Pushkar Debrief

It has been quite a while since I last posted, but I can assure you that it is for a very good reason. The group just returned from a week-long excursion to Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, and Bikaner. In addition, I traveled to Pushkar, a small hippie settlement in the middle of the desert, with several of my friends the weekend prior to the trip. I can honestly say that this was one of the best trips I have ever taken in my entire life — educational, fun, interesting, stimulating, diverse, and emotionally moving.
A group of my friends (12 of us) left Jaipur on Saturday morning, February 21st and took an AC taxi to Pushkar. We arrived at the hotel in the mid-afternoon, checked in, received delicious (and free!) mango tea. All of us were desperate to check out the falafel restaurant that came highly recommended, so we ventured off into the streets of Pushkar wandering through the markets. On the street I purchased a camel leather notebook with a stone of amber on the front, for use as a future journal. I’m hoping to write in it as often as possible. Last summer I returned home from Kolkata with a composition notebook full of letters, poems, notes, and ideas, something I will treasure forever. I plan to replicate it over the semester.
The falafel restaurant, The Third Eye, is run by Israelis who have emigrated to Pushkar and have essentially established a hippie colony. I ate some of the most authentic falafel I have ever had in the Israeli diaspora, with French fries inside the falafel sandwich itself! In those moments I really missed home and hummus and tahini I eat regularly with my family. All of the Jewish kids in the group kept reading all of the Hebrew signs around the restaurant and hotel with pride. I even had a very short conversation with an Israeli guy in Hebrew (dad, you would have been proud). On the way back into the market I happened upon the Chabad House and an Israeli guy came out wearing tefillin and a kippah. He asked me first if I was Australian and then if I was Jewish. I was with my friends so I didn’t stop, but it was extremely tempting to sit down with a bunch of hippie religious Jews and feast in India.
For the rest of the afternoon we wandered around Pushkar and happened upon the Brahma temple, the only one of its kind in the whole world. In my honest opinion, the temple does not stand out from many of the other temples that I have visited here; nonetheless it does hold great significance for many Hindus. It is the only Brahma temple in the entire world, drawing pilgrims from all parts of India. After the visit to the temple, my friend Josh and I wandered through the streets of Pushkar and happened upon a religious musical gathering near one of the ghats on the lake. As I crossed the threshold into the ghat to start taking pictures of the lake, an old man stopped me and said I had to participate in the pooja before I could start taking pictures. At that moment I recalled my friend Becca telling me not to do the pooja because it meant jumping into the lake and exposing myself to multiple parasites and bacteria. I was extremely hesitant. Luckily, Josh, who looks Indian because his father is Bangladeshi, is extremely outgoing when it comes to interacting with Indians so we decided to play along. We sat at the water’s edge separate from one another and were tended by individual priests. I was given a red powder bindi and was relieved of my bad karma. I placed a blessing on my family and friends, poured a little bit of the lake water on my head, and made a 100 rupee (roughly $2) donation; with that I completed the ceremony section of the pooja. Josh and I then proceeded to walk around the lake to see all 52 ghats at sunset. We sat with other pilgrims, walked shoeless through the pigeon poop, soot and waste, and felt completely satisfied as the sun fell behind the horizon.
That evening we returned to the hotel and sat on the roof for several hours sipping lassis and talking about life and India. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, a pure vegetarian place with all organic produce. It was really delicious. The next morning all of the girls in the group received sketchy massages from the hotel masseuses, all men. I obviously kept my clothes on and stayed pretty tense for the entirety of the massage due to my heightened sense of male libido (from the sexual repression in this country).
Overall, I had an amazing two day vacation from the busy city life of Jaipur and a lovely escape into some hippie and Israeli culture. If you ever get to Rajasthan I unhesitantingly recommend Pushkar for a lovely weekend away and a great shopping retreat.