Pushkar, Rajasthan, India

Pushkar, India

Our arrival in Pushkar left a lot to be desired... Since the train from Barhatpur to Ajmer was late, we didn't arrive at the station in Ajmer until around 2am. We then had to go out of the train station and barter with the auto-rickshaw drivers to make a late night drive to Pushkar, about 11km away. This was quite a hassle, since it was late and it is ingrained in these drivers to rip foreigners off. The car drove through the night, over the mountain that separates the two towns, and down into the small town of Pushkar. Since no vehicles are allowed inside the town proper, we were dropped off in deserted streets and left to our own devices to try and find the hotel we had reserved. A little twist in this search was that the hotel we booked with was full, so they'd transferred our reservation to another hotel... We wandered around the completely deserted, locked up town for a good 45 minutes trying to find this new hotel. We finally approached the only people we saw, a group of men sitting around drinking chai and watching TV, and they pointed us in the right direction. It was around 2:45am by this point. We went to the hotel, pushed our way past all the cows blocking the entrance, banged on the door, rang the bell, and yelled (I was losing my cool by this point), but were met with only silence. Locked tight! Both of us were really tired from lack of sleep the previous night and such a late night this time that all we wanted was a place to sleep. Randomly, a man came riding along on his bike and kindly helped us find a hotel; he was much less timid than us and banged and yelled until someone opened the door. The second place we tried with him turned out to be nice, so we threw down our bags and crashed for the night. Quite coincidentally, we ended up at one of the places we were going to check the next morning as a better place to stay for the duration of the time in Pushkar.

Pushkar is a pilgrimage town for Hindus. The town itself is made up of whitewashed buildings surrounding a circular lake. Legend has it that Brahma (the creator of the universe) dropped a lotus petal here, creating the holy lake. An interesting twist to the tale is that Brahma took a milkmaid as a second wife when his consort, Saraswati (goddess of education) was late for a ceremony that required her presence. She was (understandably) angry at Brahma for this little mishap, and cursed him to never have temples built to worship him -- with the exception of one temple in Pushkar. And still, to this day, Pushkar has one of the only temples dedicated to Brahma in the entire world. Pilgrims flock here to worship at this temple, bathe in the lake, and go to the other 400 temples in the vicinity. With all of this worshipping going on, you can imagine that the streets are full of people, bells ring from the temples, chanting goes on over loudspeakers, cows wander everywhere... it's a pretty atmospheric place.

Our hotel! We "splurged" and stayed at a nicer hotel ($12/night) -- complete with a pool, green courtyard, views, a TV, and hot water in the room!

colors! pigments for paints.

watching the sunset over the lake and town.

The street view from our window. India is awash with color.

More colorful pilgrims

A local girl took this of her friend with Sarah's camera. Is it art?

The other view from our window

Sarah at the pool!