Pushkar

After 9 hours of mainly chai stops for the driver and conductor I arrived sweaty and tired to Pushkar, having decided on the bus that I was quite prepared to be ripped off by a rickshaw driver and taken to my hotel (which I had specifically booked for the swimming pool). To my amazement there was not the usual comotion as i departed the bus and to my dismay not a rickshaw to be seen. I got my ruckdac into the most comfortable unccomfortable position and started trundling through the streets towards what I had been vauguley told was the direction of the bramha temple near to where I was staying, only after the man i asked wanted to hear my life story. Eventually after more directions and life stories I arrived, I was shown to a pretty minging room and just out of the corner of my eye I noticed what looked like an open cesspit but I presumed it was the pool.

So far off to a bad start, maybe a walk around town will get me in a better mood. Within 5 minutes of leaving the hotel I had been pestered by more beggers and hassled by more hairy sadhus than anywhere else I had been. On going into see the sacred lake where Brhama dropped a lotus flower I expected to see a small oasis in what otherwise was a pretty non-discript town. It was certainly no oasis, the ghats completely surrounded the lake and made it look a little like my swimming pool but there was a certain something about it I couldn't put my finger on. Just as I was starting to come round a sadhu, or at least a man posing to be one, started hastling me, offering me a flower to give as an offering, i politely declined and then he started saying how it was for my family, which is apparently the standard rouse, priest performs puja then asks you to value the price on your familys blessing asking for thousands of rupees in exchange. I walked off feeling a little deflated and saddened that in even the most holy of places the con men are out in force.

I can't say i did a huge amount over the next couple of days, a quick visit to the Bhrama temple about the only thing of real note. Otherwise I meandered through the main street, bumping into a couple familiar faces that i had met in Goa (Pushkar actually did feel like a bit of a rajasthani goa, except the fruit shacks lined a busy street and not the golden sands), and enjoying the experimental fruit cocktails the stall owners would conjour up.

As it was nearing my birthday I had decided that I would treat myself to a tiger safari at Rathambore and after a little bit of email haggling I had booked myself into a luxury resort. I cut my time short in Pushkar and got a train booked to Jaipur to kill a couple days before heading to the jungle.

I boarded a local bus to take me to the train station in the larger town of Ajmer. The bus was packed to capacity and after contemplating waiting for the next one I decided just to persevere and pushed myself on. The most interesting part of a packed bus is not the jostling for the occaisionally vacated seat, which can be fierce, or even the way a young man will never relent his seat even when the most infirm board, it is in fact the agility of the bus conductor. These most nimble of men can manouvere their way through even the tightest of spaces, at times swinging from the handrails in order to negotiate oversived luggage or sometimes just those who are fed up of standing and all the while never missing a fare!

Once I arrived I quickly checked the train was still on time and then went for a spot of lunch. As I left the station I was pounced on by a plethora of drivers eager to take me back to Pushkar, unable to convince them I was just waiting for my train I ducked into the first place I could see, a rather unsavoury drinking hole, I spent an uncomfortable hour before deciding it would be better, and safer, to sit on the platform and wait out the last hour till my train arrived.