Atta Girl 3

The Afterglow

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

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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