Hippie Mecca

Hippies pay for stay in paintings

Pushkar is full of hippies. It wasn’t just yesterday’s party, the whole hostel is taken over by hippies, every hostel, the whole town is! Cool!

My rooftop tent-shack

I already met a few interesting people on the way. Everyone seems to stay here for at least a week or two, just chill, walk around, do meditation courses, play music, draw mandalas… I almost feel out of place with the three days I have here. There are three good consequences of the hippie infestation – no Indians find me exotic enough to nag for photos, shops have really cool clothes and jewellery, and the shopkeepers aren’t that pushy. They must have gotten used to the fact that this type of tourist really doesn’t have that much money… I’m seriously considering breaking my intention to not buy anything until the last days of the trip.

Natasha and the owner’s kid

Yesterday I had a relaxed morning, braided my hair again with the help of Natasha, then I walked around the Pushkar holy lake with its washing ghats, climbed a hill to see a temple on its top, checked out another few temples, strolled around the town and took a nap in the afternoon. Sleeping here is fantastic, and the roof tent is perfect. They offered me moving to a room today, but I’d rather stay on the roof.

The holy lake and a ghat

Climbing up

Another well-maintained temple

Supplement this view with the sound of car beeping from all over town. A quiet holy spot.

Jain temple

 In the evening there was a procession, a lot of singing, music, carrying of god idols, even some fireworks. Remnants of Holi. I followed the rituals for a bit, they were infinitely more interesting, colorful and joyful than the usual Christian stuff, but ultimately bored me anyway. I just started a new book instead.

Yeah!

Today we tried to get to a free yoga class in the morning, but Natasha who heard about it and invited me is perhaps the most disorganized and distractable person in the world and we got there half an hour late. No joy. Instead I chatted with Adam who is a guide through Australian desert and aboriginal cultures and learned more about what I glimpsed before in Oz. After ice cream for breakfast I went exploring and checked out the famous Brahma temple which turned out quite underwhelming. And then – shopping. I think I’m getting good at this haggling thing. When after some five minutes of bartering, changing my mind, almost leaving the shopkeeper agrees for my last offered price while cursing me around in Hindi, I know I’ve done well. All in all I bought three shirts, two tops, two skirts, five dresses, four vests/ jackets, a pair of shoes and a book for the equivalent of £50. And this is before I even got to Delhi! I might be selling after I come back.

Hilltop temple

Later Natasha and Adam joined me in a journey up the higher temple hill to see the sunset from there. The journey was good and the view amazing – the savannah of Rajasthan with small mountain ranges sticking out here and there from the flat is quite enchanting. When we were back in town someone remembered that there is a live dance and music show on tonight, so we went to check it out. It was nice and I recorded a couple videos for Eva, maybe she’ll find them inspiring.

Now it’s time for some new general observations. After visiting a few places, I now know what I found so wrong with Mumbai. I expected it to be a city, and it’s not. It’s a village that happens to have 16 million inhabitants. The way things are organised, the way people act, everything seems transplanted straight from a 10k Indian village, and multiplied a thousand times. It is confusing.

Non spicy food doesn’t exist. The mildest korma is well in my mid range of spiciness, and I like that sort of stuff. If you can’t stand spicy, you can eat fruit and plain nan, or cook yourself.

In Indonesia many guys had long hair, and many people were telling me: long hair, long life. In India I heard it once, and haven’t seen a single Indian guy with long hair. I wonder why.

Religious shopping

Indian morality seems to prevent people from stealing by cutting your purse, but not by cheating. I’m generally not afraid that a guy who says to go with him somewhere to see something will beat me up and rob me, but I’m sure that if he can, he’ll try to sell me something at triple price, charge me a nonexistent luggage tax, or ask for a donation that will never reach any temple. As far as they are concerned, if they can cheat you into giving them your money willingly, it’s not stealing.

Indians don’t seem to have much imagination when it comes to naming places. I’ve seen dozens of Baba Restaurants, cafes, hostels, internet booths, shops, barbers… Even more often things are called Shri Krishna, or after some other god (BTW, another example of the ever present religion). Saying: ‘it’s next to Shri Krishna Hotel’ is like saying ‘it’s next to Starbucks’ in NY.

Tomorrow morning I will lazily set out for Ajmer to catch a 2pm train to Jodhpur, further into the Rajasthan desert.