
first, to acquire a salwar kameez or at least some relatively modest, vaguely
Asian-appearing garb, and second, to avoid Rajasthan in the summer. Stubbornly
disregarding both tips, I landed at Indira
Gandhi International
Airport late in the
evening on July 2nd – bound for western Rajasthan in capri pants and
a t-shirt. The first two weeks were glorious. I tried, with some success, to
ignore the life-sucking heat and the hordes of small boys whose command of
English was limited to shouting ‘hey baby!’ as they tailed me through the market
places. I even managed to laugh off a bout of food poisoning in Jaipur, at
least once I was walking and eating again. It was all part of the experience, I
told my journal.

Still, by the time I reached Jaisalmer I had started to
tire. The famous desert city was stunning, with its sandcastle fortress – there
is no other metaphor for it – rising vivid yellow from the town, against the
too-bright blue sky. But it was also crawling with rickshaw drivers, freelance
guides, and hotel and safari touts, and the Jaisalmer variety were more
aggressive than others I’d encountered. I was running out of patience. The
camel safari I signed up for was an acknowledgment of this fact – I thought
that three days in the desert would be just the restorative I needed. A break from
handicraft vendors and small boys alike. The heat, I decided, was by far the
lesser of two evils.

My first hour in the desert was spent staring wonderingly
around me, enthused, savouring the experience. Confident I had made the right
decision. The landscape was surprisingly varied: the soft waves of fine sand
that I’d always imagined, piled like pyramids, but also long stretches of bare
rock, or hard-packed dirt studded with scrubby, stubborn bushes. It was still
early, and the heat in the air was dry and clean, not at all like the damp,
warm air crowded with odours that I had breathed in the cities.

But as the morning passed, so too did my interest in the
desert landscape. My attention was devoted instead to my saddle. It chafed. It
was as hard as a picnic bench. And, most importantly, it was loose – with every
step my camel took I swayed and jerked alarmingly to the left; the sand several
feet below was suddenly remarkably hostile. My pleas to the camel drivers to
fix my perch were ignored, and I grew more and more frustrated. To make matters
worse, my two companions on the safari were seated on young camels-in-training,
led side by side by the two drivers, within easy chatting distance. My camel,
Mr. Buddha, was more experienced and was allowed to walk far ahead on his own.
Under the desert sun my frustration and fear turned slowly to a paranoid sense
of isolation and exclusion.

By mid-afternoon I had had enough. Bursting into tears, I
announced that I would rather walk than stay on Mr. Buddha a minute longer. I
flatly refused to go any further unless something was done about the saddle. I
was simultaneously indignant, distraught, and hugely embarrassed that the other
two safari-goers, Dutch backpackers who had just spent six months trekking in Nepal,
were watching me throw a first-class hissy fit in the middle of the desert.
Still, I held my ground (even as I heard one of them comment that they didn’t
think the saddles were all that bad) and eventually won a full re-saddling of
Mr. Buddha, complete with extra blankets for padding. We moved on, and now I
found the ride quite comfortable – a softer surface, and no dramatic swaying or
jerking. I had been vindicated in my complaints: clearly, for there to be such
a difference now, something had been genuinely wrong. I rode contentedly the
rest of the way to our evening camp site.

As we settled in for the night, though, I realized that my
feelings of isolation and tension hadn’t faded, and neither had my acute
embarrassment. I felt uncomfortable and out of place for much of the evening,
unable to shake the idea that the others were laughing at me. I became
standoffish and sulked through dinner; after the sun had gone down, a troupe of
musicians and dancers appeared from the darkness and performed for us, and all
I could muster in reaction was a complaint that the light had faded too much to
take pictures. Suspecting that the others thought my earlier complaining had
been just for the sake of it, I began perversely to play the role that I
imagined had been assigned to me.

I went to sleep miserable and disgusted with myself, and in
the morning I made the decision to return to Jaisalmer two days early. One of
the camel drivers escorted me to the nearest road, where I caught a dusty bus
full of villager-commuters into town, and promptly made an appointment for a
full day spa treatment. An exfoliating massage seemed like the perfect way to
leave the desert behind me; but still, even with layers of skin scrubbed off, I
couldn’t shake the episode. A day later I made my way north, to Shimla: in the
shadow of the Himalayas I donned a hoodie,
jeans and sneakers, and managed to enjoy my remaining time in the country.
Another seventy-two hours saw me safely back in my father’s KL condo.

