Pushkar

Our trip to Pushkar was organized in the usual way, passing emails back and forth on the international analysts mailing list and finally a bunch of us decided that the best time to go would be for the annual camel fair. Accommodation is expensive and difficult to find during this time, so our friend Abhi (who has contacts and friends in just about every town in India and beyond) kindly arranged for us to crash in some luxury tents, as well as arranging two cars to take us to Pushkar and back. Yes, tents! In winter! Well, let’s not spoil the fun with complaints ... We live in India. We are tough. I joke around with my colleague Sonali at work, telling her that we are off to Pushkar to buy a camel so we can ride it to work, or barbeque it ... she was a group manager for the data analytics team, and had a great sense of humour (pretty rare in our company).

Pushkar Camel Fair - What the Guidebook Says

“Come the month of Kartika, the eight lunar month of the Hindu calendar and one of the holiest, Thar camel drivers spruce up their ships of the desert and start the long walk to Pushkar in time for Kartik Purnima (full moon). Each year around 200,000 people converge here, bringing with them some 50,000 camels and cattle. The place becomes an extraordinary swirl of colour, sound and movement, thronged with musicians, mystics, tourists, traders, animals and devotees. It’s camel-grooming nirvana, with an incredible array of cornrows, anklets, embroidery and pom poms ...“ 
(Lonely Planet India)

We set off on Friday after work, usual routine. I turned up to the office with my backpack and at the end of the day I left my work shoes in a drawer and put on my trainers. There was a lot of pressure at work at the time and my boss was not excited about me chatting away to Antoine about the travel arrangements (who is going to sit in which car and the like) ... but frankly, I didn’t give a damn. My boss might be a man, but I swear he is having PMS sometimes. I took my job pretty seriously, but when it’s Friday, it’s Friday and it’s time for work to end and for life to begin. In the interest of my mental health, give me a break!

I had just had my root canal done at the dentist and I was taking strong painkillers. There was a bottle of vodka in my backpack but I would not be having any of it, unfortunately. I complain about my forced abstinence to Saurabh on the Office Messenger. He has some sort of biosciences background (I think?) so I ask him if it’s really so bad to mix painkillers with booze. He suggests I take up marihuana instead.

The overnight trip to Pushkar was rather uneventful, I ended up in a car with the boys, as usual. I have some twisted talent for ending up in male-only environments. And from what I can recall the talk was typical of gentlemen left to their own devices – boobs, booze, bullshit. We arrived in Pushkar early morning, and the landscape on the way was simply amazing – a desert with mountains, totally different from any other landscape I had seen so far in India. I am really starting to believe in the diversity of India – this place could not be more different from the green lush landscape of Kerala, or the mountains around Shimla. It’s like a different world. We stopped at some car park outside the city and it seems that it’s going to be all rather packed for the festival. There are lots of cars and lots of people.

The photos I took in Pushkar are some of my best from India, you can have a look at them here.

We walk to our campsite / resort, Sajjan Bagh, all hungry and some of us still half asleep. There are three girls and the tents are doubles. Someone is going to have to share with a guy. The two Mexican chicks, Karina and Mirabel, stick together, so that someone would be me. I do not want to go through the embarrassment of picking my roommate so I simply walk towards a tent and see who turns up. Of course it’s Pascal; he has been following me around the office lately and we have been engaging in some half-hearted flirtation.

We have breakfast in the dining tent at the resort and decide to head to town. It’s a slow start to the day ... We see cows with their horns painted red, all sorts of people selling all sorts of colourful things, a little kid painted as a goddess ... and as we get closer to the centre, it becomes increasingly obvious that the town is incredibly packed with people. So far there are not many camels in sight. It was supposed to be a camel fair, not a people fair?! We become more and more squashed and eventually we lose half of the group, plus one digital camera and one mobile phone. The area near the town stadium, where there was some camel action happening, and towards which we were trying to get, was a paradise for pickpockets and perverts. I did not manage to count the number of men who touched my ass and my boobs, nor did I manage to slap any of them – my hands were too busy guarding the contents of my pockets. My dignity would have to be sacrificed this time. We all have enough of it and decide to crash at a rooftop restaurant, where we watch the crowds from above and complain how much we hate this city! It was much nicer to watch it all from above – across from us there was a hill with a nice temple on it, and the crowds down below on the streets looked interesting. Rajasthani women wear very colourful clothes.

Rajasthan – according to the guidebook:

“Rajasthan, the Land of Kings, is India’s most colour-charged state. Half desert, half bony hills, the everyday is shot with searing colour – brilliant fabrics flash like flames against the stark landscape. You’ll experience these saturated shocks of colour everywhere – a sea of turbans clustered under a village tree, rural women in traditional dress, saris drying on a parched riverbed.”

