WE’RE headed into the Great Indian Desert and our lives are in the hands of a camel driver who carries a Barbie pink compact mirror.

When he’s not preening in front of the little pink mirror, he’s making chatty phone calls to his friends and listening to romantic Rajasthani tunes on his mobile. Sometimes he sings soulfully along to the soundtrack.

Every now and then he stops singing to look back at us, suffering as we jerk up and down on our camels. Then he says with real excitement, ‘‘Oh you are going to a very nice place. It’s very nice, very clean, right, right in the Thar desert’’, and for a moment our hopes rise, and we think that maybe it’s all going to be OK.

His name is Shakran and he is leading us into the Great Indian Desert, also known as the Thar Desert.

We are in the Indian state of Rajasthan, home to golden desert dunes, turbans and colour-drenched clothes covered in tiny mirrors. A camel safari is the quintessential Indian experience.

But the downside to visiting a place with so much allure is that visitors are often overwhelmed by the hawkers, touts and busloads of tourists.

So when my friend and I heard some operators were offering safaris heading to the less visited region southeast of Jaisalmer we signed up for a four-day trip. We were hoping to experience some real desert life.
Day one
Despite the discomfort, there’s an undeniable romance about sitting atop a tattooed camel with the desert dust swirling all around you.

My friend Mel is riding Magu, a farting, imperious creature with a hump that rises nearly 3m off the ground and a back so strong he can carry five people at once. He’s loaded with most of our supplies, enough water for three people and camels over five days, numerous blankets and an enormous pile of food.

Within farting distance comes my camel, Lala, a sweet natured five-yearold who half-heartedly jostles Magu to lead, but spends most of his time munching at green foliage along the path and being chided by our camel driver to hurry up.

We drove for an hour or so before climbing on to these camels, so we’re not just ducking out to the nearest sand dune. We’re heading away from desert-style resorts and into a world where traditional desert hospitality still rules. Magu is carrying enough water for four days, but we’ll be expected to share it with others we meet along the way.

At first there are plenty of people. We pass dusty farmlands filled with fields of melons and glossy black goats. All the farmers wave hello; the men in white turbans squatting under trees, the children running and waving and the gorgeous Indian women with pink and gold veils unfurling as they cup their hands over their eyes to stare.

By lunchtime the fields are gone and there’s just dusty scrub, stunted trees and the occasional sand dune. It may be winter, but it’s still a sweltering 30C, so we stop to rest our aching bones under a lone tree about noon.

A man in a turban turns up on foot – seemingly out of nowhere. He heads straight to Shakran who happily chats and splashes water into his battered water bottle. Then another turbaned man turns up, and yet another.

By nightfall, it’s grown more desolate. The Thar Desert may be the most densely populated desert in the world, but all we can see are a couple of earth huts tiny in the distance, scrub and sand all around and one of our three bottles is already empty.
Day two
There’s something special about starting your day on a sand dune. The external clutter of everyday life is gone and the day ahead feels pleasantly empty.

That morning I soak in the quiet rhythms of camel riding, the regular bobbing up and down, the dull clanking of the camel bells and the subtle changes in the landscape.

The sand dunes are less spectacular than around the more touristy areas, but it’s still beautiful here. Monsoon has just finished, so even though the ground is sandy, the aak scrub is a lovely light green. Tiny white butterflies scatter as we pass, silent but for the camel bells and of course Shakran’s soulful singing.

My body has magically adjusted to the exercise and with the extra padding of a second saddle blanket I feel no pain. But by afternoon, Mel is hurting again. It’s so bad she’s wincing with every step. Shakran suggests we rest at the nearest farm.

Forty minutes later, we see a tiny hut by a single tree in a field strewn with tiny melons. As we approach, women in glittering colour-drenched skirts come outside.

They point us towards the hut where a woman spreads blankets and orders us to rest. She disappears and we’re left on our own – or so we think.

We’re in a structure so small that a tall person could touch each wall. It’s entirely made of jute vines looped around in a circle. The floor is packed earth and there’s a single doorway.

Tucked into the walls are saucepans, a small axe and a torch still in the battered cardboard box it came in. Some of the vines are still green. Shakran says they can build one of these in a single day.

Finally we notice the twinkly eyes of children staring through the golden jute walls. They come to the doorway, blocking the light and giggling. They’re all bangles and bright smiles; their ears clustered with piercings and their eyes heavily lined with black kohl. Finally then come in, try on my bangles, touch Mel’s blonde hair and practise shaking our hands. One of the girls plaits my hair Rajasthani style, with two plaits looped into one. That night we’re bombarded with food and hospitality – humble as it is.
We eat a delicious masala curry made with melons, together with fresh chapatis. I ask Shakran to give them our vegetables, then discover that he deliberately brought too many vegetables, so he could give copious amounts away. He worries about their nutrition out here.

It seems entirely natural to these people that we should turn up, sleep in their hut and share their food.

Or that one of the men will fill our empty water bags with their precious well water, as he does the following morning.

We’re grateful to be here and look affectionately over at Shakran lying on a straw platform, the only place he can get phone coverage. Then he exhausts us by getting us to take photo after photo of him against the setting sun.

For the second night we sleep on the soft sand dune covered in saddle blankets, our bodies warm and our faces cool and turned up towards the black velvety sky clotted with stars. In the morning, Mel’s no longer in pain.

Days three and four
The last two days have a magical free floating quality. Sand is now etched into our clothes and skin so completely that everything is soft to touch. We happily bob up and down on our camels.

We meet wide-eyed children who have never seen foreigners before, their ears clustered with up to a dozen earrings, then a woman carrying a tiny baby in a bowl on top of her head. One afternoon we see a yellowish sandstorm rising in the distance like a blush to outline the trees.

Since we’re no longer in pain, we help unload the camels and scrub the dishes with sand, desert style.

The last day we nap under a huge aak tree with dragonflies flying about. When it cools down, we get on our camels for the final leg.

The huge mountain of food has gone, though we barely ate any of it.

Several days later, we hear what Shakran spent our enormous tip on – cool clothes and phone credit.

WE’RE headed into the Great Indian Desert and our lives are in the hands of a camel driver who carries a Barbie pink compact mirror.

When he’s not preening in front of the little pink mirror, he’s making chatty phone calls to his friends and listening to romantic Rajasthani tunes on his mobile. Sometimes he sings soulfully along to the soundtrack.

Every now and then he stops singing to look back at us, suffering as we jerk up and down on our camels. Then he says with real excitement, ‘‘Oh you are going to a very nice place. It’s very nice, very clean, right, right in the Thar desert’’, and for a moment our hopes rise, and we think that maybe it’s all going to be OK.

April Fonti

Documentary Photography, Indian documentary photography, female photojournalist, female photographer
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