The Journey so far-

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• Rats Rule in Karni Devi Temple, Bikaner
• Bikaner to Jaiselmer, The Zooming Drive
• Beautiful Sunrise over Gadisar Lake in Jaiselmer
• Sonar Fort in Jaiselmer
• Silky Sand Dunes, Sam in Thar Desert

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Day 3 | 18th, December 2010 | Sunset over Sam Sand Dunes of Thar Desert, Jaiselmer

We enjoyed the peaceful moments in the regions of sand dunes devoid of tourists for more than an hour and were waiting for the sunset at a nice secluded place far away from the tourist rush. Soon the sand dunes turned up into the fest with loads of tourist all over them. Some of them were enjoying, rolling, shouting, riding camels, drinking, shooting pictures but waited eagerly for the one cause i.e. SUNSET …

Time to frame the sunset… Full Version…

That’s Me and Camel Shahrukh… …

She is least busy watching a family playing in the sand…

Ohh… Something to capture… Camel and The Sun…

Ohh… Something to capture again… When metering just the sun…

The excitement among them raised to heights as the sun started to go down and the colors in the sky started to turn into golden yellow to orange to ink blue to black…. Do spare me if  I sorted these colors incorrectly, as I have color blindness :p… But, the vistas looked stunning and we were extremely happy to see such a sunset over sand dunes… I always wanted to shoot sunset whatever little I know on shooting them so for me it was time for a little practice now…

Capturing the best sunset of my life…

Time to frame the sunset… Cropped Version…

Sun is almost hidden…

Sun is hidden…

What is he wondering???…

Glued by the beauty of sunset…

Let me also come…

Time to go back…

As the sunset was over people started going back to their places and the music of drum from the adjoining camps were started to capture the air over sand dunes… We also got up on our camel and started to move back to hotel Sam Dhani, RTDC which looked quite far from that place … Now, the camel ride was taking its toll on our back and we were hoping to reach the hotel as soon as possible to straighten our backs… As were deep into the desert it took some time to reach the hotel and by then the cultural program had almost started. We handed over the money to the camel care taker and his tip too… He asked us to give the Rs 100 tip if he will make us see the ripples in the sand. He did a fair job in letting us witness those ripples which are washed away by the tourist rush in most part of Sam.

Will I ever capture it…

Soon the cultural even started amidst bonfire with the introduction of the performers  who did an extremely decent job in entertaining the tourist present at Sam Dhani. Most of the tourists were busy in boozing in some corner, so the attention of the performers shifted to only few who were interested in the music or songs played by them. There were very little applause by the audience which also flared a lack of interest by the tourists in the performance but I and my wife were at least enjoying whatever they were performing. This was realized by the performers too who then made us the center point of attraction and it was as if they were performing only for us …

The traditional performance ticks with Bonfire…

The traditional performance…

The traditional performance…In full swing…

One of the dancers took my wife along as well to dance and she responded pretty positively to enjoy many steps of the local Rajasthani dance. She seems to be a good dancer to me … Jokes apart, she indeed is a good dancer, so wasted no time in picking up the steps to enjoy the music and dance. For me dance and songs is a total NO, so I sat back and continued to click what I could in the limited light on offer … The snacks which included pakoras along with tea were served in between the event and by 9 PM people started to get hungry, so were we. The program ended by 9.15 PM by seeing the audience leaving either to booze or food, we clicked few pictures with the locale artists too and after biding adieus to them, we went in for the dinner too.

The traditional performance… Converging to the end…

The dinner  was again the same yellow dal fry with a locale vegetable of some wild bush which was not liked by our taste buds. The savior though was churma (crushed sweet chapati) served as a desert but we had it as main course … After the dinner, since it was too cold my wife wanted to sit along the bonfire along with other tourist to share some gossip and meanwhile I went to the other side and installed my tripod to catch the start trails. Well after 20 minutes of exposure, I got a single star trail because already there were too many lights nearby which caused flare. Meanwhile, it took more than 20 minutes by the camera to save or process after I closed the picture. The result was disappointing, so without wasting anytime we shut off the lights and went to sleep.