Imperfect Paradise

We’re sitting on the shaded rooftop terrace of the beautiful haveli hotel ‘Seventh Heaven’ in Pushkar (despite phoning a week ahead we couldn’t get a room) listening to Janis Joplin blaring out of the speakers. It doesn’t get much more relaxing. We’re hanging around before jumping on a local bus to Ajmer and our 2am train departure to Delhi and back to hectic Indian life.

We’ve been in Pushkar since lunchtime on Wednesday and we’ve had a really chilled out few days. Pushkar is apparently usually one of the most picturesque places in India, but unfortunately at the moment the lake has dried up, so it isn’t quite what we were expecting. The story goes that Brahma dropped a lotus flower on the earth and Pushkar appeared. It’s a weird place, incredibly holy for the Hindus, but also jam packed full of hippy tourists and shops selling your typical ‘hippy’ clothing. There are signs up everywhere explaining that you should dress conservatively, and not embrace in public, so it’s pretty upsetting to see so many tourists paying no respect to what the town is about.

We stayed at a place 10 mins walk out of town, so have had the most relaxing sleep since we got to India, no cars, no people spitting and no dogs howling at unusual hours of the night. Aside from relaxing we’ve wandered around town, taken a walk up to the Savitri Temple on one of the highest hills surrounding the town and tried to find a decent meal!

All in all, it’s been an uneventful couple of days. I’ve nearly managed to get over the cold that’s been plaguing me for coming up to two weeks and we’ve rejuvenated ourselves a bit for Delhi. But we’ve also been frustrated by the the sheer volume of tourists and the tourist trade here, something we, perhaps naively, weren’t expecting.

Delhi here we come!