Gone Since November: Pushkar (Camel Time!!)

A camel video to start off your interest in our time in Pushkar!

Our travels continue in Pushkar, population of approximately 14 000, in the province of Rajistan which is in northern India. We rode the train for two hours east of Jaipur during the middle of the day. It was more pleasant to not have to take an early morning ride because the train had warmed up and it was not freezing cold inside of the train.

The train ride was to Ajmer junction and not straight to Pushkar, as the train does not go all the way to Pushkar. We travelled by taxi for the 12km trip to Pushkar at a cost of about $4 which was always nice. We decided to go to Pushkar as it had been recommended by people we had met as being a quieter town and a good change of pace place from the million plus populated cities that we had just visited. One of the more appealing factors of Pushkar is there are no tuk-tuks. This means tourists are not constantly hounded by tuk-tuk drivers, or when walking down the streets having to hear the constant horn honking of the tuk-tuks as they drive around. There are very few motorized vehicles in Pushkar other than motorcycles, which was a nice change.

Before we took our cab ride to Pushkar, we wanted to double check some of the details of our train tickets to see if we had moved up on the train ticket waiting lists for our travels later on in India. While waiting in line at the ticket booth inside the train station, there are always crowds of people. It was stunning how many men try to cut into the ticket lines thinking they are being clever and no one is going to realize what they are doing. Steve would have to over and over again tap the men on their shoulder and get them to get out of the line where they just cut in front of the two of us and go to the end. Most of the men are standing almost on top of each other to prevent people from cutting in line and lots of arguments would ensue as people acted as if they were innocent of trying to cut into the line. We did eventually get our train tickets sorted out as the train employees have been more often than not very helpful in sorting out our travel plans.

Pushkar is a very nice quiet little town that is situated around a lake in the middle of it. Bathing ghats are built up around the lake as it is a holy site for the Hindu religion similar to the ghats in Varanasi. Being a special city for the Hindi religion, there are lots of rules in this town--no meat, no eggs, no liquor, no shoes near the lake and no smooching (seriously, there is a sign that says no smooching!!) Monkeys the size of large dogs were located all around the lake and it caught us off guard a couple of times when a monkey would come galloping by because of the size of the monkeys and how different they were from the ones we had seen previously in India!

The second day we were in Puskhar we took a two hour camel ride just outside of town into the desert. Ang and Steve each had a camel and a kid on the back of the camel who were the guides. These kids were very friendly and had lots to say. We were impressed by how large the camels were. It was fun ride up and down the sand dunes on the camels and the two hours was the perfect amount of time on them as our bottoms and legs were pretty sore by the end of the trip. We were lucky to have met some Irish girls before arriving in Pushkar who were unfortunate enough to book a two day camel safari, where you spend a night in the desert in tents. Sounds really interesting, but you after two hours of galloping around, we understand why those girls were so upset about their longer ride!

The following day we had a very interesting experience sending a parcel at the India post office. We wanted to send a couple of small packages to Canada and hoped this could be done at the post office. That might sound silly but one never knows here until it happens! When we arrived in this barren looking office, Ang is attempting to ask for padded envelopes or boxes and they kept saying no. The interesting part was one of the employees took our things and said he was able to put the items into a small box for us, and he went to wrap them up in the back room. It took the man almost twenty minutes before he came back with the box and we were wondering what could be taking him so long. We realized when the package was brought back to us was that the box was sealed for mailing with not brown mail paper and tape, but a cotton type of paper and the man had sewn the clothe around the box to seal it up! It was very impressive and quite interesting to see it completed. We then noticed some other boxes that were ready to be sent had been covered by the same cloth and the ends were sealed with what looked like candle wax. Things are done very differently here, and its half the fun just seeing how the everyday things get done in other parts of the world.

From our observations, the ways goods are sold is each retail person has their niche. One person is the water and toilet paper person. Another man is the fruit person, jewelry guy or the clothes guy. Our favourite person, though, is the man with a cart full of nuts and popcorn. We found our first popcorn man about a week ago in Agra, but had a neat experience with a popcorn kid near the Pushkar lake yesterday. We told the kid we wanted two bags and he began the process of popping the corn kernels. The other times we had bought already popped corn, so didn’t get to see the process from start to finish. First he started a wood fire on the side of his cart. On the fire he had a metal cauldron with salt in it from which the popcorn was cooked. It was fun to watch the process of him stoking the fire until it was ready (he used old popcorn to start the fire!), pushing around the kernels in the salt and creating an excellent popcorn that Ang was very pleased to have some fresh kernels of her favourite treat! The boy was gracious enough to allow us to take some picture of his process.

We did enjoy our time in Pushkar and hope this is a sign of things to come for the rest our trip in India. We are now out of the “Golden Triangle” tourist track so hopefully this means less of the tourist track hassle and a feeling that we are getting a better handle on how things work in this country! Five hour train to Udaipur tonight, a town that is located on a lake and is supposed to have a fairytale castle!

Streets of Pushkar. And remember, this is a quiet place compared to the other Indian cities we've been to! There is a fruit cart in the bottom right corner, for your information.