Pushy in Pushkar

Just had what may have been the worst busride of my backpacking life, on an overstuffed 25 year old Tata bus of easily 70 indians in standing room only in the 100 degree heat through the surprisingly humid Indian desert from Ajmer to Bundi. Stuffed into a worthless bench essentially with little or no padding, crammed in next to various extremely sweaty and staring indians. It rivalled 6 hrs in Nicaragua on an ancient chicken bus, 3 to-a-seat, with my backpack in my lap, which surely must have been worse, but perhaps I'm just getting old and dont have the patience or body of my youth. Anyway, Bundi is charming so far, and a bit less filthy than other spots we've visited. So allow to back up to the end of the last entry...

I believe I'd been writing about the dozens of people taking our photos, yes, this continues unabated, but there is an amusing coda to the "look natural" photo at the top of the Jaipur minaret. We arrived home to our hotel from the Amber Palace on the outskirts of town to find the woman who is perpetually reading the Indian paper and sipping tea on the terrace flagging us down. "Excuse me" she asked us in her high Brit accent, "But is this you?" She pointed to a photo in the Jaipur daily newspaper of the two of us "acting natural" with a caption that reads "Foreign tourists enjoying a day out." Unbelievable! Perhaps that explains all the stares- we're just celebrities! Needless to say, we kept the clipping, and took a photo to hopefully upload here soon.

Preceding this, we visited the Amber Palace (in the "top 5" forts and palaces according to our rough guide), which was pretty impressive. Now, I'm going to totally geek ou t here for a moment, and give you the best possible description I can think of for desribing this place, which is like being in a real live level of say, the old PC game Quake- an old castle with stairways and winding passages, towers than overlook gardens and mazes of yellow corridors that we literally got lost in after only a few minutes. (though the video game had less red betel spit on the walls). The whole place had great views over the valley, though like apparently everything in India was in a state of renovation, which meant it wasnt quite at its full glory. Lots of workers shuttling around carrying bowls of cement on their heads, even lengths of pipe balanced! (horizontally mind you).
Back down to Jaipur to leave, with a brief detour at our fave pseudo-american style coffee shop (Cafe Coffee Day)- coffee is hard to come by in these parts, to down some real live fake frappuccinos (aka Iced Eskimos)- and amuse ourselves with the overly elaborate wording and descriptions on the menu. They also always ask if we want ice cream and chocolate sauce on our coffees.

And then a bus onto Pushkar, where backpackers mix with extremely devout locals at a holy lake with 52 ghats, 400 temples and the only shrine to Brahma in India- very important pilgrimage site. And it is charming and beautiful, but it is also quite filthy. Also, far more cows here than anywhere else we've been, which really are quite adorable. Of course, the whole time we're evading various priests trying to lead us to the ghats to open our wallets, which we eventually succumbed to on the last day (more on that below). But it did feel relatively holy and sacred, watching people bathe in the ghats, pilgrims walking through the streets, tons of holy cows everywhere, bells ringing and holy music constantly in the background along with the smell of incense. The temples were reasonably interesting, though one giant one had some casino-like flashing and dancing lights, which seems a bit... I don't know, culturally different. Though I suppose we in America invented the electric Christmas light. We also found out that we had just missed the Dalai awho'd been visiting pushkar that very morning. Oh well.
Breakfast was witness to a massive monkey battle royale, which the restaurant owners son became heavily involved in, complete with menacing his bamboo stick at them, only to have them running screeching into the kitchen and then out again, pounding like thunder across the metal roof of the restaurant.
So we spent the day wandering the hippie-trail streets, evading priests until we were pulled into the ghats (steps to the lake) by an older gentleman who was very friendly. We went through the whole rigmarole with the holy men, threw the flowers and said the blessing, and made the "donation." We then sat aroudn while this older Indian gentleman (Maharaj Shiva- I'm not making that name up) drinking chai and having an extremely awkward though interesting conversation. He is a biology teacher in Ajmer, and comes to Pushkar once a year which he loves for the serenity it brings, and always on the same day. First year he got a wife, the next year a child, the next, another child... He seemed to know everyone in town, then asked us for our email and birthdays, promising to send birthday greetings every year. Oh, and of course he wanted a picture, which we will be emailing him next download. Though awkward, it was nice to finally have a genuine cultural interaction with a local.
Later that evening after a hike up the hill to a temple of one of Brahma's wives, we heard the sounds of an insanely bad marching band, who we then decided to go watch. Turned out that there was a procession to march the local Raj prince down the street, though if I were him I'd think seriously about investing in lessons for my personal band. (And since then, we've seen many more marching bands- seems that hipster trend has made it all the way to India).