For the weekend Andrew and I with nine other friends headed out on a Friday to Pushkar, and the largest mammal fair in the world. That's right, the annual Pushkar camel festival. They have a website here. They estimate that 25,000 camels are traded each year. Pushkar is a small town in the state of Rajasthan, a short bus ride from Ajmer. We headed out on the relatively expensive Shatabdi Express Train, which is a fancy seated car train in which they feed you and serve you chai. It's quite comfortable. It also completes the journey a couple hours faster than all of the other trains, which means we left at about 8 am and arrived in Ajmer by one in the afternoon. From the train station we took rickshaws to the bus stand, 2 km away. Then we got into a bus (of course, first we had to switch buses about 3 times because people kept telling us conflicting information), and took the hour drive up over a mountain range to Pushkar. We got into Pushkar and immediately went to our hotel, the Diamond, and dropped off our stuff. Pushkar is a rather small town, centered around a small lake in the middle of the Rajasthani desert. Pushkar is considered a holy town, because the lake is actually an eye of a goddess who fell to earth, so it is a completely vegetarian town and is completely dry. Although "special" hash drinks and food are readily available at any of its many rooftop cafes. Some cafes also serve eggs (which are considered non-veg in Indian society). For the most part we were surrounded by other tourists, mostly European and Israeli. Like Manali, many of the signs were written in Hindi, English, and Hebrew. We went to a small rooftop café (which served beer, listed on the menu under the codename special cold drink). The cafés are very relaxing, with lots of pillows, wind chimes, and a great view of the sunset of the lake and the desert. At these cafes it's impossible to eat a meal in under an hour. For some reason it just takes a lot longer. The service is slow and the seats are comfy. So if the conversation is good it usually took us at least 2 hours to eat a meal. The sun finally went down and we decided to wander around the town. We finally ended up at stage for the camel fair. It was surprisingly similar to a county fair back home. It was a large all white stage, decorated with ribbon in the back, and all lit up in too bright white light. I reminded me of the Alameda County Fairs in which I used to perform tap dances and watch magicians. I became surprising nostalgic for home and my parents. The show was obviously going to be late so Andrew, Summer, and Eric and I decided to walk around awhile before the show started. I decided I wanted an ice cream cone and the guy said 10 Rs, an appropriate price. Then two of my friends each wanted some, and when we paid him he refused to give us change. He changed his price to 30 Rs, obviously outrageous, and refused to give us our change. For some reason I had had enough, I wasn't going to get ripped off by this stupid ice cream seller. We started to raise our voices in Hindi, which always gets attention. Finally I saw two police men walk buy and called them over (they also didn't speak any English). We explained to him that this man was trying to rip us off. By then we probably had a crowd of 15-20 people. Now, I didn't quite care about the extra money that he was charging us, about a US Dollar extra, but it was the principle, and it is kind of fun being able to negotiate in Hindi. A man standing behind Eric asked what was going on and apparently knew some English. He said that they were all gathered there because this ice cream man always tries to rip everybody off and they hated him too-they were there to support us. It was apparent that when the crowd started yelling with the police at the ice cream man that he was going to give in. He gave us the appropriate change and we happily ate our ice cream cones and walked up and down the street. Later we passed him again and I think out of the corner of my eye I saw him smile-but that would be unusual for and Indian man so who knows. We watched the show which consisted of school age girls dancing traditional Indian dances. It reminded me even more of the fairs back home, complete with technical difficulties and speakers at a volume too high for them to handle so they crackle. After the show we ate dinner at another rooftop café. Many of them try to imitate "continental food" such as nachos, which is an appreciated break from Indian food. But they are all hit or miss, mostly miss. We got back to the hotel, where there were people sitting in the courtyard drinking tea, although it was already past midnight. We woke up around nine and got ready to go out exploring on Saturday morning. First of course, we had to go to a café, this one called Babu's, I believe. They served a breakfast of curd with Muesli (a granola mix) and fruit. I usually stay away (curd just does not sound appetizing) but for some reason I was adventurous and now I can't get enough, I've had it almost every day for breakfast since coming back from Pushkar. By noon we were out and walking around the town. We went back to the Camel Festival and it was quite different in the daytime, a lot more dusty and bright. We saw horse dancing, and camel dancing, both were incredibly cruel to the animals and we quickly decided we didn't want to stay around for too long. But then we looked behind the stadium-at the REAL