Pushkar (Ajmer) - Emilia

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We had a lovely evening at the Lake Palace. We were taken over there by boat from the town and when we arrived we enjoyed fresh peach daiquiris and watched the dancing that is put on every evening. Dinner was delicious but so rich I couldn’t really manage very much. However, the ambiance, being treated beautifully and everything else made the evening very special.

By the time it came to take our taxi to Pushkar (we couldn’t face the bus AGAIN, so just threw un-budgetted money at the problem) I was ready to leave. I was pleased to learn that my poor cow with the horn in her eye had received medical treatment that same day and had her horn cut back and some drops and ointment given to her. I dragged Rob back to the street where she leaves repeatedly to try and find her (he is patient) but it seems that with her health so repaired she has become rather frisky and wild and had gone for endless walkabouts. However, the nice rickshaw man who I had taken hostage into being as concerned for her as I was assured me that the vets did come and sort her out.

I was mortified on getting back to the hotel the day before we left to find one of the six puppies had been killed. She had been hit by a drunk rickshaw driver. I was so upset and found her little body with blood about her head resting on a step. I picked her up in my hands and her brown body was still warm and her eyes were closed. I gently took her to the edge of the lake and let her body drift out. It really made me feel sad, it seemed so violent and senseless that something so beautiful had been knocked out like that.

So anyway we arrived after a six hour journey last night in Pushkar. I have nothing to say, we are leaving, tomorrow. Why this place has become the huge place of popularity and mass tourism on a par with Goa and Manali I fail to see. It is a dump, it is just that the shops are better than Mount Abu. I fully admit we are not seeing it in its best light, it is overcast, humid and rainy, but still.

I was carrying a resentment within minutes of arriving here. From the moment we set foot outside our hotel we were harrassed every 50 metres of so by someone trying to give us rose petals and saying “fesival, festival, last day. You must put flowers in lake”. We gamely nodded and smiled and said “yes, yes” and tried to shuffle on. However, it soon became apparent that unless we actually WENT to the lake no one was going to leave us alone. Apparently everyone who comes to Pushkar, festival or not, has to go to the lake and do puja or prayers with one of the preists loitering about. After this you, guess what? Yes really, you have to cough up rupees for the pleasure. After you’ve made your ‘donation’ you get a piece of red cord that is tied around your wrist. Apparently this cord immunises you from being hassled by any other well meaning locals or priests as you can joyfully waggle your hand and beam and say to them smugly “I’ve done it, thank you” and under your breath “so bugger off and leave me alone”. This red cord is known in guide books as the “Pushkar Passport”.

So in a nutshell, you are bullied into going to the lake in the first place to perform prayers that you don’t want to do and don’t care about only to be asked to cough up money for the pleasure so you can get a bracelet that ensures your freedom from hassle for the rest of your time here. In my life I have NEVER seen a more blatant bullying of people to get their money. There was NOTHING spiritual about it whatsoever. If the priests just wanted us to say prayers with them as unenlightened westerners and wanted to share their message with us, then fine, but you knew all along they were only doing it to get money at the end of it. Religious Commericialism.

As I squatted by my “priest”, (I use the inverted commas because I discovered this morning that when he’s not being a white clad Brahmin trying to get money out of tourists he is bedecked in t-shirt and trainers and working on a market stall), I didn’t want to sit or put my umbrella down or relax in anyway. He kept hassling me so much about this, “why you no relax?”, that finally I sat my bottom down on the wet step and looked at him intently. He then proceeded to say prayers which I had to say after him, word for word, gave me red and yellow powder paint, rice and rose petals, which I had to cast into the water and then got a big red stripe between my eyes and some grains of rice stuck to it. After all this he started the build up to getting the donation, rabbitting on about the temple and chapattis and something else I don’t know what. So I said 50 rupees to shut him up as much as anything else. He indignantly told me that this would only cover the cost of the ‘materials’. I was huffing so much inwardly I almost suffocated. I didn’t WANT him to do any of this. So I said I’d give him 100, and that shut him up. I might add at this stage that the guidebook says any priest asking for more than 50 rupees is a con-artist and should be reported to the tourist police. Well, there we are then, I have nothing more to add.

Anyway, our hotel isn’t bad exactly but is fairly charmless and unatmospheric although it does boast the bonus extras of clean bathroom, newish towels, a swimming pool and ok coffee. Obviously there’s no side lighting and two strip lights in our room but you can’t have everything can you? Today is our first and last full day in Pushkar. I don’t know what we’ll do, there doesn’t seem to be much to do here. There are apparently over 500 temples, but really if I see another temple something terrible might happen to me. So I am going now to fill the next 9 hours of the sights and sounds of the town and hope for the best.

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