Pushkar, India

Again, we all piled into the van and got back on the road, destination: Pushkar. The ride from Jaipur to Pushkar is amazing. It's raw India. Rugged mountains, small towns, ox drawn carriages, everything. Included in everything....STICKERS! You might be wondering why we care about stickers. Lara came up with the cool idea of putting a sticker from each country on our netbook. Up to India we had put six stickers on our computer (Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Vatican City, Greece, and Turkey, we forgot in Austria). We literally spent 4 hours looking for a Turkey sticker in Istanbul and we hadn't come across any place in India that had anything close to what we were looking for. So when we found a sticker of the Indian flag we were super excited.


We arrived at our camp in Pushkar a little after noon. The camp is a complex of really nice tents and huts. All of them have air conditioning, running water, clean bathrooms and nice beds. We weren't roughing it by any means. After we got situated we were taken by camel carts to the Pushkar fairgrounds. On the way to the fairgrounds we passed a gypsy camp. As the cart went by we were surrounded by little kids asking for rupees, shampoo, or chocolate. We could see the 'homes' that these kids came from and it's hard to imagine anyone having anything less than them. Spending five years in San Francisco with its plethora of homeless has definitely made me more immune to seeing homelessnes, but seeing little kids in it is still really hard. What's worse, is that you can't give the kids anything because it rarely makes it to the kids. If the kids receive something the parents or bosses in the beggar mafia take it from them. Besides the children, the ride to the Pushkar fairgrounds was amazing, in a good way. There were camels everywhere, literally. The Pushkar Camel Festival is many things: a holy pilgrimage to the local lake, a camel market, and a county fair. As we were coming in, so were dozens of camel owners with their herds for sale or trade. The landscape was also amazing, just rugged mountains as far as the eye can see.

Our cart dropped us off in the middle of the fair. I honestly believe you could walk a quarter mile in any direction, stepping only on camels. Besides camels, the fairground was filled with camel supply shops, food shops, a make shift movie theatre, arts and crafts, all of which were completely different than anything I've seen before. I know some of you are asking, "What could be in the camel supply store in Pushkar that isn't in my local camel store here in the US?" To ride a camel you need the right blankets, saddle and stirrups or sometimes just a rope. You also need colorful ribbons and ropes to pimp out your camel. And most important, you need nose 'nails' to go into your camel's nose. These nose nails are then connected to a rope and used to rein in the camel. Pretty crazy huh? We walked around the fair for a few hours taking it all in. The sun set as we walked around the fair and I had another one of those 'I'll never forget this' moments.

That night we were treated to some cool Pushkar entertainment at our camp. Dancers, a drum band, a fire breather, and a puppet show all entertained us. Adding to the entertainment was one of the other tourists staying at the camp, Stuart, who propositioned one of the dancers for 500 rupees (~$12). Classy.

We started our first full day in Pushkar with a camel ride to the camel arena in the middle of town. I use the word arena in the loosest sense. The arena was an enclosed arena with bleacher seats on two connecting sides, the other two sides simply had a wall. We rode into the arena on our camels and stayed on the camels as we watched the entertainment. First up on the entertainment ticket was the camel race. The camel race was argueably the most disorganized organized sporting event I've ever witnessed. One of the other tourists in our group had to get off of her camel because the camel was needed in the race. When the race actually started all the camels just started running everywhere. The best comparison I can make is it's like a vibrating football board game. At some point the race ended, everyone cheered and a small group of people ran up to one of the racers to applaud him. After the race was the camel dance performance, although it took 20 minutes for things to actually get organized. A small rink was made in the center of the arena and everyone gathered around. The camel dance performance was like a dance off for camels. The handler has the camel leashed up and he has the camel trot around. The coolest part was one of the camels got on its elbows and crawled on its front elbows. Beyond that, the camel dance was kind of lame. Going with the theme, there was no organization to the dance as well. Each individual dance would end when people started booing, there wasn't a clock or even what appeared to be official judges. When we had seen all of the camels a winner was declared and the horse dancing competition started. We were about to leave the horse dance competition before it started based off of the camel dance competition, but the horse dancing competition was really interesting. Like before, a handler would come out and would lead the horse around the circle. Two drummers would play as the horse was dancing. The horses actually appeared to dance to the beat of the drums. After a few minutes an assistant would bring out a tiered platform about 2 feet high and the horse would climb on top of it and dance as well. The handlers also got the horses to stand and walk on their back legs. We watched four or five of the horses strut their stuff and we were about to leave when the master horse dancer came out. Appearantly this guy is a local legend and has quite the following. This guy was dressed well and even had his own band. I have to admit, this guy was the real deal. His horse did everything I mentioned, but did it with style. The horse would not only get on its back legs, but it would walk circles on its back legs and then hop on just its back legs. The trainer had his drummers play under the horse while it walked on two legs. Everyone loved it. By the end of the performance the circle had shrunk in half because all the viewers were trying to get closer. We left a little bit afterwards once we realized no one would top the fan favorite.

We walked through the fairgrounds and checked out the town. The town has a lake and a temple which are revered by a group of Hindus. We toured the temple which was cool, but also the smelliest, most disguisting temple I've walked in. Think of an outdoor temple with several side rooms, all resembling a recycling center in smell and floor stickiness. Let's not forget that we had to take our shoes off and walk in our socks to go through the temple. As we walked into one of the side rooms I thought we were walking into an opium den. The lake that is thought to be highly spiritual by thousands of people has been completely drained. The lake is a huge dried lake bed with some man made pools for the believers to take dips in. Inside the lake is a tower with blinking christmas lights. The lake certainly wasn't impressive but the sights were.

With all of the Pushkar sights seen we headed back to our camp. That night we said our goodbyes with Mark, Helene and Colleen as they were all leaving the tour the next morning. Lara and I both agree that the Pushkar Camel Festival was one the coolest experiences we had ever seen.