Pushkar - Religious, Touristy, Great

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Hello there! SO we've been in Pushkar for 5 nights now and its been fantastic, such a great change from the madness of Mumbai!The first full day we had in Pushkar, we headed straight down to the famous lake, where all the Ghats are. In these Ghats, people come from near and far to bathe and cleanse themselves. As soon as we got down to the first Ghat, we got approched by 'holy people', we had heard before some are not so 'holy' and do a blessing for you then make you pay stupid amounts of money so naturally we were wary of them. Although after a while we let them do their blessing on us, and made a small donation, it was actually quite nice. After the blessing they put colourful bracelets on us, these were our 'pushkar passports', the holy men said that if we wore these we wouldn't get hassled anymore, for the most part this was true.

The restaurants around this place are great, almost all are rooftop restaurants that have great views of the lake and the surrounding hills, alot of my pictures are from these rooftops. Our only problem with the restaurants here are that because it is such a holy place there is no meat (including eggs) or alcohol, although almost every restaurant and guest house serves beer on the sly. I cant wait to get to delhi and eat some meat!!!!!

Our guest house were staying at is great, its like 1 pound 30p and we have tv, shower, and a pool which we havnt seen in India yet, its sooo nice on those really hot days. And one of the guys that works here is a little gay man named Hanumen. He makes us laugh constantly and calls us 'darling'! Made sure I got a pic with him!

As I said, in Mumbai we bought some traditional Indian clothing so in Pushkar we had the chance to wear them. We go loads of compliments (especially Hanumen) from the Indians, but later found out they were wedding clothes haha! Still love them! That day were wore the clothes we went to more Ghats around the lake including Gandhi Ghat where Ganhi's ashes were spread, that was really cool. Another Brahma holy man did a blessing on us, which was nice. We also went to the Brahma Temple, which is one of the only ones in the world so is obviously a big pilgrmage point. We couldn't bring camera's in but it wasn't a problem as the temple was quite dissapointing really.

A couple days ago we went on a Camel ride and saw the sunset, that was amazing. We also saw many, desert villages which was really interesting. Jays camel was going crazy at the start, i enjoyed this very much but he was pretty worried I think ha! When we stopped in the desert a local man played some music for us and so that was really nice.

On our last full day, Jay was pretty ill so I went of exploring on my own. Started climbing up the side of the hill as Im way too manly to go up on the steps! I saw a freaking rattle snake climbing up, i froze and them picked up the pace..that was crazy! It was worth it though, the views from the top of the hill were great.

So today we checked out of our guest house and are getting on a sleeper bus to Delhi tonight, havnt been on one of those yet so should be interesting, takes bout 10 and a half hours. So our next stop is Delhi, we dont want to spend too much time there but would like to get our Vietnam Visa there if possible. Speak soon x

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