Atta Girl

Parts 1 to 3

Awww man, I love my family here so much. I’m so sad to leave. We’ve hung out a lot, just sitting around, chatting, me looking after the really little kids (along with the older girls), playing games, going out exploring the streets.

It’s amazing how attached we’ve all become to each other.

The younger girls are always so keen to play, or dance, or just generally be silly, so we’ve been playing games I used to play with my own girls, or making up new ones.

When it’s really fun, Sonam and the older cousins are keen to join in too.

Games have included the usual whirling and twirling games, like them sitting on a large cane chair, and me swinging and pushing it wildly around the room. Or just grabbing them by the hands and swinging them wildly ‘round and ‘round.

Or the trust game, where they have to fall backwards without moving their legs or feet, until I catch them. It took them awhile to get used to that one - sorta goes against the grain. I also tried “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?,” but that wasn’t a big hit.

Last night we all came up with a great game that involved throwing a plastic wastepaper basket lid, from a distance, at a collection of various sweets, bikkies and coins. Whatever you managed to cover with the lid from your throw, you got to keep.

The game started out by us trying to throw coins into a tiny paper cup.

Then the girls suggested that sweets might be a good addition to the game (surprise surprise), and so I gave them some rupes so they could get a collection of stuff from their shop downstairs.

We laughed our heads off,  and I’ve promised them we’ll have another round tonight, my last night here.

The littlies watching on

People Of Colour

Rajasthan is a swirl of colour. Its brilliance is everywhere.

Yeah, plastic flowers

TV reporter, probably doing a story about the upcoming election. There’s a big rally tonight, the last day of campaigning, before the actual state election takes place in a couple of days.

Last eve in the Blue City

Setting up for the rally. I didn’t stay for the talkfest.

Filtered water station. I always re-filter it with my hiking squeeze filter before drinking. Just in case.

Bikkie shop. Look yummy don't they.

I might try this style

Milk delivery back at the shop

Indian version of the bum gun

Sleeping routines are completely relaxed around here. For everyone. School starts at 10am, and the kids seem to go to bed whenever they’re tired.

The so-called developed countries could really learn from that. Having well-rested and relaxed kids is, I imagine, supremely conducive to effective learning. Let alone relaxed parents, released from the torturous morning school/work routine.

At night here there’s random noise at any time, including loud music all over the place, till well into the night, people chatting or singing loudly, dogs barking their heads off and fighting each other, firework bombs going off, you name it.

No one cares. People just sleep through it all.

I don’t care either. After a year of living like this, I never really think about the noise at night at all. If I get woken up, I just go back to sleep. But actually I tend not to get woken up so much anymore, I must be getting used to it.

The kids and I played for hours in the evening, we had so much fun.

As usual.

Dance action.

The girls were really keen to take selfies on my phone

They’re the sweetest and funnest kids ever.

I miss them, we still keep chatting and messaging each other.

Jai Sri Ram!

It’s slightly cloudy.

It’s the first time I’ve seen the clouds since I came down from the mountains in Dharamsala some weeks ago.

I’m sitting in a little garden café in Pushkar, a holy town built around the sacred ghats of Pushkar Jheel, a small but beautiful and auspicious lake, that sits right in the middle of the old town.

This town is famous throughout India, as it’s the only place in the country with a temple to Brahma, one of the three supreme Hindu Gods. Most of the temples and ghats here were built in the 1700s, or later, as the Muslim Mughals, who conquered this area in the 1300s, destroyed all the earlier ones. Meanies.

Pushkar is also an auspicious place for Sikhs to visit, there are two famous gurudwaras here, one dedicated to Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, and another to Guru Gobind Singh, another important Sikh teacher. A gurudwara is a Sikh temple, as well as a general gathering place for Sikhs.

And, not to be forgotten, Pushkar has been a hippy hangout for decades, as it’s small, beautiful, sacred, and such a chilled place. As a result, the town also has loads of cafés serving everything from pizza and veg lasagna to magic lassis.

It was a 5 or 6 hour journey to get here on a local bus, with no room for my backpack except on my knees, on my already scrunched legs.

I was really sad to leave Jodhpur, and say goodbye to the family I’ve become so close with so quickly. For me, sad goodbyes are probably the hardest part of long term travelling. And there seems to be a lot of them.

My friends in Jodhpur are poor. I mean, they’re not the poorest family in India, by a long shot, but they’ll work their whole lives and never really get ahead, materially. They’ll always struggle on a rickshaw driver’s wage, and a tiny shop income. They’ll never own their own place, and never have any way of saving money for the sort of luxuries that you and I can enjoy without any thought whatsoever.

