Ode to Pushkar

There’s always THAT place. 

As soon as we arrived in Pushkar yesterday morning Steve and I looked at each other and we knew.

It’s a feeling of being welcome without the pressure of being expected.

“Dear tourist I’m glad you chose to visit my humble town, but I’m not going to ask you for money, I’m not going to ask you to buy my goods and I’m not going to ask you to book a tour with me. I’m too busy being happy cause I live in the most wonderful place on earth and I’m sorry for you cause you leave tomorrow”. 

And we know that they know. And they know we know they know.

So while you try and haggle on the prices at the market without success they look pitifully at you and don’t give in since tomorrow you’ll be gone yes, but there’ll be someone else buying what you didn’t buy today.

And while you visit the temples and the havelis trying to take as many photos as possible, you can’t help but feeling the yearning. “Maybe we should call our tour operator and tell them we want to stay here another couple of days”. But that would throw off the entire trip so you won’t do it, besides that yearning is what’s making this place so magical, if you stayed longer you’d gradually acknowledge all the bad things as well as the good things.

But let’s start from the beginning.

Originally Pushkar was not included in our trip. But Steve and I made some research and found out that the wonderful lake with all the temples and the bathing ghats on the shores made for really beautiful photos, so we looked at a map and we saw that the other place where we were supposed to go to, Mandawa, is at exactly the same distance to Bikaner as Pushkar, so we asked if it was possible to made that slight change of the itinerary and boy are we happy we did!

We were warned though, be careful in Pushkar! The place is full of tourists traps! They will come to you for money, they will force you to pay for prayers, they will harass you wherever you go so we braced ourselves with our toughest look and went outside on our own.

The first brahmin we saw didn’t ask us for money in exchange of prayers, he just said hi.

The first kids we saw didn’t ask us for baksheesh but they laughed at us cause we crossed a holy bridge barefoot and we almost burnt our soles while running and looking for shade.

Then we saw other kids and still they didn’t ask for baksheesh but they wanted some biscuits!

We went to the market and we were not asked to get inside and have a look.

While almost on the point of feeling ignored we started relaxing and changing from a “you’re not going to mess with me, buddy” look, to a “hare krishna, hare krishna, hare krishna, hare hare” look (I actually sung that song when Steve finally decided to shave!).

Our tour guide was also very relaxed, with a good english he explained everything we wanted to know about the Lord Brahma temple and the southern indian Vishnu temple.

We then headed to Sun set cafe for a couple of drinks (sodas, since alcohol is not allowed in the holy city) and enjoyed the magnificent settings over the lake, with a peaceful soundtracks made of kids delighted screaming while splashing in the pools and the quite chatting away of the women.

Looking at how people live their lives we can understand the indian concept of shanti, peace or peaceful.

I doubt you can actually understand shanti anywhere outside Pushkar, but over there it is so strong you cannot help but feel the freedom and swing accordingly.

Oh Pushkar, where have you been all our lives? Shanti shanti!