Sometimes it's more than the memories

Ale and I love to take photos. Luckily Ale likes to take photos even more than me and so she has some awesome lenses-a fish eye, a wide angle, a 18-200mm zoom, and our tried and true 35mm/f-1.8. I love my 35mm and then steal all her other awesome lenses. When one of our cameras runs out of batteries, we always have the other one. We switch off using each others cameras a lot because we are too lazy to switch lenses. Her SD card has a good quarter of my photos and mine has a good quarter of hers.

And then tonight, her SD card had a malfunction as we were trying to upload them to facebook on the computer here at Hotel Victoria. We think we might have lost everything on it. We are in mourning right now. She is on the rooftop, I'm in our room. We have no words for this emptiness. I know it's just material images of good times we have had, but it feels like so much more. Half our days are spent behind our cameras. I can't even begin to imagine how Ale must feel, because I'm pretty sad thinking about all the photos I've lost and she has lost even more. Tonight, if you all don't mind just saying a prayer that this can be fixed. It would mean a lot to us.

It's hard to write right now about today, knowing how sad Ale must be, but I know she would want me to...

We arrived this AM at 530 to Jaisalmer by bus. Our hotel owner was supposed to pick us up so we called him on our arrival and after 5 minutes we had no response. He ended up calling 5 minutes later but it was too late, because we had already taken matters into our own hands. A guy (lets call him Guy1, who we thought was the driver or the drivers assistant- which now makes no sense. Why would a driver have an assistant?) came down the aisle of the bus right before the last stop and told us all about the touts who try to rip off tourists and he said he would bring us to our hotel for 20 rupees a piece. I had read about this is my lonely planet, so I was glad the driver was looking out for us. Then another guy (Guy2) walked down the aisle and repeated a similar story and told us it would be 100 rupees total. I was confused. "But I thought it was 20 rupees?" Guy2 said. "Oh no" and then when we got off the bus and our hotel owner was not there, we had no choice but to go with Guy1 or Guy2 since all these touts were now trying to bring us on their vehicle! And then it clicked. Guy1 and Guy2 were touts!!!! They had gotten on our bus not the stop before the last bus to rip us off! However, it was 530 am and we wanted to get to our hotel and we had ginormous backpacks. So we followed this 30 year old Japanese tourist guy who we had talked with in Udaipur before getting on the bus and decided he was pretty big and could definitely take this thin Indian guy, so I grabbed Ale and we went with the 20 rupee guy. He brought us to the front of the gate and then told us cars can't drive into the fort (which I had read about so I kind of expected) and then he showed us to a rickshaw. We complained about not being brought to our hotel (since it was inside the fort and this driver knew where our hotel was and had told us he would bring us there) and the driver didn't make us pay and somehow got the rickshaw driver to only charge 30 even though he wanted to charge 50. We somehow avoided being completely ripped off and I was proud.

We found our way to our hotel and magically got into bed. I even took a shower, albeit a low pressure and luke warm one (no big surprise there.) I happily slumbered and the next time I woke up, it was noon. Whoops. I was able to still get banana pancakes and chai on the house. <3 Hotel Victoria! The view from the rooftop is really neat. We are inside the fort but on one edge so we got some neat pictures looking down on the city this evening. We planned our camel safari which we will be going on tomorrow from noon until the next morning. Then we did some shopping. Surprise. The tapestries we bought in Udaipur are cheaper here, so that meant we had to get more. I also got a really neat painting of Ganesha, the elephant goddess of luck.

Then I saw a shoemaker on the street who redid the soles of my favorite FabIndia shoes! So we paid an absurd price- 1000 rupees for these adorable little flats and then it turns out they are all over Rajasthan for 200 rupees. Story of our life. However, I'm reassured in that I haven't seem any that are as pretty and as good of quality so that at least helps me sleep at night. Since I haven't found any 200 rupee ones that look like mine, I decided I'd get my soles redone in the US. Well turns out I can get it done in the streets of Jaisalmer for 100 rupees ($2). Maybe I should have just bought a cheap pair? Whatever, I'd rather invest farther into my 1000 rupee shoes.

Pics: a view from our rooftop, Ale in our haveli/hotel, me prepped for our camel safari with my cool hat, banana pancakes (more like creeps)