Jaisalmer -If

The desert. A habitat that normally makes life itself difficult or impossible due to its harsh living conditions. The origin of all life, water, can only be found through wells that go at least 20 meters deep into the sand and rock. While the sun shines down on the vast landscape with temperatures of up to 45°C in the summer and you look in vain for a place to provide shade, you have to ask yourself the question: What crazy person thought that it would be a good idea to have a civilization here to start? Something like that is doomed to fail. The only reason I think is realistic for having such an idea is that at the time of his mad flash of inspiration, the sun had already evaporated all the fluid from his brain through his ears and he saw the mirage of an all-powerful sultanate as a prophecy.

But seriously now. It is not without reason that the first civilizations in human history emerged 4000 years ago. BC settled on rivers. It was only through the existence of rivers such as the Euphrates or Tigris that the Sumerians were able to settle in Mesopotamia, the Indians on the Indus wrote down their Vedas, or the Egyptians were able to establish an advanced culture on the Nile Delta. However, any form of agriculture is impossible near the villages of the Thar Desert. There is usually a well in the villages, but that is not the holy grail. The heat makes it almost impossible to concentrate in the long term and create a smart education system. Apart from the fact that any physical work is so strenuous and therefore building a reasonably good infrastructure is difficult, there is also a lack of resources that have to be transported from far away. So what drew and continues to draw people into this inhumane environment?

Or perhaps the reason for my incomprehensibility lies in my Eurocentric worldview, in which people are taught that human well-being depends on the quality of asphalt roads, the level of education and the variety of fruit selection in the supermarket? The villagers there have more in many aspects than I do in Aachen. They have an ancient culture and spirituality, an understanding of nature and a sense of community that we are so incredibly far away from. Of course, it's impossible for me to say from the outside whether they lead a fulfilling life or not. But maybe all the things I associate with an advanced civilization don't need to be there; maybe the path to happiness lies somewhere else. But more thoughts on that later.

In Jaisalmer I arrived at the train station at three o'clock in the morning and, to my astonishment, met three Germans at the deserted train station with whom I strolled around. One of them lived in Jaisalmer for a year and did his voluntary social year at a school here. Lean reminded me a lot of my best friend Malte. He walked through the world with a lightness, elegance, curiosity, good nature and energy that I only know from my best friend. When his broad grin resembled Malte's, I felt a more than pleasant familiarity. We drank a night chai, secretly climbed around the fort and settled on the city walls for sunrise and ate my dhal and paratha from the previous day. After I had to change my accommodation at short notice because of my hostels and the upcoming camel safari, I met three Germans, one of whom I had already met in Sri Lanka. So I spent the day with the three hippies and we strolled to the strangest musical instrument shop and through the huge and winding fortress. In the evening we sat on one of the hundreds of roofs in the city, ate Nepalese food and sang to the guitar music of a backpacker in the hostel. I also did a crossword puzzle with one of the girls, Malwi, even though they were doing more nonsense than thinking.

I've been thinking for a long time about whether I should mention this topic here in this blog or not because my parents, siblings, friends, a person who is more than just a friend to me and finally the entire public can read this. But I'm no longer in puberty and I don't really care what others think of me. I only have to justify myself to myself and to no one else and I can also imagine that perhaps one or two people think similarly and can understand it.

Before the trip, I always heard from different people about their travel romances or one-night stands as a backpacker and I myself also remember my encounter with the Berlin woman on the Way of St. James. So I subconsciously built up an expectation that involved lots of passionate encounters with other travelers. I realized pretty quickly that reality looked different and that you can't plan or wish for something like that. At the beginning of the trip I was stressing myself about having something with someone and the self-generated pressure had a pretty good effect on my mood, especially when other travelers told me about their recent 'love' adventures. Once or twice I thought I was about to become more intimate with someone, but then something still came up. At the end of my Sri Lanka trip, I realized during a phone call with Eva that I was in no way here to sleep my way through the backpacker scene or get to know the love of my life or anything like that. I started this journey to learn. To discover cultures, to get to know other ways of life, to explore nature, to build a clever historical and geographical understanding, to learn new skills such as surfing, diving, horse riding, yoga and meditation, to understand myself and to explore what I strive for , to make friends, to have adventures, to have experiences that will shape me and to enjoy my life. I realized that all of these things are so much more important to me than any fantasy-based romances that are more fleeting than my commitment to washing my clothes every three days. Puppy cake! If I (or the people around me) are lucky, I'll get around to doing a half-hearted hand wash every two weeks).

So I traveled through India completely detached from this desire and I noticed how much better it made me feel because from that moment on I was able to concentrate completely on the things that were really important to me. My libido died pretty much at the same time and I miss him less than ever at the moment. After a month without any feeling of physical affection for anyone, I met Malwi, with whom I despaired over the crossword puzzle book. For the first time I met a person to whom I felt physically attracted and who I simply found really funny and likeable. And for the first time in several months, I met someone who made me nervous whenever they were near me. But since I knew that she was leaving the next day and that I would certainly never see her again, I didn't even try to find out whether the affection was mutual. On the one hand because I was too nervous, on the other hand because I longed to get to know her better than just spend an evening with her. So when we said goodbye, I just told her that she was pretty and said goodbye. It was a nice encounter that I don't attach great importance to, but it did give me a nice feeling of insecurity through stronger affection.

So I went on the camel safari with a Pole, Filipino, British, French and Indian. We drove two hours towards Pakistan in a jeep with us standing in the back and stopped at an abandoned desert town to explore. Many centuries ago, the city's residents were driven out of the city by years of drought, and the erosion caused by sandstorms broke the houses into smaller and smaller pieces, so that in the end only mysterious-looking ruins remained. From there we rode the camels further west. And camels, or were they actually dromedaries, are so much bigger than I thought. When standing they measure 3½ meters and after hours of exposure to the sun they reminded me of paintings by Salvador Dali. When we arrived at the dunes, we 20-30 year olds frolicked around like little children, doing somersaults, flick-flacks and racing in the soft sand. Exhausted, we prepared the dough for the parathas and the vegetables for the chutney, dahl and curry, lit a campfire from dry brush and started cooking dinner. After we ate more sand than vegetables, Marlon, the Frenchman, got out a huge bag of hash and we had a fun evening, philosophizing and looking at the Milky Way and me talking about constellations.

The next day we rode four hours to a village and back in the much too hot sun and repeated our evening ritual, except that we lit a much larger campfire and jumped back and forth over it. Oh yeah! And we went on a night 'safari' where we drove through the desert at night in a jeep and drifted over the dunes. We also saw a desert fox there :) The group of boys kept talking about the hottest backpackers they had met and at such a pubescent level that I was able to quickly exit the conversation by saying that I was gay. Now they just started asking me questions and I told them my dating life so far, except that I swapped all women with men and told a convincing story about the problems of coming out. On the last day in Jaisalmer, when I was walking around with the Pole and the Filipino, they asked me more and more questions about the topic and they slowly began to suggest, step by step, that they might also be bisexual, but didn't know how to deal with it. It's always interesting how men behave when they're just among their peers and then slowly open up when someone makes the first step. It was a damn fun group.