After arriving in Ajmer, we were greeted with another chaotic Indian train station. We followed our guide through the crowds and to our two private vehicles. Because I was feeling ill, I got in the front of one for the cars and the 45 minute drive to Pushkar was all a bit of a blur.
Once we arrived we luckily had four hours of free time before our late afternoon camel safari so I crawled right into bed. I really wanted to do the camel safari, but the thought of being bobbled up and down and all around after being sick all night sounded a bit like a bad idea.
After a good nap and a shower, I decided I was going to do it. By this time, one if the other guys in our group, James, had now been sick and throwing up and so he decided to miss it.
(We still really have not figured out what caused it and whether James and I were sick from the same thing. For dinner the evening before, both myself and another girl had the exact same meal and she was fine (aside from a little bit of tummy issues later). For lunch, four of us had done the cooking class and only James and I had gotten ill. Everything else Dave and I had eaten the same stuff and he was fine. So I will never know what caused it, but I definitely could have done without! My stomach cramps in Agra seemed like nothing compared to it!)
We walked out the front of our hotel and before us were 11 camels, some more ornately dressed up than others. Every year Pushkar holds one of the biggest animal fairs in the world, called the Pushkar Camel Fair. It had just taken place a few weeks before, and one of the camels, Krishna, was still very decorated from it.
We hopped on our camels, handed off our bags to be put in the camel cart, and continued in a single line of camels through the streets of Pushkar, past a Sikh temple, through more rural areas and then finally into more desert like area. All the while, bopping up and down, up and down. Trying to go down slopes on a camel is interesting. They bend their knees inwards and seem to have a lot of trouble!
Crossing water
We reached our sunset spot amid a sandy plain, and I have to admit, I was thankful for the break. I tend to get car sick, and riding on a camel was ten times worse then most car rides. Whether I had been sick the night before or not, I'm sure I still wouldn't have felt great!
My camel, Lucky
The camel cart
Dave arriving
Dismounting a camel:
At the sunset spot there were some other camel groups and lots of camels just sitting and chilling out. Some were lying down on their side, which I had never seen camels do before! There were some people performing music and fire stunts, and then on the other side some local villagers had come up and were performing some horrible attempt at music and then desperately trying to sell their CD.
Me and Krishna
Alannah and kissing camels
Once the sun had gone down, everyone hopped back on their camels and I opted for a ride back in the slightly less bumpy camel cart. Kids came running after relentlessly begging for money and biscuits and we were going slow enough that it was hard to shake them off despite saying no.
We got off the camels in town and Shakti led us around the streets of Pushkar to a restaurant by the lake. I ordered a soup trying to get something in me and it was the perfect dinner! We walked back to the hotel and went straight to bed.
The next morning we met our group at 10:30 after a much needed lie in, and wandered through the streets of Pushkar to have brunch in a rooftop restaurant with views of the town and the lake. While were up there a big wedding procession went down the street.
Wedding
Pushkar itself is a small holy Hindu pilgrimage town, with one of the world's few Brahma temples. In the centre of town is its sacred lake surrounded by rows of ghats and hundreds of temples. It is (supposedly) conservative and no booze or meat is allowed in the city, although marijuana is plentiful.
It all sounds much nicer and more spiritual than it is. The real Pushkar is full of westerners, touts, flies, and scammers. The westerners are mostly Israeli hippies, who after serving their army stint come to Puskhar for months to just chill out (the abundance of weed may have something to do with it). If you want to find falafals and kebabs in India, this is the place!
Our hotel had a sign out front noting to cover shoulders and knees, and yet there were numerous people walking around in short sundresses (and lots for sale in the shop!) It was probably the least conservative acting place we had seen in India! It's a bit sad that this holy place has become so touristy and westernized.
We checked out some of the shops, and then the Brahma temple which was one of the least interesting temples we had seen in India. Surrounded by flies, beggars and unrelenting women trying to sell bangles and other wares, we quickly continued on and made our way to a part of the lake where we had eaten dinner the night before.
Brahma temple
We grew to love the cows
Tattoo? No thanks!
One of the many places to get falafals and kebabs
The "holy men" who hang out by the lake will try to scam you into bringing you down for a blessing and asking you for a donation. Despite us being aware of this, we even got tricked into going down despite protests and telling them we weren't going to pay. It started as Dave was taking a photo of me near the lake when a man flower thrust a flower into his hand and just told Dave to just put it in the lake. Insisting he didn't want money or anything after we had said no thanks, he just said to put it in the lake. We started to walk off but then another guy started yelling at us that we were being completely disrespectful by not putting it in the lake. We said fine we would put it in the lake but we were not giving money. The guy agreed with us (of course he didn't want money he said) and just showed us where to go, but before we knew it I was being grabbed in one direction by a man in white and Dave in the other direction with the guy who was saying we were being disrespectful, and they were starting their blessing. Ugh! We both stated we were not giving any money, and of course at the end they both asked for a donation. (After Dave had told his guy how disrespectful he was being to us, he had the audacity to tell Dave that sometimes people from Canada give $10, but that it was up to him how much he wants to donate).
