a bird on jiju!

cara on jiju, me on punga, hannif, and daniel on papu aka desert boy

nothing like a nice cold king fisher after a hard
camel ride!

We are back from our camel safari, and what a blast! Definitely an unforgettable experience. It was just us and the two guides, and a really cool German guy. One guide was about thirty five and the other was about nineteen. They both looked older. When I say about, it's because they weren't really sure exactly how old they were. The older one was named Dave, and the other one was Hannif. They lived in nearby Muslim villages. They said they weren't really sure about their age because they were desert people. Dave spoke pretty good English, and Hannif spoke a little. They both learned from tourists. They were real characters. We taught each other songs, and all sorts of things, and laughed a lot. They were also very good cooks. We ate simple, delicious, desert style Indian food. They taught me how to make chipate, and what they called desert thali which was like a spicy, Indian stew. Each night we slept underneath the full moon on the sand dunes, and watched the dung beetles work tirelessly through the night. One day when we stopped for lunch (which was more like siesta) in the shade, one of the camels had been eating from a tree and disturbed a bee hive! Poor Desert Boy was so shocked by the stings, that it didn't even know to run away. We heard it grunting, so we got up to look and Hannif ran over and saw what was going on. Dave was trying hard not to laugh, but it was pretty funny. Finally they both used their turbans to cover their faces and went over to light a nearby bush on fire. The bees dispersed and the camel ran away. Later when Desert Boy was still roaring, we had a good laugh. Another day we stopped by Dave's village and had chai with his family. That was really cool to see how they live. It was all adobe with grass roofs. His family was really nice. On the last day, we stopped by a gypsy camp and they sang and danced for us and Cara danced with them. We are both kind of sad to leave the desert, our guides, and the camels, but like Dave says," no hurry, no worry, no chicken, no curry!"-ashby







damn, I look good in a turban!






cara dancing with the gypsy girl


cara found a baby goat!

. . . the end!