Ducks, Rats and Holy Lakes

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Imagine the scene, you're silently scanning the foliage for a sight, a glimpse of movement. Your eyes strain...what was that? Nothing, hopes dashed. You've been waiting, hoping for hours. Maybe, just maybe, you'll be the lucky one. Lucky enough to sight one of the rarest and most majestic animals on earth, the Bengal Tiger. Another sound, a twig breaking, your eyes dart looking for a flash of yellow fur. Nothing. Patience is the key, silence...silence...waiting... Antelopes graze, crocodiles lie baking in the morning sun, then a new noise, one you've not heard before: 'MICK! MICK, MICKKKEEEEYY! IS THAT A DUCK?...N'NO, NOOO, IT'S KINGFISHER! MICK, IT'S A KINGFISHER, THERE! THERE! YOU SEE IT?!

Any tiger within a million miles has just fled.

'You're not wrong Babs. It's a kingfisher. Great spot, Babs, great spot'.

And with it, our hopes dashed. Tigers 0, Thames Estury Twitchers 1. It was a lovely looking kingfisher, no doubt about it. But it wasn't a tiger. Babs, Mick, thanks a f*cking lot.

Not much more to say really. There's two ways of seeing the (beautiful) Rathambore National Park, a jeep or a big bus thing. Having not booked months in advance, we were in the bus thing. With Babs and Mick. Nuff said.

We should have stuck around longer for another couple of safaris, but instead we headed to the station for the train to Pushkar, north a bit and a wee bit west. Things weren't looking good when I got shat on twice by a bird, or birds seen in vicinity. Jenny was also shitting on me, but at scrabble, watched by a crowd of approximately 3,000 locals. Approximately would have been a good word to have had, but Jenny had the X, as well as the Q and Z, so I had no chance really. Still, we made it to Pushkar surprisingly easily, and knowing we'd settle there for a few days, we unpacked our rucksacks.

Pushkar's a teeny town (15,000) built around a very holy lake. We've been reading a book all about Hindu Mythology, and could bore you with the long though interesting story about the lake, but won't because you'll get bored and realise you should be working and not reading this which is what you might do anyway. Either that or you'll think, 'They're spending an awful lot of time writing blogs, shouldn't they be out there doing stuff?' It amazes me too, it really does.

So, Pushkar is a lovely and quite quiet for India. We stayed at a brilliant place (Raghav Resort) which is a garden nursery with a few bedrooms where you can stay. This meant that we had a beautiful big garden in which to chill out and read/write/bake in the sun. The lake itself was described by Jenny as 'a bit like a municipal reservoir.' I'm sure that the throngs of rope twirling western pilgrims to Pushkar who spend every evening gathered at the waters edge for a sunset, drums and 'hey, like wow' session would disagree, but in truth, it is a bit like a municipal reservoir, if a very holy one. Of more interest to us were the two big hills, one much bigger than the other, each with a temple parked precariously on top. And so we plodded up to each of these. We seem to have got into the habit of walking up big, steep hills around about midday, which can only be foolish. But we do like a good walk, partly because it's a bit of an escape from people trying to sell you stuff, and partly because most other activities involve a lot of sitting around on our arses. To be fair, we were a bit more sensible for the second and much bigger hill, up to the Sivrita Temple, and were back down by about 10am so we could spend the rest of the day sat on our arses.

Quite a few people spend weeks or months in Pushkar and it's easy to see why. It's got a very laid back feel and although the shop owners are on the enthusiastic side of assertive, it's pretty easy going. We're also very much in camel territory, the animal that is, not the cigs. We flirted with the idea of mounting a camel called Jonny, but we as we are heading to the desert soon, we decided that Jonny would have to wait. We also suspect that every camel is called Jonny: time will tell. Our final memorable event was Ant being butted up the butt by a cow. It could have been worse as, as the right horn connected with the right cheek, and penetration was avoided.

