Just Des/serts – Sandstorm and Scorpions

Kuhri is a small settlement 40km south west of Jaisalmer. It consists of about 20 dwellings, a combination of squat, square single storey block built buildings and an equal number of single storey, mud-sided, thatched houses. As we drive through the village on a sandy track, I can see a line of brightly coloured women, in a line, walking to and from one of the wells on the outskirts of the village, their green, gold, blue saris shimmering in the afternoon heat. As we draw nearer, I can see the women walking with a slow, steady, elegant gait, silver water pots balanced on their heads, supported lightly by a single, upraised hand as they return. Some walk alone, some in a noisy, animated group towards the well. One women walks side by side with her two small children, each carrying a silver pot, appropriately smaller in size. Over to my left is a collection of new open air showers, about 6 or 8 of them, in a line, on a raised concrete base, like the kind you see at an open air swimming pool in England. I was nervous about a desert safari, perhaps too touristy and fake. This is not it.

I am driven to a small compound. There is already a group of four young French people, waiting in the stifling shade. They kindly allow me to murder the French language, until organically it turns to English. It is less painful for everybody that way. They are travelling around India in a sort of search for their ethnic origins, their families originally coming from Gujarat, further south. The heat is intense and conversation is interspersed with languorous pauses. Gradually, over a period of about 2 hours, other people arrive: a retired couple from Stuttgart, a shy young couple from Chile, an Englishwoman currently living in Dubai, with an over indulged 10 year old son, two Italian women in their late 20s who are gradually working their way around the world over a number of years and are a little homesick, but are loathe to return due to Vatican inspired homophobia. There were also a couple of Indian families, adults and children, but they arrived later, just in time for the camel ride and kept themselves to themselves. They didn’t get to enjoy the thatched oven that we were in.

We each set off on camels at different points in time and took different directions. My camel driver was a wizened old man called Nemmet. As he led the camel into the desert, he would speak camel every couple of minutes, presumably for the animal’s reassurance. As he did so, he would open his mouth and extend his upper jaw, exposing both sets of teeth and making something like a short, truncated, braying noise, exactly like the camel he has been working with every day for probably many years. We travel for approximately 1.5 hours, seeing many skittish antelope who stare, run for a few seconds, stop and stare again and then disappear behind tatty and tangled bushes and small trees, or into sandy hollows. There are lots of Baldi trees, with succulent, rubbery green leaves on the tips of the outermost branches which the antelopes, even on their hind legs with their forelegs resting on the lower branches, can’t quite reach. There are no birds and apart from Nimmet’s braying, there is no sound, except the sound of the breeze. Although the sun is on the wane, it is incredibly hot and I’m soaking with sweat, which tickles the sides of my face, my jeans are wet at the crotch, my thin shirt sticks to me like wet tissue paper. In the light breeze, sand pours from the edge of multitudinous ridges and ripples like smoke in a dynamic architecture of forming and reforming curves, points and steep ‘V’ shaped valleys. We arrive at a ridge to view the sunset, which is completely obscured by the amount of sand in the sky, so all that can be seen is a faint yellow glow as the sun descends and then disappears and suddenly it is night. We walk back to the compound. I thank Nimmet and give him 200 rupees (50 rupees is usual, but bloody hell, he’s been walking through sand for at least 3 hours). He thanks me impassively, looking straight into my eyes with not a flicker of emotion. From here he will walk back to his village, which he showed me as we were walking. It is about 2 miles away across the dunes.

After some food, conversation and some Rajhastani folk music (which felt good, the musicians and dancers obviously local, as they chatted with the people from the village between songs, who would enter the compound and welcome them like old friends – it was more like a village get together than some tourist fakery), one of the guys asked if I wanted to sleep in the compound or in the desert? I said desert. He said the weather will not be very good. I said that’s fine. He went away and came back about 15 minutes later. He said the weather would not be very good. I said that’s fine. He said Ok and smiled.

We set off in a jeep and drive for about 30 minutes. Of the group, I was the only person sleeping outside. The young guy gets out two blankets and a pillow. I arrange them on the sand on the top of a dune, one to sleep on and one to cover me. The sky is cloudy, but there is an intermittent full moon. The landscape is an eerie black and white, quite light when the full moon is out. There are not many stars. I walk around a bit, savouring the calm. The driver is already asleep, cocooned in the top blanket, which he has wrapped around him like a tube, the sides pushed under his body, with the head end, pulled tightly under his head, so that the weight of his head keeps the end closed and secure. That must be the way to do it. I try the same and once I’m used to the rich smell of the blankets, eventually drop off to sleep.

I have no idea at what time the storm struck. I was first woken by the noise, a crazy, angry whistling and then a real, hard, physical buffeting. In my sleep the head section had come lose. I rubbed my eyes and my eye sockets were quarter full of sand. My ears were full of sand. The sides of the tube had come loose and one side was flapping noisily like a flag. Although partially covered, the blanket I was lying on was covered with soft silky sand, almost buried by it. I retrieved the pillow and sat up on it, to keep it from blowing away. As I did so, removing my hands from the topmost blanket, the intensity of the wind increased and changed direction and caught the blanket, which started to whip away in front of me. Instinctively I grabbed one end and held on with two hands. The power was so great that I was actually dragged along the sand for a few feet, with the blanket out in front of me like a sail. Retrieving the blanket and pulling it into my body, I realised the pillow was gone. I look for it, but cannot see a thing, apart from swirling sand in front of my eyes. Repositioning myself to face the wind side on, I wedge the blanket under my side to make an L shape, where my body is resting on the short part of the L to try and keep the blanket in place. It is now cold and I curl, foetal like, listening to the sound of the wind for I don’t know how long, trying to get warm. The driver is still asleep all this time, in the same position, unruffled by it all. Eventually I fall asleep.

When I wake it is 6am. My phone and camera are still in my shoe, but covered with sand. The water bottle is still wedged into the other shoe. Both shoes are on their sides, partially buried. It is calm. There is a bank of sand on one side, partly covering the blanket. The lower blanket is submerged. My hat is mostly hidden, just one small brown section protruding. I try and shake everything off as best I can, then put my hands in my pockets. They are full of sand, front and back. My once vaguely white shirt is sandy coloured. I feel both happy and relieved, like I’ve come through an ordeal. The driver is still asleep.

I take off my shirt, shake it down and then grab the camera and clean it with the shirt, rubbing the sand off my stomach and chest at the same time. I switch it on, but it’s not working. I carry it with me as I walk towards a ridge in the mid distance. I walk over pristine, newly formed dunes that I’m sure where not there yesterday. The world has been remade and I am the first to enter it. There is compete silence and calm and it is very striking in the cool, early morning light. There are small, snake like, scuttling tracks which I follow to find large, black, bulbous beetles, eating the fruit of a shrub. After a while, I stumble across an old well, which has been filled full of sand to a depth of about 6 feet from the top. Between the sides of the wall and the cone shaped, hour glass pile of sand inside is a scorpion, walking anti-clockwise around the inside perimeter, confronting any stones in its path with a warning raised sting. I consider jumping in to try and get it out, but think that I also may not be able to get out again. I stand and stare at the landscape around me and can see nothing but sand interspersed with shrubs and the occasional tree as far as the eye can see. This truly is a place of terrible beauty.