Since my trip to India, I’ve always fended off
questions about the curtailed safari. I show friends and family the photo of me
happily astride my camel at the outset, and then change the subject. At most I
might add that the heat was too much for me (‘silly idea doing a camel safari
in July’) or make a joke about Mr. Buddha’s odour driving me away; I rarely
hint at the real reasons behind my departure. I suppose that’s because I feel
like the last-place finish in the adventure travel sweepstakes: I wasn’t tough
enough, adaptable enough, willing or able to live without air con, flush
toilets, and ample ‘personal space’. I couldn’t handle it. To this day my
embarrassment is unfaded.

But it is comforting to remind myself that, like the car
accident, the camel safari was a once-in-a-lifetime disaster. It was a learning
experience that I can safely put behind me. I can, in fact, confidently say
that I will never – knock on wood – be a travel failure again.

Practical Information:

There are a few direct trains
to Jaisalmer from Delhi, but more often you’ll
have to change in Jodhpur.
But don’t go straight there – in spite of being one of India’s most
touristed areas, Rajasthan is fascinating and you could spend months exploring.
I did a rough loop from Delhi to Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur (a
must-see), Jodhpur
and Jaisalmer in just under twenty days, and barely scratched the surface.

In Jaisalmer I stayed at Hotel Temple View, a basic guesthouse right inside the ancient
fortress with a great view of a set of Jain temples, as promised in the name. I
also organized my camel safari through the hotel owner – most guesthouses run
their own safaris and there are also some safari companies. You’ll want to ask
lots of questions before signing up because the quality really varies – Lonely
Planet recommends Desert Boys but
when I was there the word on the street was they’d gotten pretty sloppy since
the LP reference meant they had an endless supply of customers. Ask about the
meals (how many a day, and what constitutes a meal) and especially the water –
you’ll want a minimum of four big bottles a day included, and five is
preferable. Aside from my saddle issues my safari really was excellent, the
guides were great and the food was delicious, so I wouldn’t hesitate to
recommend Hotel Temple View both for its rooms and safaris.

There’s some debate over staying inside the fortress versus
staying in the town where it overflows outside the walls. Jaisalmer is at
serious risk of erosion and some
people argue you should stay outside the fort to help preserve it, but you’re
more than likely going to be walking around inside the walls every day as it is
– the best way to preserve it is to stay away entirely. (It can be cheaper to
stay outside the walls, too.)

I’d really like to give a shout-out to the spa I visited.
It’s called Bobby Henna Art Painting and
Herbal House (Bobby Henna for short, if you’re asking for directions) and
it’s run by a group of sisters and their mother. It’s specifically set up to
make women travelers feel comfortable and safe, but men are also welcome. The
men in the family run a handicraft shop that I visited afterwards – they gave
me a whole line about how the girls tried to run the shop first, but were run
out of business by traditionalists, and apparently they go to some effort to
make sure the proceeds from their shop actually get back to the village women
who make the bags and pillow cases and bedspreads. (Their card says, “Where the
process goes to womens”…) This may or may not have been a tall tale, but they
were without a doubt the friendliest and least aggressive handicraft vendors I
encountered in the country.

One of Jaisalmer’s most popular activities, after the camel
safaris, is the bhang shop – a place
where you can get THC-laced lassis. As the guy on the Woodstock album says, “It’s your trip, man…
but watch out for the brown acid.” There were supposed to be five of us on my
safari, but the two English guys visited the bhang shop the night before, and
wound up on a four-hour taxi ride through the desert to a detox center in Jodhpur – so drink your
lassis with caution.

Lastly, no matter how experienced a traveler you are, do
brace yourself for the touts in
Jaisalmer – I have never seen anything like the scene in front of the train
station, before or since. It was basically a mosh pit. One rickshaw driver
actually climbed in with us, still arguing for his rickshaw, after we had
already found someone else and were trying to drive away. People followed
behind us for over a mile when we decided to walk to our hotel, and then tried to run in ahead of
us to collect a commission for our arrival.

And whatever you do, no matter how bad-ass you are, really
don’t attempt a camel safari in July. I’m clearly not an extreme adventure
expert, but I’m not a total princess either – it was straight-up brutal out
there. With so much else to see in the country, why bother?