Thor in the Great Thar Desert

The desert is a charming place. It's refreshingly empty and quiet and the people who inhabit it have charmed me. Dadya's young wife smiled a brilliant grin with a gold nose ornament flashing in the light, pleased as we gushed over her tiny daughter but without any need to say a word. Desert food is simple and delicious. Fresher meals made with more care than anywhere else in India.

Frankly, I was disappointed by the two "Franks," some Dutch travelers who joined us for lunch in the huts on our final day in the Great Thar Desert. They shrugged and said the food was all right and made crude jokes. Typical European travelers, at least those I have witnessed so far in India. Such little respect and appreciation for hard work and good intentions. A real lack of enjoying the moment and making the best of it.

I wasn't joking when I told Madya that he was "#1 chapati maker." Those were darn good chapatis. I watched him mix the flour, salt and water by hand, knead the dough by the light of the fire for fifteen minutes, and carefully fry two dozen, one at a time, on a perfectly heated griddle. Perhaps the Dutch would have preferred white bread from a factory but Madya's chapatis made my day.

A desert lightning storm is a different experience. There is no escape in the desert, like there is in the city, no civilization to surround and protect us. When the sky darkens, the whole world goes gray, and when the thunder booms you count every second until the lightning blindingly flashes the ground into brightness. Twenty seconds, there is time before the rain but the crash is already loud. Ten seconds, it's time to find shelter and watch the approaching lightning coming faster and faster on the horizon. Two seconds between crash and flash and there's nothing more to do but huddle in the dimness of the hut and thank goodness you are there and not in the middle of the darkening wilderness. The desert is wild and empty and in a storm a human being is a contender for being the tallest thing around for miles, save the camels.

I warily eye our thatch roof hut and all night I am paranoid that lightning will strike our roof. Nick reassures me: "Think about how many storms these huts have survived." But the storm is upon us and furious wind picks up wet grit from the desert floor and blows rain, sand, and dust through the hut window grate, covering everything in a dirt film. Who's to say this storm won't be different and our hut won't go up in flames?

We watch the storm through the open door in the relative dryness of the hut. Flashes of lightning make the land as bright as daylight and thunder rocks the ground beneath us. Lowing cows wander past eerily, waving their huge horns in perturbation at the weather. They seek shelter under the open-air thatched pavilion a few feet away from our hut, but they eye our spot with envy and the bovine bodies seem larger and stronger than usual. I am intimidated by the cows and bulls, a true city girl. Their huge eyes are not calm tonight: they bear the glint of the terrible storm.

The wind and rain pick up stronger, the eye of the storm, and we struggle to shut the tin door against the elements and the cows. The latch doesn't work and, stared down by a calf, Nick drags a heavy bag of concrete mix against the door, blocking us in for the night. Dozens of spiders flee the scene and I dwell on the urban legend that an average person swallows eight spiders per year (an aside: this is listed as False by Snopes.com).

A long night of mooing cows, crunching gravel, eerie flashes of lightning illuminating the empty desert, and deep thunder as our soundtrack. I wake up several times and cling to Nick.

In the morning the storm is still not over, but is subdued, limiting itself to the occasional drizzle and a flash of lightning on the horizon. The desert smells of fresh relief from the dry spell. Our camels sat out the storm kneeling on the desert floor, completely undisturbed by the circumstance. The cow convention under the pavilion has disbursed, and they have left gifts of mounds of manure.

A flock of goats and sheep come through our little valley to munch their way through the desert scrub, bleating and baaing helplessly. The desert is returned to its normal sense of slowness, silence, and isolation and I am truly sad to leave it behind that afternoon and return to the world of city people.