The very least I could do as we said our sad goodbyes was to hand Zigarh, the dad, a wad of cash. It’s enough to make a difference to his family, at least for awhile. He cried. So did I. He’d already given me a gift for each of my daughters, and told me to bring them all here, to visit his family, and that we could stay with them as long as we wanted, and he’d take us all over Rajasthan.

So gracious.

Cute gifts from Zigarh for my women-girls

And then he took me to the bus station.

My Reservation Cum Boarding Card. Don’t you love it. My fare was 220 rupes for the journey, about 4 bucks, for a journey that took most of the day. Public transport is subsidised here, as fuel prices have gone through the roof in India, just like everywhere else.

Another rattler

Nice to be in some hills again. The landscape around here is dotted with rocky outcrops and small ranges.

Ajmer bus station. Ajmer is a bigger town, maybe about 15 clicks from Pushkar.

A sad scene. It looked to me as if this guy had been considering suicide, by jumping from this tower onto the busy train line below, but was talked out of it by the other two guys.

India’s suicide rate has been growing for decades now, and, horribly, is now the most common cause of death in the age group of 15-39 years, with three times as many men taking their own lives, compared to women. Causes include mental health issues, for which there is little help here, study pressures, economic pressures (particularly for poor farmers), and domestic violence (women).

So distressing. It’s yet another huge problem that India has to come to terms with, a large part of which involves reducing the stigma around mental health issues, and providing real support. Let alone changing the blatant sexism, sexual violence and coercive control that is routinely directed against women here.

My first view of the lake at Pushkar

I went for a stroll. I was starving. This veg laffa (Middle-Eastern bread wrap) ended up in my hand in no seconds flat. Steamed potatoes, salad and spices. With garlic sauce. Mind-bogglingly good.

Mela Melee

Pushkar is crazy at the moment, at this, the busiest time of its year. The Pushkar Mela is in full swing, it’s a combination of a number of festivals, including a camel fair, a cultural festival, and a religious gathering, culminating in a ritual bathing in the lake during the auspicious full moon, Kartik Purnima.

Gau Ghat, the main ghat in Pushkar. This is a very sacred place in the country, so important that the remains of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were placed here, along with a number of other Indian VIPs. Local Hindus originally constructed a temple here to protect cows from the Mughal invaders back in the day, hence the name Gau (cow) Ghat.

People purchase these offerings to place at the temple.

Lineup for the Brahma temple. This line became impossibly packed on full moon day, the most auspicious day to do a puja (ritual offering and blessing).

The streets were crazy-packed sometimes

Chapati production line

Delicious kachori, served crushed with a serve of dahl and chilli in a bowl made of leaves. Kachori is like a deep-fried small thick flattened flour ball stuffed with lentils and other spices, or potatoes, or various other things. Served with a small wooden spatula. 100% biodegradable.

And a chai, in an old-school ceramic cup, also 100% recyclable.

There’s loads of sadhus in town, it’s an auspicious time to be here.

This legless guy was getting around on a homemade trolley.

Sugarcane juice maker. Just like at the north coast markets.

Poha

There’s a big fairground full of rides and sideshows and food stalls etc, to cash-in on the at-least half a million people that come here for the festival.

This is the undercarriage of the ride on the previous pic. It doesn’t matter that a floor panel has completely broken away, nah.

You have to throw a hoop on the blocks to win.

Elaborate balloon popping

Homemade dolls

Sand sculptures

Yeah right

I wandered away from the fairground, to the camel camps

This old guy doesn’t look well, his hide looks so damaged.

Where there’s tourists, there’s camel rides

Right in amongst the bloody traffic. Poor things.

Pushkar is basically surrounded by desert and sparse scrubland, with small hills and outcrops around the place. But the festival site has been encroaching on the desert, as more and more people turn up every year.

Kulfi is a frozen dessert made of milk and spices, kinda like icecream.

Sadhu posse, all chanting Jai Sri Ram!, which means “praise Lord Ram.” It’s a common greeting around here, and if I say it to people (which I do) I’m suddenly their friend for life immediately.

As opposed to when I don’t say it, in which case becoming their friend for life takes about 5 more seconds.

Rama is one of the Hindu deity A-listers, is featured in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and is a reincarnation of Vishnu. He’s the embodiment of chivalry, virtue and heroics, sorta like the Rocky Balboa of Hinduism, but more stylish, and with a better vocabulary.

Sadhu camp

Selling coloured decorative rope

Temples and Bollywood

I’ve been hanging with some super interesting and nice people here in Pushkar.

