Day 95 - Exploring Pushkar !

Exploring Pushkar

I woke up today feeling dramatically better than the previous day, but feeling a bit disgruntled and tired still. There has been multiple days now where I haven’t been able to eat anything in a 24 hour period and have been forced to stay in bed missing out or delaying our adventure. I can feel and see that I am loosing weight, I really hope this recent bout is the last time. 

Tom must have been feeling a bit dusty after yesterday’s consumption of beer. It was well past 10am before we emerged from our dorm room and made arrangements to stay one more night so that I could explore Pushkar. The first stop was a nearby café on a small but busy Indian street to enjoy breakfast. I enjoy a small success by being able to  eat a piece of toast, some fresh fruit and  fruit juice. I feed most of my leftover breakfast to some street dogs & take a piece of toast that I shred and put into a cup. Tom is very amused by this and knows that I plan to use it to make friends with more of the local animals. 

We explore the streets of Pushkar that consist of market stalls selling a huge range of bohemian clothing, bags, jewellery, cushion's and leather bound books. We stop at one such book store and buy a green leather bound book that catches our eye. We then head down to the ghats and walk around the holy lake that Pushkar is famous for. The ghats here are still considered holy and there is a heavy Hindu presence in this town, which we can easily see by the shrines, street art & holy cows that roam freely. There are no cremation ghats here at Pushkar. 

While roaming bare foot along the ghats and temple ground we see many Hindu people bathing in established enclosed cement areas & praying. We also see lots of street dogs, cows, monkeys, pigeons (including one in the mouth of a cat) and goats, proving my cup of bread very helpful in my friendly advances. 

About halfway round, we sit down on a shady bench to have a break & photograph some more of the Gray Langur monkeys, but are approached by a man claiming to be a priest. He insists on taking us down to the lake side to put flowers in to the lake. A seemingly harmless request from a priest. Initially we are concerned for our bag which has my shoes tied to the outside & is a reason for the priest to insist it shouldn’t come down the ghats to the lake & should be left on the bench. When his back is turned I move it down anyway so we can see it and make sure it isn’t stolen, which was our concern. 

Once down at the lake side he asks us questions about our family member to bless them, our journey, our relationship and future marriage. The blessing seems to go on for a long time with several phrases needing to be repeated back to him, slowly the blessing seems to change and become less about us and more about his temple, charities, donations and good karma. This is feeling less and less like a true blessing and more like a wordy scam. He finally finishes and then asks us for our donation to achieve good karma, insisiting on 1000, 2000 or 3000 INR, which he insists we must have and must individually give to him to achieve good karma and bless our families. At this point I’ve well and truly had enough of feeling like a dumb & easily scammed walking ATM. I march back up the ghats while Tom tries to shake him by offering him 200 INR, more than he deserves in my opinion. The priest (?) has the audacity to turn down 200 INR insisting on receiving a sum in the thousand range. He is seriously infuriating and I snap that if he won’t accept 200 INR he gets nothing and we don’t care about blessings because that’s not how karma works & we never needed his blessing. He accepts the 200 INR, realising he won’t get more from Tom but then has the nerve to follow us back up the ghats and ask for 200 INR from me to validate my blessing. I say No and not politely march off. 

What a shit head, never again will I allow us to be blessed! 

After this we continue our way around the ghats and back into the main streets of Pushkar, exploring and searching for an ATM. We are successful in our search and locate an ATM not far from our hostel. Disappointingly the ATM distributes a 2000 INR note with a rip in it that has been taped back together. We have already learnt our lesson about damaged Indian money in the form of a 10 INR that had the corner ripped off. We’re not sure who gave it to us, but it’s useless, not even beggars will accept it! The ATM is luckily located next to the bank itself so we can go in there and ask for a replacement, for a brief moment I thought the teller was going to deny our request because the ATM didn’t give us a receipt, even though we requested it. Thankfully she did, I was in no mood and would have argued with her and made all sorts of threats to get the bill replaced. 

After the bank we started to head back to the hostel but I was approached by an Indian lady holding a small child and asking for me to go wither to the chemist and buy her child some formula milk. This is a scam that we had read a lot about but had not yet encountered, we also have had the pleasure of meeting a girl in Nepal who warned us about this particular scam because she had been caught in it. 

The Woman with the child did not look like a beggar, her saree looked immaculate and she wasn’t skinny. Her child looked clean and healthy as well as too old to be on formula. I straight away declined to go with her, despite her insistence she wasn’t asking for money, just formula while gesturing towards her child’s mouth. The only way to shake her was to tell her that I knew it was a scam and to go away, this cost me a very dirty look but she left me alone. Having got her way I would have been taken to a chemist that was part of the scam & pressured into buying over priced formula milk that would be resold back to the chemist later on. 

Feeling very tired now and grumpy, we decided enough was enough and retired at a local café across the road from the hostel, close enough for the WIFI to reach our appliances, but close enough for the toilet should I need it. 

At 6pm we ordered some pasta (bland and boring for me) at the café & made plans to see the sun set over the lake. Surprisingly If there’s one thing that Indians do just as well as their curries, it is Italian! We have eaten pizza and now pasta in simple Indian cafes that has been better than some of the food we have eaten in Italian restaurants back in Australia. 

As we go to leave the restaurant a young male calf wandering the street puts its head down and tries to charge me, something that has been occurring a lot with the male cows in India. I am able to wave my arms and make loud scary noises while jumping onto a ledge. I'm not entirely sure that I have been scary enough to force the cows retreat or if it's the barking from a small, tan street dog that I patted earlier on. This brave little dog chases the cow away from me, cornering it in a corner of the street before it whirled around and ran in another direction. On her return she looked so proud of herself as she trotted up and I gave her a big pat in thanks. This is now the 4th time a young male cow has seriously tried to ram me with its head in India & I'm starting to get scared of them which I'm sure they can tell & which will create more incidents. Tom is finding it hilarious which is not helping the situation. Being mauled or crushed by a cow in India is not on my bucket list and the fatalities that happen every year from cows in India is a serious thing. 

The sun set is at a weird angle to the ghats and the cloud formation doesn't give us anything special, it's still nice to sit by the ghats and take in the beautiful sight of the holy town, knowing we will leave tomorrow and likely never be back. 

- Alli