Nobody tells you that a camel’s preferred method of standing up is to launch you violently forward, pause for dramatic effect, then hurl you backward, all while your children, who have apparently evolved specifically for this purpose, sit bolt upright and look mildly bored. We discovered this approximately thirty seconds into our three-day trek into the Thar Desert, somewhere between the golden walls of Jaisalmer and the invisible line where India quietly becomes Pakistan.
This camel trek was three days of a twelve-day Rajasthan itinerary we had put together ourselves, and it turned out to be the beating heart of the whole journey. Jaisalmer was our last stop before looping back east through the desert state, and we had deliberately left the biggest adventure for the end. Three days, two nights, on the back of camels in one of the world’s great deserts, sleeping on rope cots under nothing but stars, eating food cooked over fires that our guides conjured from almost nothing. No Wi-Fi. No air conditioning. No plausible escape route. Just us, the sand, and approximately forty-three degrees of afternoon sun that pressed down on your skull like a warm, heavy hand. If you want to see how the whole twelve days fit together, we laid out the full route on our Rajasthan itinerary page.
We would not trade a single minute of it.
DAY ONE · MORNING
JAISALMER FORT → THE DUNES → FIRST CAMP
Into the Golden City, and Beyond
We met Rajesh at the edge of the old city just after dawn, the honey-colored sandstone of Jaisalmer Fort still glowing behind him like something from a dream. He was lean, unhurried, and possessed of the particular patience of a man who has spent his life watching tourists discover, often the hard way, that camels are not horses. They are not even close to horses. They are, as far as we could tell, somewhere between a horse, a disapproving aunt, and a very opinionated sofa.
The first lesson was the saddle. Rajesh and his colleague Mohammed laid out the wooden frames and woven blankets with the efficiency of surgeons, and then invited us to try. What follows is a list of things we learned: a camel saddle is heavier than it looks; the camel has opinions about where it goes; and the knot that holds the whole thing together is, apparently, a knot that must be done in a specific way that none of us could replicate, though we each tried at least twice while Mohammed watched with gentle, unwavering amusement.
The children took to it immediately, of course. Within twenty minutes they were sitting cross-legged on the saddles, arms out, singing to themselves, occasionally standing up — standing up, on a moving camel — while we adults gripped the wooden pommel so hard our knuckles had gone white and concentrated very hard on not falling off. Our youngest developed what can only be described as a full camel-back dance routine. We watched this from a position of white-knuckled, sweat-drenched dignity and said nothing.
“The camel looked back at me — actually turned its enormous head — with an expression of such profound disdain that I briefly considered apologizing.”
Riding through the dunes in the morning light is a thing that rewires something in your brain. The Thar spreads out in every direction in shades of amber, ochre, and pale gold, the dunes rolling in long slow swells like a fossilized sea. The only sounds are the soft crump of hooves in sand and the distant cry of a bird whose name none of us knew. The sky above is enormous and painfully blue. You begin to understand, quite quickly, how people fell in love with deserts: not despite their emptiness, but because of it.
We rode through the morning heat, the temperature climbing steadily toward 43°C. Rajesh had positioned Mohammed at the front to lead, himself at the rear, and us in the middle, our four camels strung together like the world’s most ungainly train. Every so often one of our beasts would emit a low, resonant groan — not of distress, Rajesh assured us, but of commentary. They were, it became clear, opinionated animals who simply preferred that you know it.
The Village at the End of the Road
In the early afternoon we stopped at a cluster of low mud-brick buildings that appeared to have been placed in the desert by accident, or perhaps by a cartographer with a very odd sense of humour. There was no road that we could see. There were chickens, a very old motorcycle, and four women who appeared from a doorway and looked at us with expressions of complete unsurprise.
The tea appeared within minutes. Strong, sweet, cardamom-scented, poured from a battered steel pot into small glasses that burned your fingers and were absolutely perfect. We sat in the shade of a crumbling wall and drank it while the children ran circuits around the camels and the village watched with tolerant amusement. One of the women asked, through Rajesh’s translation, where we were from. When he told her, she nodded thoughtfully, as if France was a place she had heard reasonable reports about.
