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Pushkar is interesting for three main reasons: it is one of the most significant pilgrimage sites in India, it is in or just on the edge of the desert, and it is completely unlike the rest of India. As one Irish guy, with dreads and lip piercing, put it to us: 'it's just totally shantih out here, you know what I mean?' Worryingly, yes we do. Maybe we should leave before we start wearing tie-died pyjamas, and smoking ganja. Or, we could go the other way and 'renounce the world...take it upon oneself to overcome oneself as a means of achieving purity in mind and body...achieving liberation via yogic discipline...adopting an esoteric doctrine of the self in order to further one's understanding of one's self and what is also God in onself', as one friendly Indian Catholic energetically put it until we worked out that he was trying to remember the English word 'monk'. This is the same evangelising Indian Catholic who claimed Jenny must be an 'idiot' for not being religious, that she must have no meaning in her life (I got away with a light scolding for saying I was a protestant). In return Jenny said that she finds meaning in plenty of other ways, and quietly suggested that finding meaning through religion only was misguided. He was also shocked by her answer to he his question 'Do you have social stratification in your country?' to which Jenny replied 'Aye but it's no the law or nothing like it is out here, part of your religious life and ritually weaved into the fabric of society (sic.)'. Thus spoke Jenathustra the Godless. She was greeted with disdain as a totally unwelcome prophet of, you know, progess.
April is the cruellest month, nowadays, apparently, for the farmers out here in Pushkar. This is mostly due to the pressure being exerted on the desert landscape by global warming, as one hotel owner described it to us. That camel he travels around on must have one nasty carbon footprint, as I'm sure he's well aware; although, he did appear to have some kind of carbon-offsetting scheme going on in the garden, with some small trees full of monkeys, and his toilet facilities could be described as 'green'. We were caught in a massive sandstorm that broke out over the ridge of Snake Hill, the lump of earth which demarcates village and desert. It happened unbelievably quikcly, but we were able to watch it climb up over the hill and turn the sky pink, before everything went golden, and sand was swirling around us, into our eyes, our hair, and our lungs. Incredibly atmospheric, but bad for the farmers. We were on the edge of an electrical storm that was moistening the ground a full 3 months early; the 3 dry months are just as important as the wet monsoon ones, apparently. These storms should be rare, but there have been storms every day for the last week.
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hello, jenny here. i'd just like to add a wee bit in about Pushkar because Colin managed to completely miss out everything amazing about it.
1- we met a Glasweigian who could talk at length about potato scones and Rothesay.
2-it was staggeringly beautiful.
3- amazing shops.
There, done.
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