camel fair. It was like a different world. Behind the stadium was nothing. Well, besides desert and hundreds and thousands of camels. They were literally as far as you could see. Here there was no electricity or running water. Just haggard windblown Indian men huddled under blankets hung for shade watching over their camels. Some camels were shaven and decorated to lure in buyers. We walked and walked and finally got to a sand dune where we could see just how far the camels went on for. It was pretty impressive. At the watering hole we trying talking to some of the camel sellers, but they didn't speak English or Hindi so we never figured out how much a camel costs. Nobody seemed to care that we were walking around, there weren't any people selling ice cream or dancing camels. It was a completely different fair than what was happening 800 meters away. It was easy to infer that this part of the fair is very similar to the fair that was probably held on these sand dunes hundreds of year ago. That these men would have gathered at night for dances and festivals, and that part of the fair has evolved into the white painted stage back in the stadium. But this part of the fair was very startling bare and these men were obviously all business. We quickly grew hot and tired and started to walk back towards the town to do some shopping. Andrew and I were on the hunt for deals for presents back home, but unfortunately because of the fair all of the prices were inflated. Demand was obviously high enough that the sellers did not bargain at all, which was frustrating. I did end up picking up some pretty cool little things here and there though. Andrew had seen these ottomans which are patchwork embroidered and are basically oversized pillows when we were in Jaipur. We didn't have time to pick them up then, but he's been talking about them ever since but we couldn't find them. Apparently they are a Rajasthani specialty because we found them in Pushkar, and got two oversized ottomans/pillows for 800 Rs, about $16 (don't worry they aren't stuffed, so they'll fit in the suitcase). We all met up at a café for a quick bit to eat (about an hour long), and then decided to check out the gigantic ferris wheels next to the stadium. Okay, really they were normal American sized, but in the middle of the desert, they looked huge. We boarded for 15 Rs, and road around in circles. It went surprisingly more quick than I expected and it was a lot of fun and gave us an opportunity to see Pushkar from above. Next we went on a spinning tea cups-like ride, and then a swinging ship. The ship was actually my favorite, like a giant swing, and everybody always has fun on a giant swing. When we tired of the rides we went to Bird Eye Café for a dinner. There we saw another group of University of California EAP students so we took over the back half of the restaurant with about 20 of us and sat until they kicked us out of the restaurant around midnight. Our hotel was nice. It was a small room with shared bathrooms. In the morning the bathroom actually had a warm shower! Although it wasn't really necessary in the desert. It was all pretty clean and with a helpful staff who stayed up late until all guests had arrived to lock the gate. They also had a small restaurant but we mostly only ordered chai in the mornings while waiting for everybody to wake up. Sunday was our last day in Pushkar, so we woke at nine and went back to Bird Eye for breakfast. I was determined to ride a camel. So after breakfast Andrew and I split off to go find a camel and ride it around the stadium. They charged us 100 Rs (about $2) for about a 5 minute ride, both of us were on one camel. It was a good deal to me. Summer showed up as we were riding the camel (she had went to pick up a bedspread first) so we got some pictures of us on the camel. It was a lot of fun actually, although kind of scary. When a camel gets up it lifts its back legs then its front, and a camels legs are about five feet tall. So while the camel is transitioning and its back legs are straight and front legs still bent on the ground, you're at about a 45 degree angle and it fells like you're about to topple off the front. Summer and some of our other friends had gone on a camel trek a week before, three days and two nights on a camel in the desert. Andrew and I had considered going but I had food poisoning so we didn't. I'm glad we didn't. A camel is not comfortable by any comparison, its really shaky and unstable feeling. Plus a camel is a lot wider than a horse and straddling it your legs are pushed quite far apart and it's uncomfortable. The short ride was enough for us. Then we walked around some more. Pushkar is nice for walking. The streets and the lake are surprisingly clean. Although we didn't go near the lake to avoid being accosted by sadhus offering pujas. Mostly we walked around unbothered. It was obvsiouly a town geared toward tourism and tried to make it as touist friendly as possible. I found a cool notebook made of camel leather that I plan to use as a scrapbook when I get home (so soon!). It was time to start heading back to Ajmer, so we met back at the hotel around 2 and took the bus back to the train station to catch our 3:55 train. We arrived back in Delhi around 11 pm, just in time to catch the last metro train back to our neighborhoods. Overall it was a pretty relaxing weekend and I enjoyed Pushkar a lot.