We agreed to give them 100 rupees which they were not happy with but I got angry at the guy and he relented. In retrospect we shouldn't have given them anything as it just reinforces it. It doesn't matter how many times you tell people you wont give them money and they agree, they know most people will be guilted into giving in the end.
After that, we were good and done with Pushkar so we just headed back to the hotel. By then we just had two day rooms for the whole group because we were heading out on the overnight train to Delhi that evening. We hung around and rested.
That evening we went to the home of one of the local Intrepid contacts, and were treated to a home cooked Indian Thali meal cooked over a wood fire on the rooftop of their home.
November is wedding season and there were numerous weddings going on around town. A part of almost all weddings are fireworks! (Indians will find almost any excuse for fireworks it seems!) So as we sat on the roof top, fireworks went off all around us. It was quite the entertainment, along with the monkeys they kept having to threaten with a big stick as they were quite interested in our meals.
Cooking our dinner
After dinner we had our last bonfire in India, complete with the burning of cow dung patties, which we had seen many of drying on the side of roadsides all over India.
At 9pm, we hopped into a bus and made our way back to Ajmer for our overnight train to Delhi.
As we made our way to the platform we could see waves of movement on the tracks: rats! Tons of them! We all were quite fascinated watching them, as there were hundreds of them, some quite large! (Was too dark to properly capture them in a photo).
Watching the rats
Our train pulled up just before 11pm and, having originated elsewhere, there were already many people sleeping in the berths. The berths are basically made up of 8 in each section: 6 on one side of the train - 3 on each side of the window where a seating bench would be (lower, middle, upper) and then 2 across from the aisle (upper and lower). Our group was mostly together but didn't have a whole section to ourselves. Because people get on and off at different times, it means if someone new gets on or off there is a huge commotion of noise, lights being turned on, loud talking, etc....
Dave and I had the two berths on the one side which were good because they had individual curtains, but bad because when people did get on and walk down the aisle they would lean right into them and end up pulling the curtains open. By 1:30 am we pulled into Jaipur and the lights were turned on and loud talking in Hindi disturbed everyone in our group as Indian men took their berths amongst us. It seemed to take forever to get settled. The train made a few other stops along the way and moments of sleep were few and far between. By 3:30 am we started pulling into suburbs of Delhi and so more noise of people getting off disturbed us, as well as the stench of Delhi - thick smog and smoke, made way worse in the night as people burn everything they can including toxic plastic.
Our berths
Looking down the aisle from our berths
By 4:45 am we were preparing to get off the train, all of us exhausted from little or no sleep and all wanting to be anywhere else but back in Delhi. We got picked up and driven to our hotel where we had two day rooms. I plopped myself on a bed, head pounding, hoping for others to want to take a nap (there were a total of 4 beds between the 2 rooms). I was the only one who seemed to want to (others were waiting for their own hotel rooms, or leaving earlier). I closed my eyes and the others piled into the other hotel room for masala chai and toast. I felt bad I was the only one in that room, but SO incredibly thankful for the much needed nap as we weren't getting into Colombo until 10:30 that evening and I would have been completely useless without it!
The hotel managed to piss off almost everyone in our group with their horrible lack of customer service skills (this was entirely by the management). It left us all hating Delhi just a little more than when we had left the first time. When we had left the hotel at the start of our tour the manager had promised they would provide Dave and I with airport drop off because I argued they hadn't actually picked us up even though we had paid for it. When we arrived, Shakti spoke to the manager and made sure that it was set and that they would honour that. The manager agreed. Well, then a new manager came on duty and he refused, even after talking to the first manager. We do not know exactly what happened but Shakti spent a long time arguing in Hindi and getting pretty angry. He finally turned to Dave and said "your airport ride is free." (Not actually free since we had indeed paid for it). We are pretty sure that Intrepid or Shakti himself paid for it and that the hotel broke its promise based on comments he made to Dave. Poor Shakti had already spent all morning arguing with them because of another issue. I honestly don't understand it because they basically get most of their business from Intrepid and every other hotel we stayed at (and every aspect of the trip) was phenomenal. It was a shitty way to end it off.
We walked down the road to a crappy little restaurant for lunch and then made our way to the airport. The spotless airport with its ultra polite staff was like night and day from the crappy Karol Bagh area we were staying and we were just giddy to be leaving Delhi behind.
We had a blast and absolutely loved Rajasthan, but after ending in Delhi we were ready to say goodbye; Goodbye to the smog, the honking, the spitting, the crazy traffic, the begging, the scamming, the garbage, and the cows - well, to be honest we got to really liking the cows. They were the most chilled out things in India. I guess eating garbage all day does that...