And from there, it was another bus ride to Bikaner....or so we thought. We lugged ourselves and rucksacks on to the 10pm bus. On arrival the chap in the travel agents kindly pointed out that our ticket was booked for the day before. To be honest the blame was 50/50 as the bloke who'd booked our ticket was dopey, but we should have double checked it. After much fraught negotiation (and additional money) we managed to secure an upgrade to a sleeper seat on the bus we needed. There then followed a rather surreal 20 mins, where the three of us sat there blowing up some balloons, which we'd offered as a sort of peace offering for the guy's 3 year old kid. We've taken to carrying balloons for diverting kids who have been sent out to pester for rupees.

So we boarded the bus, thrilled to be on there and excited about our upgrade to find that we're actually sleeping in the luggage rack...well it was a compartment above the usual seats. Anyway, after 6 hours a face appears to tell us that we're in their seat. At this point we realize that we'd actually missed our stop. Not entirely our fault, as we'd be told it was an 8 hour journey. This seems to be a favourite trick of travel agents, who like to create the illusion that you arrive at day break rather than 4am. We're then unceremoniously turfed off the bus on to the roadside. Thankfully an opportunistic auto rickshaw driver appeared to transport us to our new digs.

Unfortunately this hotel was pretty unpleasant. I think so far, we've been pretty lucky with our choices, so our standards have been getting a bit high. This place was like a prison cell, but so grimy that you'd be shouting for a transfer to another prison. It was called Evergreen - but we renamed it to neverclean and evergrim.

Bikaner is a bit off the main tourist route, so we had to work a bit harder for our fun. There is a delightful fort and also a camel farm (which had 300 camels). We were thrilled by this place, although in truth it was so darn hot we went a bit 'mad dogs and english men', spending the hours between noon and sunset in a somewhat delirious state.

However, our key reason for visiting Bikaner was the rat temple. Basically the belief is that the rats are reincarnated saints, so people bring offerings of coconut milk and sweets, whilst the rather fat and contented blighters have free run of the temple. We're just used to seeing rats scurrying away in dark corners around bins or grimy restaurants in Soho, so it's a tad bizarre to visit a place where every corner has 20 or so of them feasting on coconut milk or just generally chilling out. The advice here is to wear socks to avoid getting your feet covered in rat shit. Fearing a fashion faux pas, Ant opted for the rat shit and is probably being slowly poisoned as we speak.

If you get the chance, we would also recommend that you check out the latest Bollywood flick 'Namaste London'. We merrily headed along unaware of the film’s content, but at the end of the film we had to make our way out carefully for fear of being lynched as it reveals a few interesting stereotypes about the Brits. One memorable scene had a frightfully posh set of parents telling a young British born Indian bloke that if he wanted to marry their daughter he'd have to change his name from Imran to Ian and sign a declaration saying that neither him nor his friends or family had ever been involved in terrorism. Very scary as the whole cinema was quite rightly boo-ing these characters and whooping with joy when the Brits were put in their place.

Anyway, following our lucky escape at the cinema w had just enough time for another ponce around a fort before hitting another night bus further out into the desert. We just can't get enough of the luggage rack!

So, some interesting facts after one month:
1.5 beers consumed between two of us, no fags
792 forts visited
1,987 bottles of water consumed
50/50 western toilets to long drops
Stools good to firm, soft in places
1 bus crash
6 different skin colours on Ant's body
2 large packages of stuff sent home which probably won't make it

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Photos

Deer-things
No tigers

Paints for sale
We later saw a cow trying to eat these

Camel Farm
Camels! Faaarsands of 'em!

Rats
Apparently these are reincarnations of saints. Saints which shit everywhere.

Rat socks
fetching.

Night Bus
The sleeper part of the bus. Immediatly above the 'seater' bit.

Comments

[Phil]

Did Mick and Babs have a guitar with them, and start singing ler bamba? Think we might have met them somewhere before ...

[Miller]

No tigers here in Antigua either
... well, not since the Bangladeshis left for Guyana at any rate. But they do have vast great herds of wild donkeys roaming free across the savannahs. Result!

[pads]

camel toes......nice touch.