30th October

Lauren and I got up early this morning for a nice wander around Pushkar before the midday heat. I unfortunately am now ‘appropriately’ dressed with a t-shirt with a round neckline. I am slightly annoyed I don’t have more vest tops, but Lauren is holding up the fort on that front.
We went for some museli and dahi at Café Enigma: a small backpacker café round the corner from our hostel. It was damned good museli actually. From there we went on a nice wander round the bazaar and ended up spending ludicrous amounts of money in this one particular shop that had clothes of dreams in it. they gave us free tea and offered cigarettes we spent so much…I did get lots of Christmas gifts though. However, I will admit that I did buy myself an awesome little purple dress that is embellished with stiching of peacocks and flowers in deeper purples. It is lovely, and I feel like a doll in it. Technically only cost about twenty pounds, but that is a lot of money here. It is great though. Lauren got one too, except hers is a steel grey instead.
Went to meet the others at the Mela. There is a moustache competition on this morning, but it was so crowded with tourists taking photographs we could hardly see the moustache despite it being two metres long or something. It didn’t even seem to be much of a competition – more just men with grand moustaches standing in a row charging 100 rupees a photo. Far more impressive was a ten year old girl walking a tight rope with a flower pot on her head, but no one really cared about her.
So we left the Mela. I couldn’t really stand watching a sea of massive cameras and socks in sandals. Went to Laura’s Café – another backpacker café with a great fresh vegetarian menu. The food looked great. I was still full of breakfast but Ben had a spring roll that was incredibly fresh and full of nice veg. Laura herself is also a lovely young woman, who will try and accommodate anything you like. Including huge groups like our one.
Lauren decided to get her nose pierced right now. We went to the barbers who took us down the road to his friend the jeweler. The jeweler sat Lauren down and took out piercings for her to choose. She chose a plain silver ball. He took out some pliers and a file and iodine then sharpened the end of the piercing stud down to a point, held her face and stuck it straight through her skin without any further ado. It was very quick and relatively painless looking. I was very impressed. I was almost tempted to get one, but I don’t have so much faith in the iodine-sterilising arrangement…
This afternoon was spent wandering around until we hit a café called Cool Blue Café. Had a spot of lunch and then decided we would climb one of the hills to go up to the temples there. There are three hill temples that you can see from the ground in Pushkar. We went up one and I have to say it was quite nice and peaceful up there in comparison to the complete madness seething about below. And there were no priests. Absolutely brilliant.
Before dinner Lauren and I went on another wander. We walked down through the main bazaar and every few feet a guy would take our picture or make some lewd comment. I really don’t like the men in this place. They are just so much more brazen than in Delhi. We got some banana crumble cake though from the wonderful cake stall next to the main gat. He sells ‘special’ cake too. Ironic: the holy place full of opiates.
Speaking of opiates, the girl who was mean to me last night sat up and drank the illegal alcohol and smoked weed with the men who run our hostel. And I thought that this was a holy place. Doesn’t she have any self-respect? Tch…
For dinner we went to Sai Baba’s. it is a little buffet style restaurant that has live music and dancing on in the courtyard. The food was ok, but it is the atmosphere and the performance that you actually go for. There were two little boys who were just brilliant wee singers. They looked very cute in their white pyjamas and turbans.
Apparently we are going on a camel trek tomorrow. Tomorrow is also Hallowe’en. I am slightly sad that there is no dressing up for me this year, unless I had decided to come as a generic Indian person, in which case I should win a prize.