A visible panty line should have been the least of my worries when I got dressed that morning and put on thong underwear. If only I’d had the foresight to know what a grave mistake it would prove to be later that day atop a camel in the Thar Desert of India. My afternoon of woe began at the Sam Sand Dunes parking lot, twenty-six miles outside of Jaisalmer, in Rajasthan. I planned to cap my five-week trip with a sunset camel ride like the ones I’d seen in guidebooks.
As we pulled into the lot, a pack of camel guides descended upon the car in which I was riding, speaking loudly in Hindi. My timid driver did little to shield me from them. Soon the most aggressive—flashing a toothy used-camel-salesman grin—cut a deal with the driver, and I was auctioned off.
The camel guide, fresh prey in tow, walked me over to what looked a bit like a rental car lot, except that the vehicles were camels. Hundreds of them were lined up twenty to a row, adorned in vibrant Rajasthani yellow, red and blue saddles. In the back row—clad in dusty, tattered blankets—slouched a bunch of over-the-hill clunkers.
After five weeks on the road, I was no stranger to being ripped off. So I wasn’t surprised when the guide motioned for me to get on the most pitiful of the four-legged beasts. I had just spent hours careening across western India in hopes of having my picture snapped on one of these creatures. I wasn’t going to settle for a decrepit camel.
“Can I have one of those?” I asked, pointing to more photogenic ones.
“No, madam, you must take this one.”
We argued back and forth. Finally, he said, “Okay, that camel will cost you 500 rupees (about $11) more.” My driver had already paid him the posted rate of 200 rupees ($4.40). Instinctively I hit the record button on my video camera and asked him to repeat what he had just said. I might need documentation to be reimbursed by the tour company through which I had booked this trip—or perhaps for the international investigator who would want to determine my cause of death. Taping a close-up, I handed him a wad of rupees. This wouldn’t have happened if my itinerary had gone as planned. I’d mapped out everything in advance over the Internet with SITA World Travel in Delhi; the car driver, the English-speaking guide, and the camel tour had all been paid for months ahead. My driver was to pick up a guide in Jaisalmer who would accompany me on the camel ride. But my driver’s eight-word English vocabulary didn’t include key terms such as “pick up” or “guide.”
