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Published: December 17th 2011
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15-12-2011
Into Pushkar. A very busy little town around a sacred lake where a load of different gods are worshipped, sikh, hindu and muslim. Although mainly it's sacred for Hindus. Well, after warnings form kush about dodgy priests we go into town and are immediately hastled by someone to take a flower to take to the lake and make an offering, after trying to refuse, a pushy young guy on a motorbike confronts us - "take flower! Is not for you is for God. This Holy place!". Anyway we just left them to hassle us a while longer until we escaped down an alleyway which happened to leed to the lake, where a new person confronts us with the same story, also being slightly aggressive, which didn't realy fill us with enthusiasm about this offering.
After fobbing him off as well we come to the lake where a relaxed person convinces us to take the flower and we are led to the lake. We both are spoken to by seperate priests and led through making a blessing for our families. Then comes the donation which we are advised should be a couple hundred rupees per member of family. I just didn't get a good feeling about this whole scenario so I was not going to part with that much hard earned cash. I said i'll give you everything I have in my right pocket and I did, meanwhile Radhika said to her priest truthfully that I had the money. So we gave 130 rupees which I know is only 2 euros but apparantly that was a correct amount to give, but of course they wanted more. So after convincing them that we only had a card they asked "what hotel you in?". We gave a half correct answer, to which they said "ok I find you in market". And we left.
Now after we got the blessing bracelet/band someone still tried to give us a flower but upon seeing the band immediately lost interest. This just reinforced our suspicion that although the lake is holy and many people go there as pilgrims, any tourists are conned into giving money for a cause which they are pressurised into believing in.
All said and done however I think if you believe you are making a blessing on your family there is absolutely no harm in it. INNIT!
The rest of the day was spent wandering around in the market, and finally taking a slightly wrong turn on the way home took us over 3kms in the wrong direction on a kind of main road out of Pushkar. People were honking and shouting, smiling and greeting, a couple of people also asked us if we were walking, which was slightly confusing. Then we realised that the sight of two goras walking on the main road towards Agra, which has gotta be a few hundred miles away, must have looked slightly out of place.
We walked back through a weird, dried up, sandy orchard to finally get to the hotel and a well earned bottle of water offered immediately by the friendly faced Kush. After a late lunch we mounted the camels and set off on a 1 1/2 hour trek into the desert outside the city with our guide Okmar. We arrived just after sunset and after watering the camels he emptied a bucket full of camel dung and started to prepare the fire for dinner.
While he was away another man came from nowhere and basically just stood there staring, which in the middle of the desert is a bit disconcerting. It turned out he lived in the area and knew Okmar, and helped with cooking dinner. We ate desert style chappatis, they were not flat but ball shaped, buried in the camel dung embers to cook, then rolled in ghee (butter) and served with vegetable Dahl curry and rice. We chatted into the night, drank more 'illegal' beer and under the starry desert sky, set up camp to go to sleep.
x Duncan
16-12-2011
Today we hit the road again to make the 3 hour journey back to Jaipur, The Pink City. Here the old city is bound by law to have its buildings painted a certain natural pink (like terracotta pinky kinda colour) otherwise there is a penalty. Kush had cleaned and serviced his car so it smelt alot better than us stinky people coming back from a long night in the desert. Talk about camel toe, I have camel butt! Duncs alright but I'm biting through the pain in my ass from hobbling along back this morning (I would photograph this but you really don't want a lovely picture of my bare red bum on the net).
Kush has a card which describes his profession as being involved in the media. He jokingly explains how it gets him out of problems with visiting locals with us but also mishaps with the police (in India you get done for having the slightest bit of alcohol in you... you drive, you don't drink at all). As he sometimes is a photographer for weddings and because he's just a bit cheeky we all of a sudden enter this stop and shoot action in the car. He spots the culprits (women carrying pots etc.), stops the car, Duncan frantically shoots photo's, smiles and waves goodbye. I'll add a couple of good shots from this activity.
We enter Jaipur which is more common ground for Kush, he knows exactly where to go and what things are of interest. After signing up for a full body massage (to get all cricks and cracks out of our bodies from camel riding) we head to the hotel. Once again we've been booked into a beautiful location with a roof top restaurant where we quickly work away lunch. Jaipur is alot cleaner than Delhi, and for us a generally more pleasant ambience.
We speed off into town for a quick blitz around and Kush brings us by a stone cutters workshop. All very intersted in stones and energies and chakra's and the like the man showing us how the stones are cut takes me and Dunc to meet his brother who can read palms and tell which inbalances are playing in our planets. Sounds all a bit Mystic Meg but the reading was surprisingly accurate, no 'i see you have a sibling, he is a nice person' kind of guess work. We spent quite a while here chosing stones and jewellery and ended up having to rush back to meet our massage appointment.
We have a meal in a local Indian restaurant chosen by Kush. Tonight there is alot of joking and laughing at the table. Kush even shows us some of his talents in palm reading. Mum apparantly the future holds 3 kids for me but don't worry everything financially is supposed to be on the up! Just finishing the night we join in some dancing in the car with Kush and his Indian 'favrates' 😊 Tomorrow, elephant ride, palaces and sari shopping!
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Mum
non-member comment
Hi Sweets, lovely to read you first blogs, and how envious I am of you, it sounds likw you\'re having a blast, and what a good idea to change plans and listen to the experts, and then to end up with a nice guy like Kush! Somehow I just never thought of camel rides when thinking of India, elephant rides yes, camel rides..? no... :-) Still, I didn\'t even know there was a desert! So nice to read your myriad of experiences, keep it up! Miss you loads, hugs and kisses.