“A vacation to the desert? That will be awesome!” I exclaimed happily. “But are you sure?” mom asked. Ginny came downstairs. “Are we going somewhere?” she asked in her high-pitched voice. “Yes we are.” I said. “Yay!” she screeched.

We took the flight on Wednesday morning. I kept thinking about the Great Indian Desert. I’ve never been to India, though. So, this was going to be a wonderful experience for me! 

We met Uncle Ted, Aunt Carla, and my cousins, Steven and Chloe at the Jaipur airport. Then we took a bus from there to the hotel. “ I’ll be renting an RV tomorrow. These buses are too crowded.” said Uncle Ted. 

I woke up in the morning. We packed our things and had a nice breakfast. I’ve to admit, Indian food is quite delicious! “Jenny, isn’t the place beautiful?” mom asked me. “ It is. And the food’s good too.” I told her. There were many traditional shops selling antiques, jewellery, handicrafts, gems, bangles, pottery, carpets, textiles, leather and metal products. We rented the RV and travelled all the way to Thar. The elders left the kids with me and whipped out their cameras to take photos. We rode camels, who were decorated with a lot of embroidered cloth and ornaments. Because of the scarcity of water, camels have adapted themselves to drink a lot of water at one time and go without water for days. There were a lot of cactuses and certain thorny desert shrubs scattered around in the sand. “ Jennifer, will you please look after the youngsters while we look for a gas pump?” Aunt Carla asked. “Yeah, sure” I replied. It was not even a minute after the adults were out of sight when Ginny asked, “ What’s that?”. Then she ran towards an awkward looking rodent who freaked out when it saw her and climbed upon a small stone. I looked closely at it and shivered, “Hey….. that’s not a rat. That’s a………. Fennec fox!” The kids hid behind a giant rock. I peeked behind the rock and saw a brown little thing crawling on the sand. I froze in fear. “Aaaaaaah! That’s a Red scorpion! They are the most poisonous species of scorpions in the world!” I screamed.

 We ran until we reached a quiet part of the desert. I tried to track our footprints back to the RV but the wind blew and all of it got covered in sand dunes. “Where are we?” asked Steven. “ We’re lost! This is hopeless!” I shouted. That’s when I heard faint music. We followed the sound and found a group of tribal people playing music. There were tents everywhere. They were the Banjaras. “ Ummm… hello? Can you help us please? We’re lost.” I asked them. An eldery lady looked at us and gestured to us to come to her. They gave us water to drink and some dates to eat. It was amazing to see that they lived in such a place with scarcity of food and water. They wore colourful dresses with big embroidered turbans and ornaments. “Fancy gipsies!” exclaimed Chloe. We sat on colourful mats while we ate and drank. Then suddenly, I heard a familiar voice. “Jenny! Ginny!” mom cried out as she hugged us tightly. Then the elderly woman tugged me by my sleeve and examined my hair. “ Looks like she has never seen blonde hair before!” I laughed. I hugged her tight. She gave me a beautiful bangle. It was a great trip!
By Roopkatha

So here is the unforgettable moment I am ready to share.

In one english class of the previous year, I remember Vandana Tewari mam. My english teacher was teaching us a chapter of english. When she finished, and was telling us what to write in the english notebook, She saw me talking to one of my classmates. And then of course when i caught attention of her eyes I knew that, I was about to get scolded. And of course I did, in front of the whole class. Of course I knew what I did was not right. And also because of me, the whole class got punished for writing all the notes from the book on their own. And I knew most of them were angry at me. I can never forget that moment. But never mind, I always knew teachers scolded us for our good.