Salli and her camel driver scan the desert and route ahead

I leaned back, stretching my legs across the warm sand and resting my head on the frame of the camel saddle. Despite the fact it was early January the afternoon sun was intense, enough to make our four camels listless and the scorpions run for cover.

All of us, our family and our four camel drivers were taking an afternoon break after our five hour camel ride from a village outside of Jaisalmer. We had stopped in a rocky bowl, sheltered from the winds. One gnarly tree provided a spot of shade in which all of us crowded. Mughal, our lead driver, built a fire of camel dung and twigs against this tree and we all joined in the work: cleaning the pots and chipped enamel plates with sand, slicing vegetables, mixing the tea.

We ate the spicy food using our right hand and bread to scoop, sipped the tea, and then took turns making certain the camels got their share of the sparse local brush, the thorny babool. And then we all, two leggeds and four leggeds relaxed. Mughal and his "boys" played cards. We wrote in our journals, took photographs, napped, listened to the million flies, bees and birds, and marveled at where we were.

We were near the heavily armed border of Pakistan, in the western Thar Desert of Rajasthan, a region of nearly 200,000 square kilometers. On one horizon, past the heat mirages, we could make out where we'd started. A flat topped hill with

steep slopes rose from the desert floor. On this sprawled a golden city-fort, surrounded by steep, sheer double-walled ramparts. Inside was a kingdom that looked dream like, a Lucas film set for a remake of Tales of the Arabian Nights. Over 300 feet above its base, tall minarets and 99 bastions cast dark shadows across the ornately carved sandstone palaces and havelis, or mansions. All of this carved from large blocks of yellow sandstone, hence the appropriate term for the city of Jaisalmer, the "Golden City."
Lying there in the sun after our camel ride, looking through the heat mirages at the golden city-fort, it was easy to lose ourselves in the magic and wonder of it all. We'd come all this way, several days and harrowing nights on express trains and daredevil busses to ride camels and learn about them. And instead we got much more. This is the way of India, you're always getting far more or far less than you bargained for.

But in those warm moments what we had gotten was clearly on the plus side. Earlier, before dawn, our drivers and their animals arrived at our desert hut. Commands were shouted to the animals and in unison they all fell. Camels don't sit, they fall, like Newtonian apples, only in jerky stages. First their fronts down to their knees, then their rears, then the front again, and finally the tail end. Down until their backs are about high enough for me to swing my legs over and sit down. The rest of the family had to climb or be hoisted.

Cassidy prepares for the race

Once aboard more commands were shouted, and suddenly we each grabbed on for our lives, Salli and Cassidy shouting in panic. A camel standing is an acrobatic feat--for the camel that is. For the rider it's more akin to riding the prize winning Brahman bull for eight seconds in the rodeo. The rear skyrockets popping you at a dangerous and not so kind angle, then just as suddenly the front end snaps upwards pitching you backwards. And just when you thought that it was amazing you stayed on, the rear pops the next stage and the front pistons still higher. And once up, a camel is ready to go, in any direction, usually with a loud snort while you're still hanging on.

Oh, snorting. There's this funny thing about camels at the time of year we rented ours. As near as we could make out from the pidgin English of our drivers, it seems these noble beasts of burden stop eating for a month and busy themselves with territorial battles, courting rituals and tongue bloating. The first two of these I remember from high school, but the last one was something new.

You're riding along on your ship of the desert, rocking forward and back, getting slowly hypnotized by the graceful arches of the camels neck as it leads each step, then suddenly out of the corner of its mouth a large bubble of pink and blue bladder swells. It looks like Bazooka Bubble Gum came out with a new flavor, Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tutti Fruti. The bubble continues to inflate, growing nearly as large as the head.