pushkar

while most of the rest of the group went on a day trip to agra this weekend to see the taj mahal, phil, rachel, and i spent the weekend in pushkar. there's some sort of programming for us every afternoon (usually feedback, sometimes a speaker)including fridays, so we took an overnight train late friday night. we made friends with the two business men sharing our unit who had almost as many questions about american culture/values as we did about those of india. once we got to ajmer, at 4 in the morning, there was a gaggle of obnoxious rickshaw drivers trying to overcharge us for the miserable half hour ride we would have to take to get in to pushkar. dismal, to say the least. they dropped us off at a gate and after a lot of frusterating confusion we realized we would have to walk down and find our hotel. it was unreal. if it weren't for the wandering cows and stanky messes of trash, i would have felt like we were on a movie set. in the cold dark of the night, with only a map sketched out on the back of a packet from another volunteer as our guide, we had a depressingly hard time finding our hotel.

we got a couple of hours of sleep in our dinky bathroom-less hotel room before waking up to see the beatufiul sunrise over the lake. we spent the day making our way around the lake, shopping and exploring temples. pushkar is famous for the brahma temple- the only temple in the world where lord brahma, creator of the universe, is worshipped. the lake is considered holy water, so there are bathing ghats surrounding it where hindus (and curious travellers) bathe, pray, and meditate. you have to take your shoes off to walk down there and you're not supposed to take pictures (but we did anyway from the porch of our hotel). alcohol and meat are also illegal, which i think is because pushkar is a pretty orthodox city.



while walking around everyone kept shoving flowers in our hands to put in the lake and pray. we had been warned against accepting the flowers and going to the ghat because they're only after our money, but we were all curious enough to not mind. one man, nandu, sat with me by the lake and instructed me through the rituals with a lot of repeat-after-me's, helping me pray to the god vishnu to keep my family healthy and happy and something about me getting a husband. before this wonderful little cultural exchange was over he asked me to pledge a donation. shocking. i gave him 100 rupies ($2.50).

our train got back to delhi late sunday night. oh how i had missed the head-splitting honking and jaw-clenching traffic. in india they joke that you can survive without breaks, but without a horn- you're done for.