“One consequence of not giving much forethought to our route was that we would sometimes end up somewhere when it might have been better not to be there. Late spring in Rajasthan, India’s desert state, for example, turns out to be terrifyingly hot. One hundred and five degrees is like the baseline. I swore I could feel my brain cook.
Luckily, in Jaisalmer, we found a hotel run by a friendly group of brothers. It had an open-air restaurant on the roof, and at night we’d bring up sheets from our room to sleep alongside the staff on cushion-lined stone benches. At dawn we’d wake up, cold and grateful to be cold.”
