14.12.2004
Pushkar
Posted by justin
Pushkar is a holy little town huddled around a magical little lake. Every year this little travellers oasis plays host to India's biggest camel fair - 200 000 people come to trade 50 000 camels and have a general party.
Even when we arrived a few weeks after the great humped event the place was buzzing. It's unashamedly a western tourist hangout, but the touts and masses of tourists are easy to bear as you pass rows of interesting little shops lined up along the winding old streets, wearing rooftop restaurants that groove to a western style, overlooking that mesmerising lake.
After so many weeks in India we were amazed at how little tourists we'd seen. Admittedly we started our India adventure in Chennai, and headed up the east coast to Kolkata - not a major tourist region - but so many times we were the only Westerners on a whole train service. McLeod Ganj was the first real evidence that tourists exist in India. Just like Vang Vieng in Laos, when we hit Pushkar we were happy to just chill out and relax, and Become One of Them.
Being a Very Holy town eggs were of course not available. Which meant masala omelettes weren't either. Which left me a little disappointed at breakfast - but there are always good fruit-muesli-yoghurt dishes lurking in certain cafes if they get the portions right. You may laugh - but developing a skill for locating quality dining establishments becomes important on the road - eating out for every meal can be hard work
Finding cows and holy men isn't. Neither is finding smooth operators dressed as holy men lurking around the lake. Offerring offerings to you to offer to the lake, in the hope you will offer them a donation. Danielle offered them the observation that as they were clearly holy men, they must obviously hold the view that money is of little importance. They were unimpressed, but we couldn't care less.
We'd already seen the smoothest operator yet - and were a little tired of charlatans. After our Vipassana experience we were a little more open to an invitation to view a video on a guru and his teachings. We trooped in to watch a DVD on Maharaji - the Indian boy wonder who was giving public speeches at age three. Now in his mid-thirties he seemed to be giving slick auditorium presentations to corporate crowds beemed via satellite across the world. He's got the website, the cable channels, the DVD, the brochures, and a rehashed commercial version of Buddhism, but he doesn't seem to have much in the way of enlightenment.
That's okay though - cause we'd already had our fill and were content to leave the spiritual fraudsters to their own devices and reach for a higher rooftop restaurant existence. Pushkar really is great for that.
