Jaisalmer sits smack bang in the middle of the Rajastan desert where the camels roam and the vultures circle. Its fort is probably the most impressive I’ve seen yet (and lately it has been a fortarama). People still live in its innards, you can stay inside (thought Lonely Planet frowns on  you for doing so. Bad tourist! Bad!), and pootle about its shops and temples without ever leaving the fort walls. It is also impressive as it is made entirely from honeycomb.

https://flic.kr/p/5E4qCU

Well alright, that’s a lie. Its fashioned from yellow sandstone, but it looks like its made from the inside of a Crunchie, and wandering about its guts it is hard not to just take a small nibble of the wall to see if it is honeycomb or not. It isn’t. Trust me.    gingerly touches teeth

https://flic.kr/p/5DZ6zv

https://flic.kr/p/5DZ6zi

On our first night I realised that maybe there was something more in the Jaisalmer water than just the usual Delhi belly worms. The waiter who was serving us bought my drink to the table. It was a simple Fresh Lime Soda, I live on them out here, just fresh lime squeezed into a glass with fizzy water. Its as refreshing as being slapped in the face by a dolphin.

So the man puts down my glass bottle of soda, picks up the bottle opener and asks if I want him to open it. I do. He does. “Oh…” he says, ever so sadly, “It go ice.” Before my eyes the bottle of soda, which was happily bubbling away before he laid a hand on it, turn to ice slowly from the top down. “I get you another.” he says in the same sorrowful tones. He takes it away. M and I sit and blink at the space where the bottle was. The waiter returns and won’t answer a single question on the incident.

https://flic.kr/p/5DZ6zg

Fresh Lime Soda and almost sock

It is clear to me that the waiter has the power to freeze water at will, and that sometimes, maybe when he has spilled birayani down a customer who would have been a big tipper, or a cow gouged at him on the way to work because he looked at it funny, he loses control of his power and ends up showing it to us mere mortals in the form of sudden soft drink freezing. You heard it here first. The next generation is here…

In other, less superpowered news, I would like to introduce you to your local Jaisalmer Yarn Store.

https://flic.kr/p/5DZ6zr

https://flic.kr/p/5E4qD3

I know not everyone is knitting minded but I ask you how I could resist buying yarn from a shop that displayed it as finely as this? Easily browsable from camel back, within chewing distance of passing cows, and 50 rupees for 50 grams of pure wool.

I think the shopkeeper was less impressed than I was.

Hard sell

So yes. I have yarn. I am going to fashion a hat with it for the chills of Nepal. Hurrah!

Also, and lastly Jaisalmer saw most of my first ever sock taking shape. It’s getting damned chilly here at night too so my toes are going to need them. Let’s hope it takes me less time to make sock two…

https://flic.kr/p/5DZ6z2

Almost-there sock