Jaisalmer

Yesterday was not fun, even in the slightest. The night before, in Bikaner, I felt sickness coming on. Then I had a 7am train to catch to Jaisalmer. I made it to the train station, my ticket booked this time by the hotel, and ran into the French guy I had met previously. We got on the train, unfortunately this time not on an air conditioned car. I brought a frozen liter of water, thinking I wouldn't need to much since I thought I was going to have a/c. Well, a 6 hour train ride into the middle of the desert with no a/c, not much water, and a sickness of some sort proved to be rather unpleasant to say the least.

Me and the Frenchman (I still couldn't understand his name) talked about all sorts of things and I ended up teaching him Gin Rummy, but I was pretty much dying. I rationed my water but still finished it with an hour left. Frenchy took pity and gave me some of his (but not much, he was running low as well). It was the worst train ride I've ever been on, by a large margin.

I arrived in Jaisalmer yesterday at about 2pm (as usual, the train ran late), and it was hot. Really hot. We got some drinks near the hotel and I pretty much just rested for the remainder of the day. I woke up today feeling much better.

This place is amazing, as hot as it may be. There is a huge fort, in fact I'm writing this from an internet cafe inside the fort right now. The entire city is carved from the same type of rock, the same color for the whole place. It's called the Golden City for that shade. The buildings have ornately carved patterns throughout the city and fort, with some Jain temples being the fanciest. I also met an Indian guy that apparently was invited to play basketball for the Indian national team but couldn't afford it (the team is so poorly funded the players have to pay their own way to all the games). And in a small world moment it turns out the shop he owns here in Jaisalmer sells their goods to a single store abroad, and that store is in little old Carmel, CA. Pretty funny. I have the rest of the day here, then tomorrow to Jodhpur. This time I finally remembered my intinerary! It's as follows:

9/8-9/10 Jodhpur

9/10-9/12 Udaipur

9/12-9/14 Ajmer

9/14-9/16 Jaipur

9/16-9/18 Agra

9/18-9/20 Khajureho

9/20-9/23 Varanasi

9/23 Overnight bus to Pokhara, Nepal