Jordan’s a successful tech guy originally from Iowa, who’s created his own MBA course based around sustainability. Yeah, he’s the guy on the left. He’s inspiring, he really wants to make a difference to the planet.

Oli (German) and Jojo (Singaporean) have been living around the place for the past 7 years, and have the craziest stories.

Beautiful people, all of them.

And also beautiful is the monster in between us, whom Jojo tamed immediately, despite her terrifying growl and bark (the dog’s, not Jojo’s).

I’ve also been hangin with Gerald, a human Berliner who’s worked all over the place for the UN, and Dave, an English guy who’s also taught English in loads of countries, including Vietnam and Kazakhstan. So many interesting people. I’ve learnt loads from them.

We’ve been exploring the place together, on and off.

One arvo Jordan and I climbed this hill, to a temple. Loads of pilgrims were making the trek up. But the tourists with cash took the cable car.

The air was a bit dusty

The glitzy fairground down below

Cheap hotel

We cruised back to town and went to the aarti, the ghat puja, which happens every night at dusk, some nights bigger than others. In fact, there’s a few of them every night, at different parts of the lake.

One night Jordan and I went to the Mela Ground for a gig by Amit Mishra, who’s a famous Bollywood superstar. The first few songs were pretty subdued, we thought it was ok but not that special, but then suddenly he let loose and was amazing!

Everyone danced crazily, mostly on their plastic chairs. It was super fun. I almost knocked a guy off his chair in my craziness.

About ten minutes after the gig finished the Indian guy behind me handed me my phone and glasses, both of which must’ve flown out of my loose pockets during some of my elaborate bouncy dance moves. I didn’t even know they were gone.

Now that was lucky.

Him giving them back, that is.

The Afterglow

Yeah, yeah, don't get excited, I’m talking about the festival.

Don’t rub it in ok.

Full moon day, the most auspicious day, and the laneways were heaving, especially anywhere near any ghat entrances or near the Brahma temple.

Mahakali, a reincarnated form of Brahma.

There was a cultural performance at the Mela Ground one day, it was amazing.

Dancers waiting patiently while all the dignitaries get turbanned, and the speeches go on and on ad nauseum. That’s sort of a feature of public events here, the important people need to be honoured. It takes forever. But the crowds don’t seem to mind, they appear to listen to it all.

There were loads of processions. As foreigners, they didn’t seem to mind if we wandered around the middle part of the fairground.

Bloody phones

There were loads of dancers and beautifully traditionally dressed locals.

There were prizes for the biggest cows, bulls, camels etc. The most productive cow had given 43 litres of milk the previous day, the judging day. The average is more like 25. They paraded her with her udders full. Poor thing, they were absolutely huge, she was sort of like a bovine Dolly Parton, and I’m sure she wishes she hadn’t been born as a cow, but as anudder, less tortured being.

Later we wandered about, there were camels clunking around everywhere.

Everywhere in town was packed on the big days. We just wandered around. Sometimes I’d sit on a stool and drink chai, and people watch. So many incredible things to see.

And yeah, of course it’s crazy noisy chaotic busy. Just nuts basically.

Just outside Gerald’s hotel. He said last time he was here, five years ago, this was a clean beautiful little square. Go figure.

I walked past this beautiful home every day

Full moon over the fairground

Chai wallah

Dreaming of icecream

In Praise Of Idleness

You know how when you live somewhere, and some days you don’t really feel like going out, so you just spend your time pottering around and doing nothing much?

Well now that the mela’s pretty much over I’ve felt like staying here in Pushkar and doing a bit of that. Well, a lot of it actually.

I mean, I still go out. A man’s gotta eat. And I wanna exercise every day, so I’ll at least go for a walk or two, and maybe do some sort of stretching or something.

I meet interesting people every single day. I’ve just been chatting with two warm and friendly young hippies from near Christchurch in NZ, Paris and Sabrina. They’ve been in India for 2 months, and they’re absolutely loving it. That’s in large part because they’ve got what the three of us considered to be the right attitude for this place. We just talked about it.

You’ve gotta be flexible here. If you’re not, you’ll almost certainly have a really hard time, because things often don’t go according to plan. There’s always delays, things don’t work out the way you’re expecting them to.

But things always work out eventually.

And you can get things happening here that couldn’t possibly happen in the West, because so-called developed countries are not flexible enough. There’s so many laws and structures there, and as a result many services you want, or foods, or accomodation, gets priced out of the market.

Not here though.

