Pink City Camp, Pushkar, 23rd November 2004
A night of tossing and turning punctuated by the sounds of Indian music, campers’ ablutions through canvas and camels grunting and bellowing. A bucket of hot water arrives at six-thirty. The bed is snug, but outside it is too chill to want to get up. Eventually, I find the energy to crawl out, take some hot water in a jug, stand it in the basin and wash.
Around seven I wander over to the mess tent and beg a cup of coffee to take back to the tent to drink as the sun rises.
Nine-fifteen, we set off for town walking along dusty roads in a cavalcade of animals and carts past stalls offering vegetables, sweets, ornaments, craft works, implements and dentistry. It’s redolent of dung, smoke and incense. The town is a huge bazaar – there are said to be 5,000 shops and stalls at the fair – for tourists and pilgrims, 100,000 are expected for the Pushkar ka Mela, which is in two days’ time. Two Ferris wheels turn slowly in the heat.
We buy sweets and flowers for 10Rs, climb the steps to the red-spired Brahma Temple and join the great crush of sharp elbowed pilgrims. Sue has her purse stolen. We give our gifts to the priest: he throws the flowers to the floor and tips half the sweets into a bucket (to be recycled, I think cynically) and hands me back the rest (I subsequently give them to a begging child). Where’s the spirituality?
Down on the ghat a priest offers red bindi spots to our group, only Louise and Donald accept. Our guide, Sher Singh, says that 50Rs is a reasonable rate for this simple ceremony – but the priest pleads it isn’t enough to feed his family of five for a day (probably true) and he needs 100Rs. He assures everyone that it isn’t about the money, that it should be barely discussed, that this is a spiritual matter. Sher Singh sighs, ‘They all say that money isn’t the problem. But that’s not true: here money is the problem’.
He’s right; everyone is on the make/take. Children calling, ‘Pen, pen, shampoo, one rupee, one rupee’. Mothers with children on their hips, whining voices, pleading eyes and open hands. Garishly painted sadhus rattling tins. The limbless, those with deformed limbs and bundles of rags and bones so twisted as to appear inhuman, all with their begging bowls. Sad 1960s hippies, who dropped out in India and wander the street in sad bewilderment heading for the Pink Floyd café. All mixed up with cattle and mangy dogs, shit and open drains, fetor and fumes. Colour and life in extremes.
A break at the Sunset Café, with a peaceful view across Pushkar Lake to pilgrims bathing in front of the gleaming white Savitri temple. Walking back to the camp, a large train of camels passes us – maybe 50 animals heads held high, slowly pacing rhythmically along, soft pads almost silent in the dust.
We rest in the tent until three-thirty then head out to walk round the camping grounds. Turbaned figures feed camels and groom the varicoloured Mawari horses with their curious inward curving ears. A young camel being broken to harness is hitched to a loaded cart and led by half a dozen men with light reins. Smoke drifts up from fires, refracting the low sunlight in a pellucid haze; camels stand as blurred silhouettes against the sky. A dusty scene of camp life backed by bare hills; a romantic dream of desserts and caravans. The adults ignore us; hassling children become increasingly persistent and insistent as we leave.