India - Jaisalmer

We spent the New Year's eve on an overnight camel tour in the Thar desert, organized by our hotel in the town of Jaisalmer. The camels are owned by the hotel, but people from a small village in the desert care for the camels and run the tour (cooking, guiding, etc). About 25 people from the village came out to the desert to celebrate the New Year's along with 15 tourists. There was traditional music and dancing, and drum playing - well, the drum was actually a large empty water bottle. I counted at least 8 empty bottles of rum the next morning, so I am pretty sure people had a good time.

The woman in the sari (the only non-tourist woman present) is the daughter of the musician and sang for us. Initially she was very shy, but after some rum consumption, she was dancing and falling over people.
These are cenotaphs for past Maharaj's:

Jain temple:

Rule regarding entrance to the Jain temple:

This is my idea of camping:

We are definitely still friends with Susan - love her! Not sure about that Ben though...: