Adventures in India 15: Pushkar

The hotel chicken wings at breakfast may have been leftovers from previous night.  We left early from Udaipur to leave time for tourism in Pushkar. Pushkar is one of the holiest places in India. The car overheated on the way - turns out the person who had earlier replaced the clutch had done something to cause a leak in the cooling system. The driver just pulled over and refilled it, so it wasn't nearly as dramatic as we were concerned it might be at first.

Ana also found limited edition gross Oreo when we stopped.

The road went up and got very twisty and narrow - saw buses driving very carefully indeed.

Apparently the hotel was a new one for the driver and he had to try a few different roads before finding the place, which was fairly attractive, though the rooms were a little iffy.

The hotel was on a hill overlooking the city, and that was a nice view. 

After checking in, we still had the late afternoon and evening for tourism.  Pushkar is famous as a holy site, the only holy lake in Hinduism and also the location of the only temple to Brahma. There was talk of why this is, something something a curse - but if I went any further I'd have to Wikipedia it, and in this case that is left as an exercise for the reader since reading it directly will be more efficient.

At any rate, we went to through a market to the temple to Brahma, where cameras are not allowed, and our guide tried to encourage us to cut the entire line.  We waited, since it was only a minute or two and why be jerks in a temple?  I am confident this site has more impact to Hindus than on me - in appearance and effect quite similar to others we had already seen.

After that, we transited through the market to the holy site of the lake itself, where you are also not allowed to take pictures.  There, and without being asked by the guide or anyone, we found ourselves holding a coconut and trying to follow along with our very own Hindi-speaking priest in some kind of blessing which reminded me a little of getting married, and which (SURPRISE) ended with them asking us for money. The priest referred to money in terms of how many hours or days he said it would support the charitable work of the local priesthood, which does not give you a clear understanding of how much they were asking for.  I am sure this was deliberate.  I was gearing up to be difficult about it and either demand more information or offer a small amount of money in a known denomination when Ana picked one. That turned out to be $300, and then we lied a lot about not having it on us, they wanted to do a written IOU, we bailed, and the guide was later asking us for it at the hotel (we wondered if he got a cut).  It was a thing.  Given choice or warning, we could happily have skipped this whole part, which was entirely unnecessary and annoying.

A picture taken of the lake next to the part you're not allowed to take pictures of.

Interestingly, afterward it turned out that our Hindi-speaking friend had accidentally picked the same amount of money, assuming their priest was speaking in rupees and not dollars.  It sounds like their priest switched currencies several times in confusing ways and made it sound like rupees when he meant dollars.  They also declined to follow through, though as someone raised in the Hindu faith our friend decided to make up the $300 in other charitable work at a time and venue less sketchy than this.

After that not very excellent tourism, we went back to the hotel and enjoyed just sitting on the room's little porch and watching the sun go down without anyone bothering us.  We were definitely wearing bug spray (malarial area) and were a little concerned when another American tourist went by with her kids and complained that the all-natural bug spray did not seem to be deterring mosquitoes from biting her kids.  Looking out over the down, we watched children kite-fighting from roof to roof and generally found this much more relaxing than standing by a lake and being hit up for money.

After the sun went down, we had dinner on the front lawn of the hotel, which was pretty nice - good temperature and views and with bug spray the bugs didn't bother us.  The whole city is vegetarian as a Hindu holy site, but we had some tasty okra in gravy and I ordered spring rolls which are probably not authentic to the local cuisine but were delicious anyway and I felt zero guilt by this point in the trip about enjoying things that weren't local cuisine.  So in our opinion, Pushkar is best enjoyed for the views and relaxation if you're not Hindu - might not have been an ideal destination for us but overall it balanced out OK.