The kindness of Rajesh and Mohammed was the kind that doesn’t announce itself. It was in the way Mohammed quietly repositioned the smaller children’s saddles without being asked. It was in the way Rajesh noticed when we were flagging and declared it time for a rest before we’d admitted to ourselves that we needed one. It was in the story Mohammed told us about this village — that his grandmother had lived here, that he had spent summers running through these exact lanes — shared simply, without sentiment, as fact. You understood that this desert was not a backdrop for them. It was home.
The First Night Under the Stars
Camp appeared as the sun began its descent: four rope cots, a fire already laid in a shallow pit, a simple awning offering the illusion of shelter. The horizon went through its full repertoire — orange, pink, a brief and extraordinary crimson — while Rajesh and Mohammed cooked. What emerged from those saddlebags over the next hour was nothing short of extraordinary: dal, rice, a potato and vegetable curry, fresh roti flattened by hand and cooked directly on the embers of the fire.
We all participated. The children patted the dough under Mohammed’s supervision, producing rounds of roti that were enthusiastically lopsided but tasted magnificent. We stirred the dal. We crouched by the fire and breathed in the smoke and the spice. There was something deeply moving about it: the simplicity, the sufficiency, the complete absence of anything superfluous.
The night temperature dropped to 5°C by midnight. This was not information we had fully absorbed when packing, and so we lay on our rope cots wrapped in every layer we owned and stared up at a sky so dense with stars it looked structural, like the ceiling of something. The Milky Way was not a suggestion but a fact: a broad, thick band of light that crossed the sky directly overhead. The children fell asleep immediately and slept like the dead. We lay awake, cold and perfectly content, and watched the stars wheel slowly westward.
DAY TWO
ONE HOUR · EIGHT CAMELS · INFINITE DESERT
The Great Camel Roundup
Why Camels Are Hobbled, and Why It Doesn’t Matter
Nobody warned us about the morning.
We woke to pale light and the smell of chai. Rajesh was already at the fire. Mohammed was, we noticed, not there. Rajesh explained, with the equanimity of someone who has explained this many times, that the camels had been hobbled for the night: a rope binding their two front legs together, so they couldn’t run. This was, he noted, a traditional and highly effective method. We looked around at the empty desert. “Where,” we asked, “are the camels?”
“Hobbled camels, it turns out, are simply camels that have decided to walk away more slowly. They had an entire night. They were thorough about it.”
The next hour was one of the stranger experiences of our lives. Mohammed had gone ahead to locate them. We followed, walking out into the open desert in the early morning cool, looking for eight camels that had redistributed themselves across what appeared to be several square kilometers of identical dunes. We found two behind a low ridge. One was visible from a distance as a small brown smudge on the horizon that resolved, on approach, into a very relaxed camel eating scrubby desert vegetation. Two more were in a dry riverbed. The last was found only after Rajesh made a sound — a particular call, low and resonant — and the animal responded from somewhere entirely invisible to us, behind a dune large enough to hide a bus.
It took the better part of an hour. The children thought it was the best game ever invented. We adults recognized it for what it was: proof that the desert operates on its own logic, and that logic does not include your schedule. We drank our chai. We waited. When the camels were finally assembled, saddled, and arranged into their customary procession, Rajesh looked at us with the serene expression of a man who has never once in his life been in a hurry, and said: “This is normal.” We believed him completely.
DAY THREE · THE RETURN
43°C · SAND IN EVERYTHING · ZERO REGRETS
Back to Jaisalmer, Slightly Changed
The last morning we found the camels faster: only twenty-five minutes, a personal record. Rajesh gave us a look that suggested he was not especially impressed, but he said nothing, which in the Rajesh lexicon counted as high praise. We saddled the animals ourselves this time, supervised but uncorrected, and that felt like a genuine achievement: the knot, the blanket, the wooden frame, the whole operation accomplished without anyone losing a finger or their dignity.