(Lonely Planet India)

For hours on that rooftop, we ate, messed around, took pictures and waited for the rest of our group. Most of us made it back apart from Juan Pablo and Mirabel. Later on, in the evening, when they were still not back, we decided to go searching for them. We split into groups and went off in different directions. Our group went to the police station to make a public announcement. Alessandro begged them to “please come home” in Spanish and half of the city heard it. Except Juan Pablo and Mirabel. They were just having a good time somewhere and didn’t have a clue we were worried about them. We took a camel taxi home, to give our poor feet a rest – the police station was quite far away from our resort. At the end of our ride, the camel taxi tries to talk us into a camel trip to the desert – “good food, good beer, good camel“. We apologize as we don’t have enough time for this kind of thing and he gives us his mobile phone number in case we change our minds. (Yes, the camel taxi driver had a mobile phone, don’t ask.)

We then sat my the bonfire in front of our tents, had a lovely dinner in the dining tent, and set off on a camel trip to the desert. Three camel taxis, three camel taxi drivers, one bottle of vodka, many beers, full moon ... we made a fire, messed about and enjoyed being in the middle of nowhere. I posed for pictures with the vodka but of course I was taking those damn pain killers so it was just going to be coke for me. The boys were having much more fun, smoking pot from some clay pipe with the camel taxi drivers. I had no idea until I came back home and saw it on pictures on my camera! So now I know why Alessandro yelled at the camel as if he was possessed ... Pretty hilarious.

 Have a peak at my pictures from the desert here.

Bedtime arrangements in our luxury tent were getting uncomfortable. The bucket shower was to be the least of my problems. When Pascal decided to be my roommate for the trip, I sighed in relief at the fact that at least our tent had two separate beds, with a nightstand in the middle. Well, first thing Pascal does is gets rid of the nightstand and pushes our beds together like we are an old married couple or something! I didn’t want to say anything, so I waited till he was in the bathroom and put the nightstand back in the middle. And then I went into the bathroom and Pascal got rid of the nightstand again. What followed was a very comical moving of the nightstand back and forth. Eventually Pascal got rid of it and I would never know where it went. I bet he threw it in the bonfire or something. We have an uncomfortable “what –are-you-doing” conversation, then we both give up and spend the night talking. The climate is typical for a desert – during the day you can walk around in a t-shirt but at night the temperature drops dramatically and the winter clothes have to come out.

The next morning we wake up late and most of the group is out already. We meet Abhi sitting by the pool; he is going to have a lazy morning at the resort. We head to explore the town – me and the two Dutch teenage boys, Pascal and Anthony. We go to the holy lake, where I get blasted for taking pictures and end up giving a hefty donation to the Brahmins. They are the priest / scholarly caste, top of the hierarchy in Indian society, and they are too good to dirty their hands with manual work, so the society supports them. Don’t even get me started on what I think about this. I am European, I work hard and I believe no one should get a free ride. But am not here to waste my energy complaining; let‘s simply say that the caste system is part of “cultural differences”!

We walk through the town, which is now considerably emptier, as the camel fair is over. We drink fresh fruit juices, eat at the same rooftop as yesterday and then try to sneak into a temple but they have something against foreigners. Anthony tries to pretend he is Indian – with his Surinamese roots, he can pull it off but has to keep his mouth shut as he doesn’t speak a word of Hindi. In all Indian temples, visitors have to take their shoes off before entering. Anthony is understandably worried – he had had his shoes stolen in front of the Hare Krishna temple in Delhi. In the end, we walk around the outside of the temple and take some pictures, before heading to the Enigma restaurant to meet the rest of the group.

Pushkar – according to the guidebook:

“Pushkar is a small, magical, desert-edged town. Under a mother-of-pearl sky, pale onion domes and 400 milky-coloured temples curl around a holy lake, said to have appeared when Brahma dropped a lotus flower. It’s an important Hindu pilgrimage centre, with one of the world’s few Brahma temples. But it’s also touristy, and budget guesthouses almost outnumber the temples. Many travellers reach here and grind to a satisfied halt, experimenting variously with spirituality, bhang (dried leaves and flowering shoots of the marihuana plant) and facial hair.” (Lonely Planet India)

When we get to the Enigma, everybody is quiet, with not much of a conversation going on. They all have this smug expression on their faces and giggle quietly from time to time. I feel like I’m back in primary school – when there is some secret and you are the only uncool kid who doesn’t know what is going on. Very soon it becomes clear that I am not being bullied. It’s just that the Enigma restaurant serves bhang lassis (something like a marihuana milkshake – the menu lists it under the codename “special lassi”). I’d never had it before so decide to share one with Pascal. Just before drinking it, I remember it’s time to take more pain killers for my root canal. Abhi is looking very concerned that I am mixing pills with pot but he is so stoned that his concern comes across as a part of the whole smugness / giggling business. The lassi is banana flavoured and tastes like normal banana lassi, except it’s green. So I drink the thing quite quickly, disappointed that I am feeling no effect. Turns out the effect is delayed and I only start feeling it halfway through my dinner.

