AJMER
Guess what ? I’m the only white person on the train! I already imagine what will happen as soon as I will leave the station.
For some reason, the train and the bus stations are always kilometers far from each other, and , again for some reason, in poor countries they are always located outside the city, no public means of connection!
While still inside the station, I ask to a man how much it costs a rickshaw ride. He looks at me mockingly, the cost is 3 rupees for him, he says, but for me he has no idea. I walk away a bit, luckily in the right direction, and find a rickshaw-wallah a bit less odious.
Ajmer has some noteworthy buildings, but I have no time to stop .
PUSHKAR
Hotel Hill View, 200 rupees for a clean room with bathroom. Found by chance. Near the bus station, but very quiet, because a little far from the road
www.hotelhillviewpushkar.com/pushkar-best-hotel.html
Restaurant Om Shiva, great buffet, good food, cheap and healthy, dysentery proof
My expectations of this city turned out to be proportional to disappointment.
A huge mystic potential, ruined by a damper band.
Mind you, the area around the sacred lake, where Gandhi’s ashese were sprinkled , is fantastic, and there really, at sunset, between cows ruminating, pilgrims who dive, and foreigners in spiritual ecstasy you can breath “real India”, but it is also true that you will find some pain in the ass at every corner.
First scam is the bracelet ceremony. A guy by accident offers a flower, an orange carnation. As you approach the ghat, and try to peek (everybody can access it, not only the Hindus, just take off your shoes), another guy arrives, claiming to be a guru. It takes you close to the water, binds around your wrist a burgundy cloth bracelet, and makes you recit a kind of pooja. From the bullshits he says, and from the list of deities mentioned at random, you should understand it’s a joke. This is the time when you have to stand up and dismiss him. If you linger … it’s too late. After the end of the pseudo-prayer, he will ask for an offer, but not a free offer, as it should be, but the astronomical sum of 100 rupees, but not 100 rupees in the whole, 100 rupees for each family member mentioned in the pooja.
If you refuse, they threaten perennial bad luck for everyone. If you are not superstitious, like me, you can tell him to fuck off.
The best thing to avoid this bleak pantomime is to accept the flower and then launch it to the first cow that passes by, or avoid altogether the invitation to pick it up
Then there are the very charming girls, like gypsies, dressed in brightly colored sari and ringed from head to toe. They stretch their hand, to greet you. And here’s the trick: there’s no reason to greet you and, even if there were any, Indians, especially women, do not greet in this way. If you give them your hand, they will hold it very tight, and start to doodle it with fake henna. If you are quick to jump away, they ask you for money to be photographed. Up to you, the beautiful photo is ensured. Greet them with folded hands, and go straight away is the best thing.
Then there are some kids who, while you blissfully sit at dusk to try to breathe the air of the real India, the one I mentioned earlier, the one that has fascinated George Harrison and his three companions from Liverpool, will literally torment your ears with the scary litany produced by their violins, or sitars, until you give them some money. Do not try to patiently wait they get tired, they won’t. Tell them simply to go away.
Obviously you pay for photographing cows from horns garlanded with flowers and mantle decorated with colored powder, you pay to photograph the sadhus, which are not sadhus, because the authentic sadhus are hermits who meditate motionless in very isolated places, and people from the villages bring them food, they don’t ask for money. In short, it’s a constant begging.
Pushkar is the classic mystique looking town which attracts with its charm many Western people, the kind of Western people who believe to solve their problems simply stopping there, and changing their name. In any case, if you manage to avoid pests, (and after a while the survival instinct comes to rescue you), Pushkar, with its lazy and indolent atmosphere, its white domes, terraced restaurants and cheap guesthouses, turns into a sweet trap that will imprison your hearts. Despite the stress, you return home and, like me, exactly, will regret to have cursed and left iy too early
