Jaisalmer Desert Festival 2020: ten photos (and five things I learned)
I met Matjaz at Jodhpur airport, and was immediately fed several large gulps of the kind of dusty wildness one demands on entry to Rajasthan.
Our driver pulled up at a rickety repair garage before we’d left the city, and joined a friend in rattling spanners around under the bonnet of our car for 40 minutes. They were fixing the horn, we were told. To be fair, our man did end up using it almost as much as his phone during our six-hour drive across the desert to Jaisalmer.
Jaisalmer, with a population of 65,000 people and possibly only slightly fewer camels, is famous for its ancient fort and its annual desert festival. The bash, which first geared up in the late ’70s, is a celebration of camels, sand dunes, folk music and the enormous moustaches the wider state is known for. Every February dolled up ungulates parade through the narrow streets of the city while heavily-bearded men in Persil-white get-ups puff out their chests as they compete for custody of the ‘Mr Desert’ sash.
It was a particularly touristic way to begin our India tour, but from the Royal Enfield escapades into the surrounding desert to protracted haggling over miniscule price differences on points of principle, it was a blast. Here are ten of Matjaz’s photos from the festival, plus five things I learned there.
Camel polo is not an elegant sport
On a rubbly yellow playing field on the edge of Jaisalmer, watched by a few thousand locals perched on temporary arena stands, two teams of knobbly kneed beasts and their riders squared up to each other before a high-octane camel polo match unfurled.
The commentary was superlative. “The animals are controlled with such grace and beauty — to watch it is as wonderful as playing it,” a woman with a caramel-smooth voice announced over the loudspeakers, as one of the players swung his mallet at the ball and missed by a foot. When a shot made a rare connection, the camels lolloped after the skidding sphere like gangly 12 year-olds careering across a playground.
Clucks of laughter emanated from the crowd when a camel plonked itself sideways on the ground, was reluctantly compelled to raise itself by its irate rider, then sank back down to the sand again. Water retention ability trumps killer sporting instinct in camels, it seems.
Quitting meat cold turkey is actually a cinch
This takeaway regards India rather than just Jaisalmer, but I can barely believe that I’ve not eaten meat for ten days.
With potato curries, flour dumplings and whatnot offering the stodgy, meat-substitute chomp a floppy salad can’t, I’ve not bothered to seek out dead animals to consume at all. I’m going to keep it up, although I’m mildly concerned that I’ll cause an international incident by suddenly snapping as a cow lumbers too close to me in the street, prompting me to take it down with a lion-style clamp-bite to the neck.
Bhang lassi is fun
Matjaz excitedly relayed a traveller tale about a legal lassi drink available in Jaisalmer that comes laced with opium. The truth, as ever, was slightly less ballistic: you can (legally) buy lassi laced with weed there.
It’s called bhang lassi, and when we found the shop serving it I immediately predicted that we’d be able to find an ‘I got high on traditional XXINSERTSOMETHINGHEREXX XXINSERTSUBSTANCEHEREXX in XXINSERTCOUNTRYHEREXX’ story on Vice. I was sort of right. Drinking it gives a fun buzz, but I might have grown out of partaking in stuff like this by the time I turn 37 in July.
You can create wonderful tattoos with just a pen and a battery pack
The most concerning sight at the festival, aside from the German tourists co-opting a highly-decorated paper mache camel from some local dancers then performing their own jig with it, was the row of junkyard tattoo artists branding impulse buy customers as they passed, following the camel polo. One of the machines was comprised of nothing more than a blue pen attached to a battery pack.
Lads showed off arm tattoos of their initials as older locals traded small change for larger rush-job tats. These set-ups are relatively common in India, it seems — we saw them in Varanasi a few days later. Could be a good feature to shadow one of these guys for a while, follow the hepatitis trail. Or set up my own tattoo stall and do some begpacking — I’ve already got a Biro.
Indian mascots are amazing
“We’ve got Mickey Mouse, Doraemon, Joker and Charlie Chaplin!” exclaimed the commentator at another of the camel-heavy desert parties, every ten minutes or so.
The inflatable Mickey and Doraemon were just about identifiable, but “Joker” was just a bloke in a red and yellow clown costume, the kind of which was never worn by Batman’s sociopathic nemesis. Coming just after Joaquim Phoenix’s mantelpiece began straining under the weight of gongs given for his portrayal of the character, the appearance was timely, at least. Although one might question the suitability of a character known for murdering henchmen by shoving pens through their eyes being touted as a photo opp for small children.
Charlie Chapman was the most popular of the four — apparently the pioneering British comic actor is a big ‘thing’ in India. Let’s hope the crowd at the event didn’t get hold of the Twitter handle of the attendant Chaplin — if they did he would have been cancelled for white-ing up by now.