For the weekend Andrew and I with nine other friends headed out on a Friday to Pushkar, and the largest mammal fair in the world. That's right, the annual Pushkar camel festival. They have a website here. They estimate that 25,000 camels are traded each year. Pushkar is a small town in the state of Rajasthan, a short bus ride from Ajmer. We headed out on the relatively expensive Shatabdi Express Train, which is a fancy seated car train in which they feed you and serve you chai. It's quite comfortable. It also completes the journey a couple hours faster than all of the other trains, which means we left at about 8 am and arrived in Ajmer by one in the afternoon. From the train station we took rickshaws to the bus stand, 2 km away. Then we got into a bus (of course, first we had to switch buses about 3 times because people kept telling us conflicting information), and took the hour drive up over a mountain range to Pushkar. We got into Pushkar and immediately went to our hotel, the Diamond, and dropped off our stuff. Pushkar is a rather small town, centered around a small lake in the middle of the Rajasthani desert. Pushkar is considered a holy town, because the lake is actually an eye of a goddess who fell to earth, so it is a completely vegetarian town and is completely dry. Although "special" hash drinks and food are readily available at any of its many rooftop cafes. Some cafes also serve eggs (which are considered non-veg in Indian society). For the most part we were surrounded by other tourists, mostly European and Israeli. Like Manali, many of the signs were written in Hindi, English, and Hebrew. We went to a small rooftop café (which served beer, listed on the menu under the codename special cold drink). The cafés are very relaxing, with lots of pillows, wind chimes, and a great view of the sunset of the lake and the desert. At these cafes it's impossible to eat a meal in under an hour. For some reason it just takes a lot longer. The service is slow and the seats are comfy. So if the conversation is good it usually took us at least 2 hours to eat a meal. The sun finally went down and we decided to wander around the town. We finally ended up at stage for the camel fair. It was surprisingly similar to a county fair back home. It was a large all white stage, decorated with ribbon in the back, and all lit up in too bright white light. I reminded me of the Alameda County Fairs in which I used to perform tap dances and watch magicians. I became surprising nostalgic for home and my parents. The show was obviously going to be late so Andrew, Summer, and Eric and I decided to walk around awhile before the show started. I decided I wanted an ice cream cone and the guy said 10 Rs, an appropriate price. Then two of my friends each wanted some, and when we paid him he refused to give us change. He changed his price to 30 Rs, obviously outrageous, and refused to give us our change. For some reason I had had enough, I wasn't going to get ripped off by this stupid ice cream seller. We started to raise our voices in Hindi, which always gets attention. Finally I saw two police men walk buy and called them over (they also didn't speak any English). We explained to him that this man was trying to rip us off. By then we probably had a crowd of 15-20 people. Now, I didn't quite care about the extra money that he was charging us, about a US Dollar extra, but it was the principle, and it is kind of fun being able to negotiate in Hindi. A man standing behind Eric asked what was going on and apparently knew some English. He said that they were all gathered there because this ice cream man always tries to rip everybody off and they hated him too-they were there to support us. It was apparent that when the crowd started yelling with the police at the ice cream man that he was going to give in. He gave us the appropriate change and we happily ate our ice cream cones and walked up and down the street. Later we passed him again and I think out of the corner of my eye I saw him smile-but that would be unusual for and Indian man so who knows. We watched the show which consisted of school age girls dancing traditional Indian dances. It reminded me even more of the fairs back home, complete with technical difficulties and speakers at a volume too high for them to handle so they crackle. After the show we ate dinner at another rooftop café. Many of them try to imitate "continental food" such as nachos, which is an appreciated break from Indian food. But they are all hit or miss, mostly miss. We got back to the hotel, where there were people sitting in the courtyard drinking tea, although it was already past midnight. We woke up around nine and got ready to go out exploring on Saturday morning. First of course, we had to go to a café, this one called Babu's, I believe. They served a breakfast of curd with Muesli (a granola mix) and fruit. I usually stay away (curd just does not sound appetizing) but for some reason I was adventurous and now I can't get enough, I've had it almost every day for breakfast since coming back from Pushkar. By noon we were out and walking around the town. We went back to the Camel Festival and it was quite different in the daytime, a lot more dusty and bright. We saw horse dancing, and camel dancing, both were incredibly cruel to the animals and we quickly decided we didn't want to stay around for too long. But then we looked behind the stadium-at the REAL camel fair. It was like a