29th October

Spent ten minutes convincing the guards at five in the morning to let us out the hostel. I hate these damned rules.
We made our train on time. We are in the fancy AC chair class that I have been in with the family. Spent most of the journey asleep or eating – the best things in life. We didn’t get a rose this time. Perhaps only certain trains give roses or maybe they were just rolling out the red carpet for the maharani. The train took 7 hours or so, but there was a delay of about forty minutes. You pass through Jaipur, so I think Pushkar would be a very pleasant little day trip from Jaipur, if anyone is considering going to Rajasthan.
We got into about ten traffic jams on the way up the hill to Pushkar itself. It is incredibly busy: there are camels, trucks, people, bulls, etc all over the roads. Have already seen about ten tourists armed with massive cameras. Does not bode well for a quiet weekend.
Our hostel was the Maharaja Guest House. It is pretty decent rooms, fairly clean, though the bed sheets have a few interesting stains and the blanket looks like it was bought in the late seventies and hasn’t been washed since. The bathroom was spotless though and they did alright food and good tchai. Though, as with everything, they worked on Indian Standard Time. So tchai, (a wee cup of tea), took about half an hour to produce. There are rules for foreigners painted up on the walls of the guest house. There is to be no public displays of affection between sexes, no inappropriate behavior, no alcohol and no shoes near the sacred lake. The sacred lake is in fact a series of sacred gats, as there is no more water in the lake. They await some rain to bring it back.
Went for a wander and was accosted by friendly seeming men offering me sacred flowers: the marigolds the use in garlands here. You have to go and put them in the lake as a pooja offering. When we found a gate down to the main gats we were accosted by yet more nice men who led us down to the gat side and then started doing prayers over us. We didn’t want to get up and leave as they might have gotten offended. So I sat holding my sacred flower and coconut and repeated his mantras after him. The priest (for he was a Brahman it turned out) then gave me a tilak dot (the red thing on the forehead) and tied a sacred red thread round my wrist and then said ‘donation now ma’am’. I began to laugh, and told him he could have fifty rupees. He laughed also, and said what importance was money, why fifty rupees when it could be five hundred. After all, money was not important, except obviously to him. I told him that five hundred rupees was in fact, too important to give to him, and gave him the fifty. He told me I was too much like an Indian girl and then tried to give me his number. Some priest. Amanda’s had not even got so far as the thread before he asked for cash, so she was unconsecrated. Lauren’s had asked her for money but in an aggressive way, telling her Brahmans needed money (mine had said tactfully that the money went to charity to help the poor of Pushkar, of which there are many). So she gave him no money, and he cursed her family name by name instead. I got the better end of the deal at least.
After the lake we went wandering across the town to the Mela. The Mela is the fair ground erected in honour of the camel festivities going on. We got offered a camel for ten thousand rupees by a thirteen year old in a fake beard and moustache. Amanda managed to convince him instead to let her ride the camel for a few minutes for thirty rupees. It looks a little unstable. They really are weird creatures. Every time I looked at them I began to wonder how in the hell something like that even evolved. Completely bizarre. As she was riding many people came up and started taking our pictures. Because there weren’t enough white tourists to take pictures of. There are even some of Lauren holding people’s babies. In order to escape, we went into the fair ground to go on some rides. I decided not to, as they sparked and looked like they might collapse. Went instead with Amanda into the Mela itself, where a traditional band were playing. After ten minutes a girl appeared on stage in the traditional Rajasthani dress of the mirrored top and skirt (much like my own) and did a dance to an old bollywood tune. She was a very energetic little dancer, but it did feel a bit weird to be in a crowd full of men watching this thirteen year old twist about the place. Eventually the crowd became too much for us and we had to go. It is completely packed in this place. And you never get a moments peace to yourself. Everyone is coming up to you trying to take your picture, give you sacred flowers, take your money, hold your hand and so on. Lots of women started shaking my hand for no apparent reason, which was very nice of them, but some of the younger ones were too scared to ask and so would run by me and give me a slap on the arm on the way. It was better than the men though, who either try to scam you or drive into you with their motorbikes before taking a picture and making a rude comment.
Speaking of rude, I had a slight trauma. When we got back to the hostel after dinner one of the Swiss girls who I did not know at all came up to me and essentially told me that I had embarrassed her, that I was dressed like a whore with my breasts hanging out and that I should be ashamed of myself as I was in a holy place. I was shocked. For a start, I had been wearing two vest over the top of one another and had had my big blue scarf wrapped round my entire upper half all day, and of course I was wearing trousers. So unless my lower arms have somehow transformed into my chest, I think I was completely fine. I was dressed far more conservatively than some of the girls I had seen on the streets. Her attack was just vicious. The way she said it as well was very malicious and I was left speechless. Thank god Lauren was there to witness it. She asked the girl if someone had said something, if someone had been looking or something. But no, no one had said anything. The girl had ‘been in India longer than we had and knew how it worked’. She also accused Lauren, who had been wearing a vest-scarf combo, of being in the same boat as me. She then turned round and stormed off. We were gob-smacked. I have never been spoken to in such a way by anyone for a long time. As soon as she left I felt like smacking her. How dare she! She had been sour faced all day. According to Lauren as well she had on the train been very snide in her remarks and had been quite aggressive, even to her friends. Evidently we had just been having too nice a time for her to cope with. We got Amanda in who had to be restrained from storming into her room and yelling. She eventually went on in anyways, but the girl was sitting there in just her knickers and Amanda couldn’t cope and left. Two faced so and so. Ah well. Better a ‘whore’ than a bitter and mean two-faced idiot.