Pur - Part II

Well, although India is part of the past now, I’ll keep talking about it, since the grand adventure is nowhere near the end.

Pushkar by night is nothing more than a perfectly round lake (which we didn’t see, partly because it was dark, partly because we didn’t drive anywhere near it) and a poorly lit hilltop temple (which you might say we nearly spotted, being the darker spot in the dark night). But Pushkar by early morning (that is, before sunrise) is to be seen while circling around it on camels.

The first glimpses of a new day were completely lost on me, as I was really concentrating on not falling down of a very tall camel. My deepest regret of not riding a camel in the Nubra valley determined me to get on a camel, no matter what, so we ended up riding the camels into the sunrise and the so-called ‘desert’ around Pushkar. Well, the thing is, there is no desert around Pushkar, or, at least, not your usual desert, the one with dunes and fine sand. This desert felt firstly like a normal dusty road, then like gravel, and only after we actually left the city did it start feeling like ground rocks, and not even finely ground; also, this desert looked more like a sea of shrubs and pointy bushes grown out of an orange earth.

And the camels were as phlegmatic as I had imagined them, yet still quite cute in their own silly way. These were dromedaries, meaning they only have one hump on their backs, but what they do have is a driver, who, contrary to any sane person’s belief, does not walk next to you while you ride the camel, but rides on the camel behind you, steering the camel around you. We found out that they don’t walk next to the camel because the camels rarely just walk, but rather trot, gallop or jump, depending on the circumstances. Mostly, they walk pretty fast, head held high, looking all but interested, save for Mona’s camel, which had a soft spot for jumping, just like her driver. Consequently, Mona and her camel friend jumped around me and my slightly more anchored camel, which preferred walking in zigzags or trotting with that exact speed that made me bump up and down at every step (and there’s four limbs on a camel!), just like a future milk shake in a blender.

The first half hour or so, while the drivers encourage the camels to get to the desert really fast, was really a lot of fun, because, as I’d never done it before, I had lots of camel parts to contemplate while trying to keep my balance. The next half hour we kind of got the hang of it and I was now realizing that I might have been cold, which had already passed, because I had gotten pretty warmed up by the effort of not holding on to my front stick/brake (which rose vertically from the front part of the saddle) until my knuckles got white. So, one hour into camel riding and I already could do the ‘no hands!’ trick. Granted, I wasn’t steering the camel anyway, but still, such talent in impossible to look over!

When we stopped to see the sunrise I was secretly quite relieved that I got to stand straight on my own feet again, because the camel’s saddle was a little off center and being on a saddle that’s tilting sideways on a camel that’s twice your height and happily galloping is not really the best feeling you could have at 7 AM. We got the sunrise part down pretty well, as we did not often get up for the actual sun rising and then off we went, circling the second half of the hilltop and Pushkar. 

The next stop was for chai and for our camels to regurgitate some of their food and idly, placidly ruminate away. Also, it was a good time to ponder on our nether parts, which were, by now, greatly suffering from rider’s gait, that is to say, we were walking more like figures from a western movie: all confident and strong, legs widely bowlegged. We rode in the still largely asleep city on our camels and, when we were in the visual range of the camel office, we slowed down to a lazy waddle, being also asked by both our camel drivers not to tell anyone about our racing and competition-level obstacle jumping.

Only at noon did we check-out and decided to visit the city itself, only to find an incredibly large range of shopping items, which made Mona concentrate hard on what she needed to buy for everyone back home. Also, it made us both spend a reasonably big amount of time taking our shoes off and, consequently, putting them on again (as with temples, the rule about taking your shoes off in order to enter applies to some shops as well). Our main goal was to see the Brahma Temple, one of the very few in the world, as Brahma has had about enough being the creator and all, and doesn’t want (or need?) a temple for worshiping. But we got there by zigzagging the street from one side to the other, entering most shops and committing to memory most of the merchandise in existence.

North India has this funny thing that Spanish people would call a siesta, so even the temples close for some hours at lunch time. As it were, this piece of information only entered our brains the minute we saw the big sign outside the Brahma Temple: ‘Closed until 3 PM’. So we headed for the ghats (a series of steps leading down to holy water), making our way through a new set of shops. As with most lakes and rivers in India, this one also contains sacred water, which means that a lot of Indians are constantly thrilled of having the privilege of bathing in its waters. And this is exactly what they do: usually in packs, Indians submerge in the brownish waters of the lake with or without a full set of clothes, but, even if they had bathed fully clothed, they will make a point of changing their clothes and rinsing the used ones in the same water, which they consider clean out of sacred reasons but which, I can confidently say, is not!

We had been repeatedly warned, most vigorously by our own Anil, never – and they mean NEVER – to take a flower that has been offered to us. Ever. Because they will make us pay ridiculous amounts of money (dollars with two zeros at the end, but not a zero at the beginning), saying that the flower is sacred or blessed or something of the nature. They did not, in fact, tell us that they will expect big donations from us at the ghats, in this case ‘big’ meaning rupees with two zeros at the end, but no zero at the beginning. It is a strange feeling to be offered something all of a sudden and, following your immediate instinct, intending to grab it, only to stop your arm in mid-air and change your mind. The more you react, the more they’ll insist but we eventually escaped the curse of the flower and, albeit achingly, left Pushkar to its dusty desert.