Pushkar

see all photos »

This morning we left the beautiful, shiny, Sundar Palace, took a rickshaw to Jaipur train station and were all ready to get the train to Ajmer when we were told over the tannoy, by a very posh woman, that our train was fifteen minutes late and that she was very sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Unfortunately, fifteen minutes stretched into an hour and a half but we managed to entertain ourselves drinking chai; watching the goats walk up and down the platform (some wearing jumpers, some not) being told that yes we really did want our flipflops shined and a new zip for our bags; and talking French (ish) to an Indian school girl who thought Jon was rather hot and kept giggling at him over my shoulder.

see all photos »

When the train did arrive the driver was clearly keen to make up for lost time and we sped through an increasingly desert-like landscape on our way to Ajmer.

When we arrived at Ajmer we haggled with a rickshaw driver and got dropped off at the 'bus station' where an incredibly, unbelievably, dirty, smashed up, sick encrusted mini bus was waiting. We stuck our bags in the luggage compartment and climbed aboard making our way to the, already jam-packed back-seat, which is probably the dirtiest thing I have ever seen in my whole life, where everyone squeezed sideways and heaved children onto laps so that we could wedge ourselves in next to them.

see all photos »

Once the bus was packed to at least twice its capacity the driver shoe-horned a couple more people on, threw some more children onto any laps that were empty and off we went. The bus drive from Ajmer to Pushkar is quite steep and pretty twisty and would have amazing views, if you could only see through the grime on the windows.

After about half an hour we arrived safe and sound in Pushkar, un-wedged ourselves from our seats and hopped off the bus in search of somewhere to stay.

We went to see one place with a guy we had been talking to on the bus. It was beautiful and very reasonably priced but unfortunately it was still being built so we decided not to stay there and went in search of somewhere that was at least fully built.

After looking at a couple more places we found a lovely place called Everest, which was very tall and very clean and run by the serious and fatherly head-teacher of Pushkar school. We gratefully dumped our stuff and went off for an explore.

Pushkar is a holy city for Hindus and the story goes that a Brahma dropped a lotus flower and one of the petals fell to the ground in Pushkar and created the lake. Pushkar has the only temple devoted to the god Brahma and Hindus make pilgrimages to the city and the lake and temple.

Pushkar is a lovely place. It feels so calm and relaxed in comparison to the other places we have visited so far. The town is made up of lots of medieval looking buildings and narrow winding streets all built around the holy lake and its ghats. The streets are so narrow that there is almost no traffic which is fantastic after Agra, Jaipur and Delhi, of course there are still motorbikes, cows, goats, chickens and the added excitement of camels but the lack of cars and horn beeping makes wandering around very peaceful.