Pushkar women, weather and siestas

At 630am Jane and I heard children singing, threw on our shoes, and went to check it out.  It turned out to be a garbage truck blasting music.  We continued to walk down to the lake where we found four women dressed nicely dumping lake water on their head.  First we had to climb the stairs and take off our shoes, then we joined them.  They were insistent on dumping the holy water on our heads; we declined many many times.  Thankfully, they were still content to let us follow them.  They were blessing themselves 51 times around the lake at all the holy temples.  A ritual done once a month. As "holy" men tried desperately to sell us ritual flowers, we stuck with our golden rule - follow the women. It was wonderful. 

Fun fact:  The lake in Pushkar was printed on coins in the 4th century BC. Digest that!! It is the home of the God Brahma.

At 830am we took a tuk tuk to the cable car where we had a view of the city and the surrounding farms and hills. We saw numerous monkeys and camels.  In the pictures, you can see a baby suckling milk from her mother.

Currently, it is 11:30am and time for the afternoon siesta. At 3 or 4 we will emerge from our room showered, rested, and hopefully having played several games of Gin Rummy.  Last night we ate dinner at 830pm when it was cooler. It was 93 degrees yesterday.  Great weather according to the hotel manager.

Other stuff: 

1. The weather is interesting.  In Nepal the monsoon was just starting.  The roads were still passable and mountains viewable.  In India the high heat (45C) broke days before we arrived.  Starting in July, the rains start and cool parts of India off including Rajastan. Originally we were going to try to make it to Darmashala, but the Indian monsoons in the mountains are known to be even worse than the Napelese monsoons, so we decided to stay south, seeing as though its not as hot as it could be and there's already flooding in Rishikesh. It has still only rained during waking hours once... soooo far 

2. The silver lining of monsoon season is that it is also MANGO SEASON! We eat piles of mangos everyday.  My Dad used to tell me the mangos in the US weren't mangos.  He would say, "You can drink mangos." I have always wondered what he meant ... until now.  Ripping a tiny hole near the top of the mango and smoshing it around while you suck through the hole, one can devour an entire mango in minutes. At the end, there is the seed, a flat disc about 2/3rds the height of the mango, rattling around in the skin.

3.  We arrived at the Delhi airport on Friday.  On Friday, the airport roof collapsed killing 1 and injuring 8.  it collapsed in Terminal 1 and we were in Terminal 3.  Menesh called to make sure we were ok.

4. The holy cows of Pushkar eat garbage and are everywhere.  According to the Restaurant Manager at our Hotel, the Indian Government wants to modernize Pushkar as they did Varanassi!  What!?  Varanassi was amazing 20 years ago. We were told Modi made Varanassi a Political location and it has changed significantly. Sad. In order to modernize, they banned cows from parts of Varanassi.

5. India won the Cricket World Cup 2 days ago! There wasn't much fanfare here in Pushkar, but we had a very happy hotel manager and kids playing cricket in the street.

6. Last and certainly least, delhi belly has set in. We are on the look out for anything dangerous, and are so far doing well enough to prevent the need for our piles of antibiotics. We also celebrate hard stools. We had a celebration yesterday and today!  During my Dad's time here, the Peace Corps volunteers used to get together from different parts of the country to celebrate hard stools.

Pushkar 2

We went to an ashram in the hills with a beautiful soul named Pinki.  They fed us mangos, invited us to join them, gave us sound spiritual guidance, and wouldn't take money.  Totally random, and everyone had fun.

Pushkar

Pushkar is relaxed and dreamy, filled with helpful, friendly people ... and monkeys.  One monkey jumped from one side of our dining area to the other (20ft).  He was about 2ft away from us mid jump. The kids loved it ... the manager was mortified.  If the red faced monkey take your cell phone or sunglasses, you need to give it a biscuit (cookie) to retrieve the items. Yesterday the kids ate nutella and pizza, and Eric and I had the world's best veggie curry.  Today we are getting henna, going shopping and doing a meditation.  Tomorrow morning its a gondala to a temple.  What train ride?

 

The first eleven hours in India

We landed in India at 3pm on Friday.  It was a Nepal Air 1hr 20min flight on which we received a full meal and a large array of free movies and tv shows. Immigration was easy (even though we were told we may not be able to leave India at a land crossing but he wasn't sure. Ugh). The pre paid taxi stand into the city wouldn't put 6 people into one car and did not have a bigger car for us.  Sooo, we uber'ed!  What a wonderful solution to getting ripped off by Indian taxi drivers. We were all 50/50 on staying a few nights in Dehli but ultimately decided to head to the train station.  We all visualized a 1st class AC train ride; a hotel on wheels.  We saw online that tickets were available, but did not want to purchase them on unsecure wifi, so I headed to the ticket counter at the station.  I asked a sea of people if anyone spoke English as the guy behind the counter did not.  A Sikh man offered to help.  We were told that the AC cars were full, but the Sikh man and the man behind the counter agreed that we could transfer 20 minutes into the ride to an AC car. So he helped me buy 6 general train travel tickets for $11.  I knew Sikh people had a duty to help and this man was really kind.  He talked about when we would get off the train, buy food, and transfer to our new AC car.

Long story short, we never transferred.  We were stuck in a sea of people with all our luggage and no way out.  We were claustrophobic, scared, hot, hungry, and tired.  2.5 hours into the ride we stopped at a big city, and we grabbed all our belongings and kids only for the train to take off before we could navigate through the packed car to the door. At this point, we didn't want to make our situation worse by getting off the train in the middle of nowhere, with no place to sleep, only to get mugged. Finally, we laid down on the train beds and the kids fell asleep.  For a moment I thought we might survive. It was short-lived as a loud obnoxious group of upper class indians came into our area yelling that we were sleeping on their beds.  They were making fun of us and taking pictures of us while we were beyond miserable.  Ultimately, they woke all the kids up.  In their defense they did reserve the bed the kids were piled on, but we had no where to go.  I cannot express how packed this car was. At this point we had made friends with a couple and their 3 year old child who were getting off at 2am and said there was a hotel they would take us to.  It worked out.  After 6 hours and 20 minutes on the train, we got off. The hotel, albeit run-down with dead grasshoppers on the floor, could have been worse and had AC. We went to bed at 3am.  

At 5am I woke up wondering what to do.  I was feeling lost and once again (just as I did the first day in Nepal) thought I had made a grave mistake bringing the kids on such crazy travels. It was time to figure out where we were.  Google told me Ajmer - a muslim holy city.  Reluctantly i looked it up in our rough guide travel book knowing that the book doesn't list many small cities, but to my surprise, it was listed!  The book said, "Ajmer is just a transfer point for travelers headed to Pushkar." WHAT!???  PUSHKAR WAS 14KM AWAY!! HOLY INDIAN COWS!! I knew of Pushkar as a travelers Mecca from my past trip to India.  The guidebook says, "Pushkar has become one of Rajasthan's (that's the state we're in) prime chill-out spots - small enough to minimalize that Indian city stress. .."  WHAT GOOD LUCK! I overwhelming felt like we were going to be OK.  We had somehow managed to get off the train in a perfect spot. (Pushkar is in fact exceptional.  More to come, but I want to put this post to bed.) 

It was an awful 6hrs and 20minutes.  Riding like cattle in a train car is not something we are used to, but it is a very important, cheap and easy way for Indians to be able to move around, vacation and visit loved ones.  Can you imagine paying $1.50 to travel to New Orleans?  Everyone would be able to afford a vacation.  As our friendly Indian family said - its not easy on their three year old, but it does allow them to move around freely. I don't think I could do it, and I'm usually up for anything (especially not with minor cases of delhi belly).