Sanka? Ya dead? Yeah mon!

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No we haven't suddenly started toboganning or recently watched too much of Cool Runnings but this was the name of one of our camel herders. Pushkar is a cute little town just a short train and bus ride away from Udaipur - or long and stressful if you're in the 2nd class carriage when suddenly floods of people get on and all scramble to join you on the not-so-comfortable bench, realistically made for 2 but can be forced to fit 4 if needs be!

But back to Pushkar - most known for its spiritual ghats where pilgrims come from all over India to scatter the ashes of their loved ones and also for its camel treks. We chose an all day trek starting out early in the morning and heading out through the outskirts of the town, obviously stopping for chai on the way!

For lunch we stopped at a family's house and Sankar cooked us an amazing meal on a stove in the garden including exciting bread rolls which I maintain he called 'waterloos'! In the 4 hours we were there we befriended the 4 children and taught them some new games. One in particular was the train game which involved Katrina lining the kids up, circling her arms, making a chugging noise and occasionally waving her arm to shout toot toot - standard practice of course!

Only afterwards did we realise that this family in the middle of nowhere may have never seen/heard a train which may explain their hilarity...who knows what they thought we were doing. We finally managed to escape on the camels to watch the sunset and head back to the hotel. To say we were sore and achy by the end would be an understatement!

Waddling around the next day we visited the famous lake and ghats and were somewhat forced to perform a pooja - a blessing for family by throwing flowers into the lake - that's after repeating what the pushy Pushkar priests said of course. Sometimes it merely consisted of pronouncing the sounds until occasionally I realised he was actually speaking some bits in English!

After managing to bargain him down from Rps1000 to 10 he blessed te family and we left. (Obviously we both think our families are worth more than Rps10 - definitely 20 or maybe 30 on a good day!)

As for our hotel, it had a huge (albeit freezing cold!) pool so we had the chance to relax a little. I use relax in the lossest sense though as there were an abundance of monkeys running around and a man with a shotgun firing at them. Thankfully the tortoises were certainly more pleasant. Oh and then there were the cows which demonstrated how you could literally be stuck between a rock and a hard place. At least they don't run at you thought...oh no wait, they do when taunted by the dogs. I don't think we've ever jumped out of the way so quickly!

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[Toni]

Kiss my lucky egg!