Pushkar passport #2

View from the temple
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We woke up this morning feeling pretty sad that today was our last day in Pushkar and wishing that we could stay another week and at least have Christmas here.

Last night we ended up staying up late and teaching the hotel owner's son to play backgammon. The hotel owner's son is about 17 and very slight and moves like a ballerina. He hovered over us on one foot until we offered him a game which he accepted with great enthusiasm. While we were playing he told us not to go walking in the hills around Pushkar as three weeks ago a tiger came right into the deer park on the edge of town and killed three deer. I thought it was meant to be hard to find a tiger in India. It's exciting and scary to think that they are so close.

"Excuse me are you Johnny Bang?"
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As it was our last day we had a list of things we wanted to do before we left. We made a start by climbing up to an old Hindu temple, perched high on top of a hill just at the edge of town. The temple has great views of the whole of Pushkar and on into the dessert and it was vert peaceful up there looking out over the lake and town.

On our way down the dusty, quartz-littered track we saw lots of little flashes in the sky and realised, on closer inspection, that they were little kites. It seems that for kids in Pushkar kite flying is all the rage. The best time to do it seems to be in the morning and just before sunset (or maybe they do it before and after school) and at those times the sky fills with darting diamonds, red, blue, green, silver, purple, pink, green. If you trace the chord down from the kite itself you invariably find a child balancing precariously on the very edge of a wall or roof (it's nerve wracking to watch). Some of them are really good and your eyes travel for miles down web-thin chords before finding the child who is controlling all the diving and loop de looping.

Lala before the trip...
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Our second aim for the day was to find a camel to ride and we found one by the name of lala. Lala was an amazing camel, all decked out in his finest camel outfit with bells and brightly coloured embroidery.

He seemed completely unfazed by having both me and jon sitting on his back. Camels have such an amazing way of seeming totally above, if not entirely oblivious to, whatever craziness is going on around them - something that must come in very handy for the camel about India. You see camels pulling hugs carts in cities like Jaipur, walking down the main road surrounded by cars and trucks and motorbikes and tooting and shouting and nuttiness and they look like they are occupying an entirely different space, somehow they are not actually there surrounded by all of the mania but are in the dessert somewhere chewing a bit of plant and contemplating the sky.

...during...
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Getting onto a camel is very amusing and kind of surprising as they tip right forward when they stand up and you suddenly find yourself hanging parallel to the ground. Just as you are sure you will end up on the floor the camel straightens its front legs and you are vertical again and off you go.

Lala took us out into the desert around Pushkar where there is a lot of sand, a couple of luxury hotels and a community of people who live in tents. The people who live in the tents all came out to wave at us as we went past and later a man wrapped in a headscarf appeared from nowhere playing a musical instrument. I am not sure what the instrument is called but it is long and thin has about four strings and is played with a bow. It is very arabian sounding to our ears, perfect for the desert, and seems to have it's own reverb built in so that it echoes as if its being played in a huge concert hall. The bow has bells at one end so with a flick of the wrist he had percussion and it sounded like several people playing at once. The whole thing was totally amazing out there in all that emptiness

...seriously he's just having a lie down...
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Once Lala had  deposited us back in Pushkar, complete with the alarming and entertaining forward lurching motion before our dismount, we were approached by a lovely woman who sold me an anklet whereupon I became her best friend and she insisted that we come back to the tent she lived in for chai and so that she could henna my hands. Unfortunately we still had several things we had to do before leaving Pushkar and had to say no but not without some regret.

As Pushkar is famous for having the only Brahma temple in India we felt it would be rude not to go and see it. While we were waiting to go into the temple we got chatting to a group of blokes who told us (hilariously) that the reason that people keep wanting photos of Jon is because he looks like a Bollywood actor called Johnny Bang. When I asked Jon who Johnny Bang was he modestly informed me that he is the biggest heart-throb in India (erherm). This does explain why school girls keep taking photos of Jon and giggling.

A last look at the lake
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After so much excitement we decided to go and have a peaceful last look at the lake before heading back to Ajmer and our train for Delhi. Unfortunately we didn't realise that it was a holy day and therefore ghats were swarming with priests. The moment we stepped foot on the ghat we were nabbed by a couple of holy men and despite showing them our Pushkar Passports (the bit of string our priests had tied around our wrists the day before) and assuring them that we had spent the last bit of money we had at the temple and wouldn't have any money for a donation, they assured us that we didn't need any money and insisted that we come down to the water and take puja.

So we went. Unfortunately it did not feel at all spiritual this time, reluctant as we were. And despite telling us that it didn't matter that we had no money, that the blessing was free, once we had finished we had the old, 'how much would you like to donate for the blessing of your family' business. My priest gave up fairly quickly but Jon's began trying to search through his wallet, which was sadly empty.

Two disappointed priests and one, only slightly fuming Jon later, we didn't feel all that much like sitting by the lake so we made our way back to our lovely hotel, had a nice curry on the roof, said goodbye to the headteacher and his son and got on the bus to Ajmer.

The bus from Pushkar to Ajmer was an entirely different beast to the cockroach-infested-sick-bucket we had before. And when we pulled up at the real bus station in Ajmer we realised that we had been had by our rickshaw driver when we arrived. This bus station was not the same road-side corner where we had boarded the bus from hell, but was a real bus station complete with other busses. Clearly the other bus was run by our rickshaw driver's mate, hehe, you have to admire the initiative.