The notes say "Up. B'fast - sore" I don't suppose there would have been a note at all if I hadn't got up. The mentioning of getting up is completely redundant. Likewise mentioning breakfast without saying what it was. It would have been worthwhile mentioning the fact if there had been no breakfast but there was. What it was will never be known because it clearly wasn't noteworthy.
Facilities for washing etc were extremely limited. I suppose I must have washed my face and brushed my teeth but not much more than that. After breakfast we were back up on our camels and the note says "3 hours trotting" then in inverted commas within the notes "bottom breaking". This might have been the phrase used by the camel driver Hookmah (pictured below) or his assistant (and the cook) Cooba. Come to think about it it was probably used by Hookmah who had a cruel streak.
I don't know how fast camels trot but I dare say that you can cover a fair distance trotting for 3 hours. In these three hours I really got the hang of Heather (or perhaps Hetha) my camel. In order to make the camel speed up all you had to do was show the stick to it. There was literally no need to use the stick. The mere sight of it was enough to cause it to speed up. Another technique was to make a sort of Donald Duck noise out of the side of your mouth. That had the same effect. It was tremendous fun trotting across the rocky terrain.
As I mentioned before Imogen's camel was a bit frisky. She had fallen off the day before but it wasn't possible to say whether it was anyone's fault. However during this trot across the desert it misbehaved. Despite Imogen's attempts to determine its direction it insisted on trotting alongside Hookmah and his camel which caused the tackle to almost snag and it could have hurt Imogen's leg on that side. Somehow a serious incident was averted. We trotted on for another hour but the incident was not forgotten.
There was very little purpose to this part of the safari except to cover some distance and eventually we reached some shade to have lunch and rest. At this point Hookmah decided to discipline the frisky camel. He led it a little distance from where we were sitting in the shade and tethered it to something before hobbling it by tying one of its front legs up so that it was standing on 3 legs and couldn't run. Then he put a blindfold on it and proceeded to give it a frightful beating with a stick. It was awful to behold, the poor camel was completely defenseless and all of us, particularly Imogen, pleaded with Hookmah to stop. He didn't until he was good and satisfied that the requisite punishment had been meted out in sufficient measure.
I have often thought about how Hookmah beat that camel. I suppose he knew what he was doing but I couldn't see the sense of it. I couldn't see how the camel would appreciate the reason for the beating it got. One of the incidents had happened the day before and the other some hours before. I suppose Hookmah knew his business and that he would say the only way to make sure a camel toed the line was to put it in fear of a beating. It was a young camel and had to learn the lesson. Still, it was an unedifying spectacle for us.
Having said that, after three hours bouncing and swaying in the saddle; and after a good vegetarian curry for lunch; and after an aromatic cheroot to boot; the spectacle did not stop me falling asleep in the shade.
Upon waking something became very urgent. This trip wasn't like a film/movie where it seems no-one ever goes to the toilet. At some point on most days I did. The previous day I hadn't and I had had at least 3 great vegetarian curries with chapatis cooked in the embers of the camp fire since, not to mention the delicious chai by which everything was washed down. On top of that the motion of the camel probably assisted in the pressing need to deal with another kind of motion.
The desert is not the best place to take a dump in private. The whole point of where we had stopped was that it was one of the few places with a big enough tree to give some shade from the sun. I made my excuses and headed a short distance away from the group with my knapsack in which I had my roll of toilet paper. As I walked the need to go became more and more urgent. Eventually I found a tiny bush to hide behind and I squatted down. The relief was palpable and afterwards I looked at what I had done and I am sure that it was the biggest turd I had ever produced. In fact it was so big that I was quite embarrassed that someone might see it (even from a distance) so I tried to cover it with a large stone. Funny what you remember, isn't it? It was not the only memorable toilet experience in India by any means but it was certainly the healthiest bowel movement of my time there. As a stool sample, it would have drawn gasps from young medical students.
Much relieved, I rejoined the group and we we set off again, this time, thankfully, at walking pace until we reached the Sam sand dunes at sunset. Camp was struck and another fantastic curry was followed by a repeat of the previous evening's meteoric fireworks in the sky viewed flat out and stoned; occasionally flicking away the the inquisitive dung beetles.
