... and how will I get there? I'll tell you -

But first, 'finally' an account of my week here in Pushkar. I've told you of camel farts and I've shown you a few pics, but there's is more to it, yes sir'ree!

It's been a crazy week. The Pushkar Camel Fair/Festival is a culmination of many things.

1) From about November 6.-10., camels'n'cattle are bought and sold with much haggling, swearing, and probably fighting. A camel costs from about 10.000-30.000Rs., the black ones being more expensive than the normal sand-coloured ones - and young camels being more expensive than older ones.

2) 10.-13. is tourist time. Most of the backpackers flee from the insane prices (nearly everything goes up 5-10 times), and in come the rich old tourists instead. The camels slowly dissappear, the numbers going from I guess 15.-20.000 and down to about 500 maybe. The 500 are solely used for the rich tourist, taking them either from A to B in the main area - or taking them on an expensive trip  out to the sand dunes for sunrise and sunset views.

3) Today, the 13th, is the climax for the festival and for the pilgrims. Pushkar is one of the only places on Earth with an actual temple to the God of gods, Brahma. The brahmans (the highest caste in the caste system) all come here. Or, probably not all of them, but a bloody lot anyway. Thousands, tens of thousands... Oh, it was terrible. They started roaming the streets at about 3 o'clock this morning, and they didn't piss off until about 5 o'clock this evening. They're all here for a dunk in the holy lake which is the center of town - after that they linger to see all the crazy things (incl. all the white people) going on in the rest of town.

So anyway, it's been quite a special week. I must admit, to your and especially my own dissappointment, that the camel fair hasn't been half as cool as I'd expected. Pushkar is a very chilled town with hardly anything to do. The camel fair adds a lot to that, but still... I've ended up chilling, reading, eating, looking at camels, and walking around, desperately trying to find some strange tournament or something. Only today I experienced the utter madness that I've been told about so often.

A word of advice - if you ever go to Pushkar, go here when the camel fair is over or hasn't started yet. OR! Come one of the last days of the fair. Then it'll be excellent, truly. :)

Anyway, what have I seen? Children balancing gigantic pots on their heads, dancing around, apparently oblivious to the fact, that some evil liquid had been lit on fire in the pots! Guys eating fire, blowing it out in biiiig fireballs - again, apparently not really getting how unhealthy such an act could turn out to be. Besides near-infants dancing with fire, I've seen just about every/any type of dance on offer here in Rajasthan (and India?). I've listened to endless amounts of really good Rajasthani music and singing, and I've been to a cooking class where I learned how to cook classic Rajasthani bathi (bread balls with spices cooked/baked in a fire), etc. I've attended camel races where we were nearly trampled to death by the camels - neither the camels OR their riders seemed to know where the finishing line was! :)) I've been to moustache competitions, camel decoration competitions, Indian bride competions - the latter being a terrible ordeal where people from around the World had been dressed up and had to say a few things about India, Rajasthan, Pushkar. It was really painfully embarrassing - my dear father would not have survived, I'm sure. ;o)

Finally, today I went for a last stroll down the main fair and bazar. I went to see some absolutely wacky-crazy-insane guys; they had built a court with 15-20 m. high walls. They then raced around the bottom a few times in cars and on motorbikes, then suddenly raced up and around the walls, driving insanely fast and grabbing money from the crowd. I should add that these guys were racing around at about 100 mph. - all the while only wearing flipflops, clothes of course, but no helmets or other padding to save them should they slip.! I'll put some pictures in here in a week or so, but.. Oh, you just can't imagine how utterly sick their act was! :o)) - I loved it!

And finally, how will I go to Jodhpur. By camel, yessir! I'll be riding alone, with only two guys accompanying me. They'll fix the meals and keep me company when required, but otherwise, it'll pretty much just be me, Krishna my camel, and the desert. How long will it take me? - hard to say, but between 5-6 days, depending on how well I take to the painful ordeal that camel riding can be.

That's it from Pushkar. A pretty lame account of a whole week, I know, but... Hmm, hasn't been the best week, and most times dissappointment ends in bad blogs. :-/ But I think I'll write again in a weeks time, by which time I'll be reminiscing about Pushkar already. Then you can have the true account of the whole thing! ;o)

All the best to y'all! :)

Simon E aka. Desert Cowboy