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Published: November 7th 2008
Yesterday, when I started writing, I wanted to write a little about the Indians that we’ve both met and not met, but have seen, have related to at some level or another, even if it’s just walking through a market and taking their photos or calling room service. It’s always dangerous an mostly wrong to generalize about people in a country of 1 billion so what’ I’m going to say refers I guess to an insignificant sample size. But blab on I will.
These are the friendliest people we’ve ever run into. Everywhere we go, everywhere in the crush of people that is the norm, anytime we smiled at someone they smiled back. Genuine smiles. Ask to take their photo, no problem. Ask them to step to the left for a better photo, happy to do it. All they ask in return, if anything, is to show them the photo. The children always wave, smile, say hello, even if they don’t want anything. They are just friendly, without guile agenda. The beggars are annoying but not threatening. The hotel workers are always asking if everything is to our satisfaction. The man who cleaned our room yesterday morning before the election
results were in came to me at the restaurant (he was also a waiter) before he left last night and asked if my candidate had won. When I told him that he had he said he was glad. He didn’t know anything about the election, but he was happy that my candidate won. Warm, incredibly friendly and an appearance at least of being relatively satisfied or at least accepting of their position and even their poverty it is the opposite of what we are used to in our own culture.
We’ve been told that it’s part of the Hindu religion and culture. The Hindus believe in destiny and reincarnation. Their fate in this life is set and that a different fate awaits them in the next. It’s a good way to deal with the powerlessness of a huge population. They accept their destiny. On the other hand, doesn’t it result in a lack of motivation to address serious problems in the society? If a beggar is fated to be a beggar, then why should she strive to be anything but that?
In Dan’s response to our writing about the traffic jam, he moves closer to expressing the true
intensity of the mass of humanity that we encounter in every experience we’ve had here. But even reading that, the words are inadequate. Some experiences, you just have to experience to understand.
Our 5 hour bus ride took 7 1/2 hours today. We entered Pushkar after fighting horrendous traffic. Driving is a story unto itself. We’ll skip that part. Anyway, we pulled up to the “tented camp” and it is as described. We were anxious to get to our rooms but even more anxious to get some food. The buffet was still available in the cook tent. This is a vegetarian place and worse, alcohol free. So we ate vegetables and lots of nan, the bread they make by sticking the dough to the sides of an 800 degree tandoori oven. The nan is quite good. We rushed to get to the camel fair while the light was at it’s best, before sunset.
We got on board camel carts, a flat bed wagon towed behind a camel. Each held 4 passengers and a driver, and we headed to the fair. For 30 minutes we were riding on this slab of wood with beggars accosting us and people trying
to get us to buy “precious jewelry,” “hand carved wooden boxes,” “locally crafted musical instruments,” (every kid can play frere jacques) and other wonderful bargains. We ignore them, refusing to make eye contact which is really hard and felt heartless. We smelled the fair before we saw it. LIke nothing we’ve ever experienced, to say the least. All the smells you might imagine plus an overriding haze of smoke, thick smoke, smoke from burned cow manure and camel dung. As Dan says, they smoke good shit here. You don’t only smell it, it makes you cough, and you taste it in the back of your throat. We are on an adventure after all. We rode on the camel cart for a long time, deep into the center of the fair. It’s an enormous big field where there are tens of thousands of camels, horses, cows, bulls, beggars, and the herders to take care of the animals. There were people collecting camel dung, others collecting cow dung, people selling “food” and people gathering food for the animals. We saw no latrines of any sort. Mmmmmmm. Then we got off to take pictures. It was very hard. How many camels can you
take pictures of? We took photos of the camel herders and some were really interesting and we pictures of the children. Fran and I stayed together. And the group made a meeting place at sundown next to a building that served as a landmark. If we didn’t do that and someone got lost it would be a real problem. Again, there did not appear to be a danger issue, but being lost in that environment with no language in common was a little scary. As you’ll see from some of the photos, this is a primitive culture, cell phones notwithstanding, with extreme poverty and no education.
Beggars were aggressive and played on our instincts to give. But we were warned time and time again to give nothing. Someone gave two girls some money after she photographed them (no it wasn’t Fran) and after that we were overwhelmed to a point beyond annoyance, to the point where it wasn’t enjoyable to be there. It was hard taking pictures. Camels get boring after a while. We were warned to dodge the camel dung because if it dries on your shoes you have to burn them. I was trying to find a
shot and keep one eye on Fran. You know how she wanders off. Not this time baby.
Dinner was vegetarian. And no booze. Very healthy. At 2:30 AM I awoke with a case of Delhi belly, hopefully a mild case. One additional challenge is that they shut the water off at night and after one flush, trouble. I improvised. They had brought a bucket of hot water and a small pitcher for our bathroom (the web site really stretched the case when they advertised “hot shower” - ya think?) and I appropriated that to fill the tank Two flushes down and by 5:30 AM the water was back on. But the power was off. Luckily it came back on just as I was, to use an old Kenyon college term, hurling chunks; just in time for me to judge that substantially more than half of the puke did make it to the toilet. Did I tell you that the bed had a 1 inch mattress? I was mistaken. It was only a half inch thick. Richard said this morning that all night he felt like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, strapped to the plank before they cut his guts out.
So today’s plan is to get up at 6 and take more fucking camel pictures while the light is good, come back to the tents during mid-day when it’s hot as hell, go back to the fair this evening while the light is good, eat more poisonous vegetables, not have any alcohol, sleep on the wooden slab and then leave in the morning. All the while I would navigate my shaky bowels and try not to projectile vomit at an inappropriate time. Sound good? This morning in my normal gentle way, I proposed an alternative plan. “Get me out of here now!” We are trying to arrange a car, or even a magic carpet to Jaipur, 3 hours away (remember 5 = 71/2), a hotel room, hopefully with a bed and reasonable bathroom. I suspect more than a few of our companions are envying my diarrhea.
We left the camel fair. Apparently, I'm not alone in my suffering. Everybody wanted our of Dodge. So we headed to Jaipur, another hotel, but we only get one night. We will go to another hotel tomorrow. I'm better.
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Theo Folz
non-member comment
camel fair
Sorry you don't feel well. Can you tell me why the "camel fair" exists? What is the purpose of have all these animals in this area? Do they have sales or auctions? Is it religious? I love your blog. It is entertaining and shows me all I will ever need to know about India without every having to go. In fact, you have saved me so much suffering, inconvenience and money that I will make a contribution to the costs of your trip!!!!