Today we walked to town in late morning, rented motorbikes, a small one for Phoebe and a larger one for Leslie and I. We taught Phoebe to ride while we navigated the narrow busy market streets, and by the time we made it through, Phoebe had a good feel for it and we looked at a couple of miles of empty road, out of town, toward a temple mountain. Phoebe's grimace turned to smiles, and the morning was cool and dry and empty, except for the occasional tractor and farm house or temple. We came back and rested with a young priest who talked in broken English about love and god and selling stuff. Then we had to go meet Ramu, for what we thought again was going to be an hour ride, this time on a camel cart. We meet, by the barber shop, park the bikes, and mount the cart, "An hour to my grandfather's village," he says, "We have to return the bikes by 5," we say, "No problem." No problem. We can't go to his grandfather's village, it's too far, so OK, OK, we'll only go for an hour and see the baby camel at his friend's house, in a village. So, OK, we're in the cart for an hour and a half, in the sweltering heat, looking at the most beautiful country, knowing a Rajishtani hour is a good four white-folk hour, and we say so. "Just up here," Ramu says, and we get there, a bevy of homes around a well, lots of children running around, some adults, and an old man washing his turban and drawers - 'pound-pound, push; pound-pound, push; pound-pound, push; while we visit, make friends, eat things they deliver, we give away what we can. Leslie finds some glasses that don't work for her any more, we find some sweets we bought as pushå for the temple we never left, some pens, some money. In return we get a turban wrapping lesson, some fruit, lots of smiles and a look at the psychedelic mushroom they 'caught' just outside the garden walls. We stay and cool off, curious about our hosts and a curiosity to them. Ramu has promised the taste of 'camel mother milk' and one of the men jumps up to fetch some. We know we have to go and urge Ramu, who gets us back in the cart and drives around the hill through a small village on another beer run. Then we come to a house where the young man stands with the camel milk, and we get out of the cart and are ushered into a courtyard and fed, fresh chilies and chapoti bread, and fat soft olives in chili oil that taste sweet, and chai and sweet rice, then mint tea and pushå all around, giggles from the women and a lot of sweat. I'm handed a big tuft of Rajishtani marijuana, we all say goodbye and this time we really leave, crawl back across the desert to a different backside of Pushkar, find the bikes at the barber shop and say so long to Ramu. We finally ask and find out Ramu knows Pepé, our friend who made the movie about Rajishtan. Figures. Tonight we'll rest and ready the Ambassador for the drive to Jodhpur July 19 Pushkar to Jodhpur We're a little sad to leave Pushkar and our new friends, but once we leave and climb over the narrow steep hills we drop into Anjer and pretty much the open desert. It looks sort of like Palm Desert, except the men don't wear turbans and the women don't wear saris in Palm Desert. Now it's just flat and pretty easy to see around the blind turns and we're flying through the desert, horns blazing again, and I keep throwing on the imaginary brake to avoid stray cows and camels, cars, and kids. And all these big Indian Tata rigs, I can't tell if it's the front of a truck or the back of a bus. Whatever, I leave the driving to Batman, as we've taken to calling Raj, because he gets there however he can, but quickly. Have you noticed the way she holds her staff, and twirls it when she scolds the errant sheep back into the fold? We get to Jodhpur in the heat of the day, of course, a big spread out city with a fort, a clock tower, and very narrow market streets. We try walking through the market, having left Raj at one of the gates of the old city. After the longest half hour walking through where we obviously don't really belong, we find Raj and try and convince him to take us to a 'fancy' hotel for a drink. He hems, then haws, doesn't get it, and doesn't really know Jodhpur, so we buy drinks at a bottle shop instead and go home to change our plans. We'll leave Jodhpur tomorrow and stay an extra day in Bikaner. There's nothing for us here. It is all about preparing for the unexpected. We pack up, take breakfast and settle our affairs, and find the road for Jaisalmer by nine for what Raj says will be a six and a half hour ride. High desert roads threaded between small oasises and sandstone quarries. 149 kilometers to somewhere in Hindi. I heard jets taking off all night lastnight in Jodhpur, and knew there were people on those planes who'd never seen Rajishtan from the air. We've never seen it from the ground.Now we're just rearranging our schedules. You will know us by our trail of rupies.
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