Riding back toward Jaisalmer, the fort visible from hours away as a golden smudge on the horizon growing slowly more solid, we understood something that is hard to articulate without sounding sentimental. The desert had recalibrated something. The slowness of it, the long rhythmic hours of riding, the quiet of the dunes, the extraordinary irrelevance of everything that was not immediately in front of you, had done something to our internal clocks that persisted long after we climbed back off our camels for the last time.
Our youngest asked, on the way back into the city, whether we could do it again. Not the whole trip, just the part with the camels. Just the riding through the dunes with the sky so big above you and the sand so gold below and the feeling that time had briefly agreed to work differently. We said yes. We will. The desert, it turns out, is not a place you visit once.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should a camel trek in Jaisalmer be?
Three days and two nights is the sweet spot for a Jaisalmer camel trek. It is long enough to genuinely disconnect (no Wi-Fi, no air conditioning) and to experience the desert at its own pace, including sleeping under the stars and cooking over a fire. Two nights gives the desert time to do something to you that a day trip simply cannot.
Is a Jaisalmer camel trek suitable for children?
Yes. The terrain is calm and beginner-friendly, with no dangerous sections. Children as young as 10 manage the ride brilliantly, often better than adults. They take to camelback with an ease that is genuinely humbling.
Is it safe to travel to India?
Yes, and honestly, it exceeded every expectation we had. People across India are extraordinarily warm, curious and welcoming to travellers, particularly families with children. Ours were stopped constantly by locals wanting to say hello, take photos, and share a moment of genuine connection. By the end of the trip our children had appeared in what felt like half the family photo albums in Rajasthan. India is one of those places that gets under your skin precisely because of the people in it.
What is the best time of year for a camel trek in Rajasthan?
October through March is ideal. Daytime temperatures range from 25 to 35°C and nights can drop to 5°C, so pack warm layers. April through September should be avoided, as daytime heat exceeds 43°C and conditions become genuinely brutal.
What should I bring on a camel trek in Jaisalmer
Essentials include a headlamp (there is no light at camp), warm layers that pack small (wool base, fleece and a down jacket for cold nights), a neck buff for dust, high-SPF sunscreen, lip balm, a lightweight sleeping bag liner, hand sanitiser and a filter water bottle. Keep luggage minimal, as everything goes in saddlebags on the camel. Guides carry water but you will drink more than you think.
Where does the Jaisalmer camel trek start and end?
Most multi-day treks depart from the edge of Jaisalmer’s old city, near the iconic golden sandstone fort. Your guides meet you at dawn and lead you out into the Thar Desert. The route passes through remote desert villages and open dunes, with the fort visible again on the horizon as you return on the final day.
Is a camel trek good for couples?
It is one of the best experiences in India for couples travelling without children. The long, slow rhythm of the ride, with hours of open desert, uninterrupted conversation and no schedules, creates the kind of time together that is hard to find anywhere else. Evenings around the fire under a Milky Way sky are extraordinary.
What is the That desert like to ride through?
The Thar spreads out in shades of amber, ochre and pale gold. The dunes roll in long slow swells like a fossilised sea. The only sounds are the soft crunch of hooves in sand. The sky is enormous and painfully blue. Most people who ride through it understand quite quickly why people have fallen in love with deserts for centuries.
Is a Jaisalmer camel trek part of a larger Rajasthan itinerary?
It can be, and it works beautifully as the centrepiece of a longer trip. A 12-day Rajasthan itinerary typically combines Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur and Jaisalmer, saving the camel trek for last as the journey’s most memorable experience. You can find the full route on our Rajasthan itinerary page.
What camera should I bring on a camel treck?
A mirrorless camera is the ideal choice for a desert trek. Mirrorless cameras are lighter and more compact than traditional DSLRs, which matters enormously when every gram lives on camelback, yet they deliver professional image quality capable of capturing the extraordinary light conditions of the Thar — the golden hour glow, the star-filled nights, the vast amber dunes at midday. They also tend to perform well in dusty environments. We recommend the Canon EOS R50 Mirrorless Camera as a versatile, travel-friendly option that handles everything from wide landscape shots to close portraits of your guides and camels. Bring a dust-proof bag or cover, and keep a spare battery — cold desert nights drain power faster than you expect.