It looks like I got away with relatively little inconvenience – the pain and weakness all but passed yesterday and by the end of the train journey to Ajmer I could already manage a stunning two hours without having to run to the toilet. Today I’m pretty much like new. Special thanks to all the wonderful people who gave me support!
After very little sleep, I got to Ajmer yesterday at noon. It wasn’t described to me as a particularly amazing place, but I decided to give it a day and think it was well spent. First I visited a Jain Red Temple which holds a pretty impressive gold diorama depicting the thirteen continents of the ancient world, according to the Jain. A bit tired (I had to carry all my luggage all the time) I sat in a park and was soon approached by various people, from beggars and preachers of new religions to various people who wanted to chat and a street musician. One of the people turned to be quite interesting – a local journalist with some local stories to tell. And the musician was great, he even let me pay his rawanahatta and after a little practice I could produce some non horrible sounds with it.
I then moved towards the Ana Sagar lake – not only was the lake really nice and peaceful, the waterfront was good and even not completely filthy. Quite a few people strolled about or sat under one of a couple marble pavilions, and it soon turned out that half of them want to take a picture with me all kids want to come and say hi. It took a while before I could move, but when I did I found out that a couple of the nearby trees are completely covered with sleeping bats! Quite a sight.
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| Bats |
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| Playing cards |
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| The road up to the holy site is full of shops and beggars |
After some non-spicy (for them) food and another filthy public toilet I went to Dargah of Khwaja Muin-ud-din Chishti – a tomb of a Sufi saint and a Muslim pilgrimage site. First, to get there I had to find a way through a labyrinth of street stalls and more and more disfigured beggars – business of all sorts is best done next to temples here. The grave was surrounded by a small district of temples, a couple blocks worth of chaotically arranged small praying shrines, washing basins, sitting squares, and naturally stalls with flowers, religious items and tons of other stuff for sale. It was very busy inside. It’s really interesting to see people who are so serious about religion for a change. In Scotland one can hardly see any of them, and in Poland there are religious people aplenty, but since practicing Christianity consists mainly of quiet prayer and organised mass (and playing politics, sadly), it’s not that in your face. You don’t normally see people burn their offerings in street shrines, throw flowers all over the place, walk barefoot or with covered heads, have small shrines in their cars, wail their prayers loudly next to a wall or paint their faces while sitting and praying on the street – and mainly, you don’t see that behind every corner. And yes, here they are all very serious about it.
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| The saint was here. |
Throughout the day I saw many people who like me couldn’t wash of all the paint after Holi. It was like after Beltane again – there’s some sort of connection one immediately feels to another person who took part in the same ritual.
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| The road to Pushkar, view of Ajmer |
Finally, rather tired I caught a bus to Pushkar. The day was pretty overwhelming again since Ajmer is a big noisy city, I felt agitated, and didn’t initially like the fact that Pushkar is full of white people. I checked in a hostel recommended by some hippie guy I met in Ajmer. It turned out they didn’t have spaces, but offered my sleeping in a tent on the roof, which actually looked really cool and is extremely cheap. Meanwhile a party started in the next door hostel and I decided that I can either stay here and be irritable, agitated and miserable, or I can go and dance it all out. I went and it was brilliant, I hardly spoke to anyone, just danced and danced until I could no more. And then danced again. At some point some guy put a garland of flowers on my neck. The place was full of hippies, the DJ mixed some good beats, people were swinging poi… just what I needed. After I had enough and felt well, I just went to bed and finished a book just before a girl who also stays here came in. We chatted until late and then, for the first time in time immemorial, I slept deep the whole night.
5lmdk8