For example, I could walk outside this little cafe right now and find someone to drive me around India on their motorbike for the next 3 months, if I wanted. It’d probably take me 5 minutes to find the guy. Or less. Someone would know someone, and he’d be here in a flash, all ready to go right now.

And all those rules and regulations in the West also mean the streets there can be totally dead. People can’t just go out and sell stuff wherever they want. Busk anywhere. Set up their circus performances on the street. Everyone lives in their little hermetically-sealed houses, and in Western cities it appears to me that sometimes there’s not the same sense of community that exists in less wealthy countries.

Interesting, that.

Last night I was at Oli and Jojo’s place. They’re long term travellers, but not really travellers, because they don’t move around very quickly at all. They find a place, and they stay there. For months, or years. They’ve spent the last 7 years mainly in Nepal, India and Peru. With some stints in the US and Germany.

It’s been really sad and confronting to listen to Jojo’s story, about being a single mum in Singapore, and the relationship she’s had with her parents. For Jojo, her own Singaporean-Chinese culture and its associated expectations can be pretty hardcore, and really difficult to negotiate if you’re not really into it.

Even though her grandfather is Peranakan, a separate cultural grouping that evolved from the migration of people from southern China centuries ago, and then mixing with local Malays, Jojo’s parents never really embraced that side of their history. They became Christians instead.

The Peranakan community have their own language, Baba Nonya, which is being spoken less and less as the old people die out. And that Perenakan culture is something Jojo would love to embrace.

She’s different, in the sense that she didn’t fit into what has become a generic modern Singaporean mould - ie, do well in a hugely competitive school system, study at college, earn a lot of cash, get married, have kids, follow your man around, yada yada. You know, the usual.

And Oli’s originally from Germany, the eastern part, who left his crystal meth-infested friends many years ago, in search of something much more meaningful for his own life. He lived in Thailand and had land and a business there for a number of years, before meeting Jojo in Kathmandu, just after the massive earthquake struck in 2015.

They were deeply involved in recovery efforts there, as volunteers, and have been hanging out together ever since, having met at a time in their lives when they themselves both seriously needed support.

It’s so great to hang with those guys. They have a bunch of instruments, so we’ve been jamming heavily, telling our stories, and sharing music, food and sweets. And other things of course, some of which couldn’t be said to fall into the licit category.

But don’t think ill of me.

The best part of travel is, of course, the people you meet.

I’ve made such beautiful friends here. I’m sure I’ll see some of them again. Well, Insha’Allah I will.

I’ve been hanging with Sabrina and Paris, the Kiwis, and a Belgian woman, Karolyn. It’s been so nice to sit around the fire at their place and chat. People come and go, everyone’s from everywhere, so it’s so easy to learn a lot about different countries and cultures.

Everyone has a story, and some of them are bloody incredible. It takes a particular type of person to become a long-term traveller, and now that the mela’s over, it’s mainly long term travellers here. We have time, we can get to know each other, we can become close. It’s beautiful.

There’s a lot of smoking and bhang lassi consumption going on in this town. These days I partake only sometimes, I’ve realised it’s quite nice in certain situations, but I’m careful to pick and choose.

I’ve been out super late though most nights, and pretty much every time I get locked in someone’s guest house gate, and locked out of my own. With a pitch black walk through the gnarly dog-infested streets of Pushkar in between.

Visa Schmeeza

As I’m lucky enough to have a few dear friends meeting me in southern India in a little over a month, I need to renew my Indian visa soon, as I don’t want it to expire when they’re around. My current 12 month visa requires me to leave the country every 3 months.

The other night I got a message from Harrison, my Oz friend from Rishikesh, who’s just arrived in Pokhara, in Nepal, with his new Israeli girlfriend, Lily. I told him I was planning to go there to renew my visa, and that him being there is good motivation for me to get off my butt and get there relatively soon.

So I’ve got a train ticket for a 24 hour train ride from Ajmer, near here, to Gorakhpur, a city a few hours from the Nepali border. I leave at midnight tonight (well, you know, it’ll probably be later, given the Indian train system).

So it’s nearly time for me to leave this beautiful place.

It’s been amazing to spend time here. I’ve had some incredible experiences, seen amazing things. Beautiful, warm people. Religious devotion, temple rituals, festival colour, Bollywood flair, and the most incredible pilgrims and locals wandering about.

I’ve seen the mela build up, climax, and slowly die down. When all the festivalgoers left, the long termers returned, and it’s been a much more chilled, slow vibe.

And a bit glazey too.

I’m sad to leave Pushkar.

It’s a very very special place.

But, of course, so too is Nepal❤️

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