When talking to several camel safari operators in Jaisalmer, India, they all assured me that the trek was worth it, despite the pungent aroma of the dromedaries, as if the camel stink was something foreigners could handle only with advance notice.

After spending two days perched on one, though, I can say that the stink just wasn’t a big factor on my trip. They didn’t smell like roses, but maybe I just got used to the stench of mine; I called him Paco.

Footprints in the sand are a common sight since the dunes are heavily trafficked.

Paco was a bit young for safaris, and the guides said that it would be dangerous to use him for treks without a human lead walking alongside him. He, and all the camels used for schlepping are always “he,” because the she-camels are larger and prone to driving their male counterparts into hormonal rages that end in what can only be described as the dromedary with two humps.

I was the only tourist on my trek to suffer the trauma of having a horny adolescent camel. The other four tourists on the trek, including my traveling companion—my Financial and Menu Adviser—were able to guide their own camels with their own reins. There were five of us: Stu, the Canadian; Tim and his girlfriend Mel, a British couple; and the FMA and I.

Stu was wacky.

He had a digital video camera with a separate lens component that looked like military or spy hardware strapped to a headband. The recording part of the camera was positioned on his belt. With his longish red hair, he looked a bit like Richard Simmons gone Borg. While the locals we would encounter clearly enjoyed discussing him, none of this made him memorable.

What really made Stu unforgettable was that he rarely walked upright. He bobbed and weaved, his thin, pale white arms with their dusting of red hair spread out for balance. He crouched low, then rose up high, like a cross between a boxing instructor and a DIY infomercial on how to shoot extreme sports.

Stu was friendly, too, a nice guy with a genuine interest in what went on around him, but whack-a-mole wacky. He’ll probably win an Oscar someday.

Tim and Mel, on the other hand, were the antithesis of Stu. Clean-cut Londoners, they provided a perfect balance to Stu’s optimistic bob-and-weave. Pleasant to talk to, willing to share the more embarrassing moments of their trip as eagerly as the exciting, frustrating or horrific ones, it was nice to meet others who enjoyed India, but didn’t think that it was some kind of mysterious magical wonderland.

With Paco and I at the tail of the line, we trudged westward with our guides, past the brown desert scrub and toward the sand dunes north of the town of Sam. We ate during the hottest part of the day under some scrubby trees on the edges of the dunes. The guides helped us dismount, with much gronking and chortling from the camels, and then they cooked us an authentic desert meal: rice, chapatis, dhal and some kind of curried desert vegetable.

The guides used very little water when cleaning the dishes. They used sand for soap, which resolved the issue of waste by absorbing anything left over. When we left, the dung beetles that infested the sands moved on the remains like large black maggots.