Bikaner

I am a celebrity. Or a circus freak. I'm not sure which. Today I went to Junagarh Fort in Bikaner, Rajasthan. The price of admission includes a one hour tour. I waited for the tour to begin and was waved over by a nice man with an unnecessarily large gun telling me to join the tour. I walked up a small hill to see a tour guide along with approximately 30 Indians staring at me. I asked the soldier if that was indeed the tour. He said yes. So I followed them through the entrance of the fort, where the guide asked if I would like to wait for an English only tour or whether I would be fine with a Hindi and English tour. I told him whatever is easier. It was perhaps a tactical mistake.

As the tour began I had expected the locals to stare a little bit, after all I have yet to see an Indian person near my height (and I've seen probably about a million so far) and my lack of skin pigment is fairly noticeable I'm sure. So the tour guide goes over the first section of things then turns to me to explain in English. Something about this was fascinating to every single one of the locals, who stared at me like I was the attraction, not the fort. Well that one time would have been fine, but this went on for the entire hour! The guide talks in Hindi, then talks to me in English while they all stare at me, move to next room and repeat. By the end only about half stared each time, but I really did feel like I was the exhibit. It was a cool fort though. I learned that they used a 12 foot long musket to kill elephants and a 8" dagger to kill tigers. I'm not sure of the logic involved there. Besides that it is a very ornate and interesting fort.

The walk to the fort was fine, with a nice little prelude of what was to come when about 50-100 men walking in a large group beside me all stared at me and started yelling and sort of cheering. I have no idea why, but I believe it was aimed at me. On my way back I got entirely lost (not difficult when all the signs are in Hindi, with the different alphabet and all) and walked in the midday sun for a good hour. A 75 cent cab ride got me back safely, and I got a nice walking tour of the city.

By the way, I'm definitely in the desert now. The camels being actually put to work prove it.

One of the things to do here is take a camel safari. You ride this miserable spitting, farting, desert horse into the sand for a day, sleep, and come back. Now I'm all for sleeping, but I'll hike into the desert myself before I get on one of those things.