The rest of the group head back to our resort to pack their things, as Mirabel has to catch a plane early morning and needs to get back to Delhi as soon as possible. I stay in the restaurant with Pascal, so we can finish our dinner. There is a group of Americans having some trivial conversation about special lassis, and when they ask the waiter if he has special mineral water, everybody bursts out laughing. Then one of the American girls starts explaining some story where somebody took advantage of her because she was American and then she concludes with something like “Next time I will pretend I am French”. High on pot, I shout out, in fake American accent: “Like somebody would believe you.” I love mocking people with horrible accents. They don’t find it funny and suddenly the whole room feels even more uncomfortable than before. The red walls and red lights start bothering me to a point where I feel like it’s unbearable.

I tell Pascal I want to leave and we go downstairs to settle the bill. They forget to charge us for the food that the other half of the group had, and we have some trivial conversation about special lassis with the waiter. At one point, I am saying something to Pascal and I realize that I am standing unnecessarily close to him. My spatial coordination is totally messed up at this point, but for some reason I make a point out of pretending that I am feeling completely normal. Pascal says he’s feeling normal too, liar. We head back towards the resort and continue this performance for a good kilometer, until I can’t help it anymore and say: “OK, I admit it. I’m totally stoned.”

Here is a nice video about obtaining and consuming bhang in Rajasthan.

I feel really light and full of energy. I am walking really fast, and it feels like I can run without giving out any energy. It’s kind of the opposite of being drunk; the more alcohol I drink, the more tired I become. However, walking on Indian streets in this state is pretty scary because you don’t notice the passing autorikshaws and cars until they are right next to you. As I said, my spatial coordination was totally out of whack. Pascal tries to touch my ass several times, and I start freaking out because we are lost. I don’t recognize the streets around us and the cycle rikshaws refuse to give us directions. In the end, we spot the disco temple and I am relieved as that means we are close to the resort. When we get back, everyone is ready to go back to Delhi. Abhi was a little worried about us, as we were late; he packs me into a car and I try to pretend I am feeling normal.

We drive through the desert, and the moon looks so big and bright – like ten times the normal size. It is still full moon, and I know the moon looks bigger and brighter when you are in the desert … but still. I have never seen the moon this big, this bright and this yellow. And I don’t think I will ever see it this big and bright and yellow again – later I read that one of the effects of bhang is: “objects may appear closer and larger than they really are”. I mention how big the moon is to Abhi and he agrees. Nobody in the car is protesting, but I am still totally amazed. How can it be so big?

What follows is a rather comical exhibit of the effects of bhang ... I am sitting at the back in between Abhi and Sohail. I have all sorts of thoughts going through my head and all I want to do is talk, talk, talk. But I know that Sohail next to me is sober and I have to pretend I have my act together at least a little bit. We pass by some Hindu wedding and I start talking to Abhi about weddings in the Czech Republic , how they are much smaller than Indian weddings etc. He is stoned as well and isn’t having any of it. We start dancing on our seats and try hard not to knock Sohail around too much ... I feel rather euphoric. On the way, we stop at a dhaba (a roadside restaurant for truck drivers) and I order dhal makhani, against all my better judgement. By the time we get to Delhi, the effect is gone. It’s Monday morning. I have shower, and my two hours of sleep are interrupted by a brief earthquake. It goes like this:

    Shake Shake Shake
    Whaaat? Am I still in the cab on some bad road?
    Hang on, I’m in bed.
    It’s not a bad road.
    The whole house is shaking.
    Hmm ... so this is what earthquakes are like.
    Should I run downstairs?
    It’s 19 floors.
    If it’s serious, I won’t make it downstairs.
    If it’s not serious, I can stay in bed.
    Should I stand in the doorframe?
    Screw it, if I die, I die.
    Good night.

A few hours later, I put on a clean shirt, hang my company security pass on my neck, slip into my 4-inch sparkly shoes and go to work as usual. As the day passes, my digestive tract reminds me that foreigners should never eat at Indian roadside restaurants. I have to visit the company nurse and ask her for some good old Immodium just to get through the day.