Tuesday Feb 5 Pushkar – town of the camel fair

Pushkar was one of the suggested tour possibilities. 6 of us decided to go. I think that we are destined to have long car rides wherever we go in India. City or country – everything is a far piece. In October, Pushkar is the site of an enormous camel fair. They have races, beauty contests (of camels) and auctions. During that time, most of the visitors sleep in tents.

Pushkar is a 3 hour drive from Jaipur. Most of the way is a 6 lane toll road, but there are tractors, tuk-tuks, and heavily laden small trucks sharing the lanes. On the way we stopped to pick up a friend of the driver. He wanted to make a pilgrimage to Puskar and took advantage of the ride.

They are building rest stops that look very much like the ones in the States, but they aren’t open yet. We stopped at this one. The driver said, “Very clean bathrooms.” He was right, so we were happy. They also had very good coffee.

This part of India is a desert region that looks remarkably like New Mexico. When there are no people or houses, you can’t tell the difference.

We did get to see many more camels: (There have been a bunch pulling carts around in downtown Jaipur, but they are too hard to get pictures of.)

We were supposed to pick up our guide at the outskirts of the town. He wasn’t there. Our driver got a little worried, because no one was answering their phones. He finally was told where the new pickup point was, so all was well.

Our first stop in Pushkar was the Brahma Temple. Brahma doesn’t have too many temples in India, because he played around on his wife and she cursed him. We had to take off our shoes and walk up a flight of stairs to the temple proper. Marble is slippery with socks – but I wouldn’t have liked to do it in bare feet. (Ick)

It has the same kind of dedication plaques that the English church in Mumbai had, except that these were for Indians.

The back of it was the most extraordinary color.

We walked further through the village. A small boy followed us all the way playing Frere Jacques on a stringed instrument. We had put our shoes back on.

We were going to the sacred lake. Every Hindu is supposed to make at least one pilgrimage here to bath at a holy ghat. Ghats are steps down to the water.

About 30 feet from the lake, we had to take our shoes off again. We were each given a tray with red and yellow powder, rice, sugar and flowers. We added the flower that we had been given at the Brahma temple.

Each of these substances represented an important element of our lives. Then we all traipsed over to a ghat and down the stairs.

We were each assigned our very own spiritual guide. He explained the significance of each item on the tray again and had us say a prayer in Hindi. Then we repeated for each item, “I pray for myself, for my family and for my country” good health, good education, good life, etc. It was weird and very moving. Knee-jerk crier that I am, I shed a few tears. He marked my forehead with a mixture of the red powder and rice. We tossed the things on our tray into the lake and the flower behind us. We were shedding our bad karma and getting good karma. Then the giant scam started. The “spiritual guide” asked for, and then demanded money for the charities in the area. They really argued about what one chose to give. It turned a good experience very nasty.

But here I am with my red mark:

We said good-by to our Pushkar guide and went to a very nice hotel for lunch. We ate in the garden and took pictures of the room next to the ladies room. Another 3 hours back to Jaipur, with a bathroom break at another place with "very nice bathrooms."

Chuck and I had dinner at the Indian restaurant in the hotel. They had a very good tasting menu. The only choices were Veg or Non-Veg. Just as we got to the soup, we were joined by Art & Lucille. We paused so they could catch up – and we all tasted everything. We are going to take all of our Chinese friends from Hefei out to dinner and decided that this place would be a good choice. We made reservations for 10 for Thursday.