Camel Riding!

The desert in Rajasthan looks a lot like Utah, until you hit the camels. Julia and I shared one, and we were both totally freaked out when it stood up. At first we have to lean waaay back, then waaay forward, then finally settle at the general animal-riding position. Unfortunately, the camel driver wouldn't make it run, so it was slow going with a lot of unpleasant rubbing on the lower limbs, but then I reminded myself, "Anna, you are riding a camel in the deserts of India right now," and the pain went away. It was about an hour journey to the small village native to the camel boys where we met their families, may or may not have had some things stolen, and drank tea. The houses here strongly resembled the adobe houses of the Native Americans, or "Red Indians" as they call them here. The tea, however, did not. I didn't really register the quantity of goats and the lack of cows until they gave us goat-milk tea, which was absolutely terrible. It was salty with another unplaceable horrible taste that should never be in tea.  We all choked it down after our tour guide told us they would be really offended if we didn't drink it. On our way back to camp we stopped for about an hour at some small sand dunes where we took pictures and watched the sun go down. Back at camp we saw a traditional Rajasthani dance and then went back to one of our tents to chill for a while before bed. After a while, Julia starts randomly screaming and jumping around. We knew something was wrong but no one predicted that there would be a huge, yellow tarantula probably 3 inches in diameter chilling on the bed with us. We called our tour guide to kill it, but he just scared it under the bed where no one could find it. Thank God we didn't have to sleep in that particular tent, I don't know how those girls did.