White Desert Full Moon

My mind is BLOWN! I am at the Rann Utsav Festival in Tent City. It’s the wealthy Indian cruise ship version of Burning Man that I never knew existed until our travel agent put us up here. It’s…words just can’t.

It’s out in the White Rann desert of Kutch or Kuchchh (which I prefer since it looks like the name of a Wookie planet, but I digress). So we are in the middle of a desert and, for a few months per year, they create a monstrously huge tent city with everything you need and everything you didn’t know you needed. There are massive highly decorated faux mahals constructed of timber and stretched painted canvas that looks exactly like sandstone until you knock on it. We are knocking on every surface to see what it really is made of. 

Upon arrival we were assigned a cluster of tents and given our itinerary, to which we may add more packages, although I don’t know when we would have time to do them. They had everything down to military precision. The greeter reviewed everything with us and then gave a quick tour of the important muster points. 

Since K could “chew a child” we started at our assigned dining hall. It was a massive tin shed with the exterior of a haveli and the interior of a cruise ship buffet. Jam packed with extended families and 3 buffet lines - 2 for regular Indian food and 1 for Jain food. There was a buttermilk station since buttermilk is served with every Gujarat meal. We served ourselves and sat down to watch people pass by with absolutely heaping plates. K was the only white face in sight.

We knew our agent had booked a premium tent, and I had stayed in a very glampy tent on the Serengeti, but this was ridiculous. We had a screened in porch with adorable seating areas, inside was an air conditioned suite complete with four poster bed, seating area, writing desk and a fully plumbed quite elegant bathroom en suite.  

We freshened up and chilled out before attending high tea and then taking a bus out to the white desert. The buses took us so far and then we had to travel by camel cart onto the salt flats that had once been the bottom of the Arabian Sea. Walking on salt was so bizarre. The ground was crunchy and springy and dazzling where the low sun reflected off the crystalline surface. Immediately the melee started up. A group of men began drumming at one site, attracting people to try on costumes and have their photos taken, another was blasting tunes and doing 360 videos of people or couples dancing while yet another was running paraplane trips, sending tourists up in an open one engine canopied machine barely over the heads of the crowd. It was a carnival atmosphere in the middle of a white salt desert and it was crazycakes kookoo bananas. Tourists were getting the costumes and dancing everywhere around us while people took trips on decorated camels, camel carts and horses. It was a sober wealthy Indian version of Burning Man.

As the sun set low over the horizon, it sent a ruby glow over the salt, quieting the crowd who gathered to watch it disappear before hauling ass back to the buses. 

We freshened up, ventured back to the dining hall, did some textile shopping and got back in the bus line. This time we were heading out to the salt flats to see the full moon. We were warned to make absolute sure to keep eye contact with one another and the bus depot or we could be lost and left behind.

There was no circus this time and it wasn’t necessary. Being out in a white salt desert under a full February moon was absolutely electric.