Visiting Baba

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My attempt to do nothing in Pushkar failed. Pushkar is a great place to meet people, Indians and travellers, so I ended up doing a few things...
The first day I was in Pushkar I met Mono alias Johnny, a very nice young priest that offered to show me Pushkar and told me a lot of things about this holy place. I was supposed to meet him the next day but I got lost and never made it to the meeting place on time. But Pushkar is very small, so small that FINALLY, I can find my way around without any trouble (must be time to go to a different place now...) and it also means that I ran into Mono again, and we set another time and meeting place and today was the day....
So he took me around the holy lake and after, we went into the mountains. From Pushkar you can't tell, but there are hundreds of temples, mini temlpes, in the mountains surrounding the city. This is where Baba lives. So we headed that way, with some fruits to offer to Baba, and after a hot climb in the moutains, I met my first 'real saddhu". There was a few other people there, all devotees of Baba , who looked so much younger than his age (I am not sure how old he is, but I was told that chillum kept in in very good shape)... They gave me a lot of food, and then they started doing mantras with all kinds of weird musical instruments, and I suppose the plan was to stay there until sunset but I had to meet friends so we left a couple hours later.
On the way back, we crossed some big fields, and some Indian women were sitting in the field and were talking to me. Of course I didn't understand a word of what they said so Mono was translating. I had to tell them my name and where I was from. I said Canada, but these people do not know that Canada exists. As a matter of fact, they do not know what is outside of Pushkar so I thought it was amazing to meet such people, in 2008 and Mono was, I thought, very kind and clever and told them that Canada was on the other side of the mountain that we could see in the distance. He said that to them, I looked Indian (of course, wearing my Indian clothes....), so they didn't know I wasn't. I thought this was wonderful. We said good bye, with the head tilt, and Mono said he would give me some bindhi tomorrow so I would look even more Indian!
So this was a good day again, that started with an early climb to the temple on the hill behind my hotel with my German and English friends. Yesterday we went for sunset to the Savitri temple, so this morning it was good to go for sunrise at the other temple (I forgot the name).
I finally put some pictures, found a really good internet connection. They are attached to the previous entry though... Enjoy!

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