different world. Behind the stadium was nothing. Well, besides desert and hundreds and thousands of camels. They were literally as far as you could see. Here there was no electricity or running water. Just haggard windblown Indian men huddled under blankets hung for shade watching over their camels. Some camels were shaven and decorated to lure in buyers. We walked and walked and finally got to a sand dune where we could see just how far the camels went on for. It was pretty impressive. At the watering hole we trying talking to some of the camel sellers, but they didn't speak English or Hindi so we never figured out how much a camel costs. Nobody seemed to care that we were walking around, there weren't any people selling ice cream or dancing camels. It was a completely different fair than what was happening 800 meters away. It was easy to infer that this part of the fair is very similar to the fair that was probably held on these sand dunes hundreds of year ago. That these men would have gathered at night for dances and festivals, and that part of the fair has evolved into the white painted stage back in the stadium. But this part of the fair was very startling bare and these men were obviously all business. We quickly grew hot and tired and started to walk back towards the town to do some shopping. Andrew and I were on the hunt for deals for presents back home, but unfortunately because of the fair all of the prices were inflated. Demand was obviously high enough that the sellers did not bargain at all, which was frustrating. I did end up picking up some pretty cool little things here and there though. Andrew had seen these ottomans which are patchwork embroidered and are basically oversized pillows when we were in Jaipur. We didn't have time to pick them up then, but he's been talking about them ever since but we couldn't find them. Apparently they are a Rajasthani specialty because we found them in Pushkar, and got two oversized ottomans/pillows for 800 Rs, about $16 (don't worry they aren't stuffed, so they'll fit in the suitcase). We all met up at a café for a quick bit to eat (about an hour long), and then decided to check out the gigantic ferris wheels next to the stadium. Okay, really they were normal American sized, but in the middle of the desert, they looked huge. We boarded for 15 Rs, and road around in circles. It went surprisingly more quick than I expected and it was a lot of fun and gave us an opportunity to see Pushkar from above. Next we went on a spinning tea cups-like ride, and then a swinging ship. The ship was actually my favorite, like a giant swing, and everybody always has fun on a giant swing. When we tired of the rides we went to Bird Eye Café for a dinner. There we saw another group of University of California EAP students so we took over the back half of the restaurant with about 20 of us and sat until they kicked us out of the restaurant around midnight. Our hotel was nice. It was a small room with shared bathrooms. In the morning the bathroom actually had a warm shower! Although it wasn't really necessary in the desert. It was all pretty clean and with a helpful staff who stayed up late until all guests had arrived to lock the gate. They also had a small restaurant but we mostly only ordered chai in the mornings while waiting for everybody to wake up. Sunday was our last day in Pushkar, so we woke at nine and went back to Bird Eye for breakfast. I was determined to ride a camel. So after breakfast Andrew and I split off to go find a camel and ride it around the stadium. They charged us 100 Rs (about $2) for about a 5 minute ride, both of us were on one camel. It was a good deal to me. Summer showed up as we were riding the camel (she had went to pick up a bedspread first) so we got some pictures of us on the camel. It was a lot of fun actually, although kind of scary. When a camel gets up it lifts its back legs then its front, and a camels legs are about five feet tall. So while the camel is transitioning and its back legs are straight and front legs still bent on the ground, you're at about a 45 degree angle and it fells like you're about to topple off the front. Summer and some of our other friends had gone on a camel trek a week before, three days and two nights on a camel in the desert. Andrew and I had considered going but I had food poisoning so we didn't. I'm glad we didn't. A camel is not comfortable by any comparison, its really shaky and unstable feeling. Plus a camel is a lot wider than a horse and straddling it your legs are pushed quite far apart and it's uncomfortable. The short ride was enough for us. Then we walked around some more. Pushkar is nice for walking. The streets and the lake are surprisingly clean. Although we didn't go near the lake to avoid being accosted by sadhus offering pujas. Mostly we walked around unbothered. It was obvsiouly a town geared toward tourism and tried to make it as touist friendly as possible. I found a cool notebook made of camel leather that I plan to use as a scrapbook when I get home (so soon!). It was time to start heading back to Ajmer, so we met back at the hotel around 2 and took the bus back to the train station to catch our 3:55 train. We arrived back in Delhi around 11 pm, just in time to catch the last metro train back to our neighborhoods. Overall it was a pretty relaxing weekend and I enjoyed Pushkar a lot.
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