Blogs from Pushkar, Rajasthan, India, Asia - page 25

Pushkar: no meat, no eggs, and no alcohol but heaps of fun! Especially when you're there for Holi. Holi is the Hindu festival of colour, and like all good Hindu festivals there's no shortage colour, music, fun, and strange behaviour. According to the newspaper article we read in Mumbai: Holi occurs at the onset of Spring when the weather changes for the new season. Traditionally the cold winds brought with them colds, coughs and viral fevers. To offset this, people threw coloured ayurvedic powders at each other. The powders were a mix of medicinal plant leaves and herbs that would ease the ailments that arrived with Spring. Nowadays the powders are all chemical and lack any of the medicinal roots, but still the festival remains and is celebrated by throwing coloured powder and water on friends, ... read more

Thanks for all your well wishes everyone! Its always nice to hear from everyone. I'm leaving tonight to meet up with Penny. I'm taking an overnight bus to Delhi so I'm sure I'll get plenty of sleep tonight. My last bus to Pushkar was interesting. The seats were really hard and made for people about a foot shorter then me and had the most awesome wall paper I've ever seen in a bus. It reminded me of one of my apartments in college where the kitchen has a really bad tile print wallpaper. The best part about the bus that made me keep giggling was the two glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Very fancy! Everytime I looked up I started laughing....I think that's why my bus was a "deluxe". I'm curious to see tonights bus ... read more

Not since being in Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu have we experienced a town as crusty as this. A town that is still very much integral to the hippie trail. A town where there are as many foreigners as locals and the major enterprise of the latter is servicing the former. Pushkar is Chilled-out with a capital "C" (can you see it?) and very spiritual - a holy place for those seeking enrichment of the soul. To do that, one must respect nature and not do anything naughty - no drinking booze, smoking ganja, eating meat or eggs and definitely no public displays of affection - big no no! Pushkar surrounds a lake, said to be the reult of Brahma (the creator) dropping a Lotus flower onto Earth. The town is therefore an important pilgrimage site for ... read more

Sometimes I have to wonder where I fit in this whole world. You get used to setting your feet out into places of beauty and the unknown, it's exciting and you learn so much about the world. You have many conversations under stars, over chai, in busy street corners about the world and evaluate the culture you live in and the world around you-where do I belong? The east or the west... Time passes so fast when you are travelling. It was late in the afternoon when I realized today all I had to eat was drink chai and have great conversation with an older man who has travelled the world. In a courtyard filled with flowers, sitting on cushions with a beautiful german shepherd there to rest her head we laughed and spoke about the ... read more

Manage to find ourselves an excellent hotel here, its called the Seventh Heaven and it really lives up to its name! The roof top restuarant has amazing sunset views of Pushkar and the mountains and we get to lounge around on swinging seats!!! Anyway Pushkar - its beautiful - probably the nicest place we've been to in India so far. Mum and Tim, i'm sure you'd love it here! Its quieter than most places we've been to and the shopping hehe don't get me started!! Has a slightly hippy feel about it, though don't panic don't think i'll succomb to the dreads and weird hippy 'nappy' trousers!! Our first outing in Pushkar and theres a festival going on, think its the Hindi festival, the streets are packed with people dancing, and theres a proccession with horses ... read more