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Two Days in Lassi Heaven, No Bhang

Pushkar turned out to be a good place for relaxing. There was always time for drinking Lassi, eating desert and watching people walk by. I also took some time to catch up on writing this journal. With a more relaxed schedule its easy to put energy into that. During the course of my leisure I ran into Joanne from Fatepur Sikri. I ran into her both evenings and we shared some dinner. She liked the music so much at the one restaurant that I wanted some silence in that she bought the CD, thus confirming why they wouldn’t turn the music off or even down, even though it made me unhappy. A little bit of money on the side is everything to restaurant employees working for tourists. Many of the employees live in the restaurant and you would be astonished how little of many of them make despite the wealth of such tourist places. I also met up with one of my students from Dharamsala who was from Bangkok. It was nice to see a few familiar faces in Pushkar. I also for some reason decided not to drink the Bhang Lassi. Bhang is a form of marijuana, legal in Rajasthan state. I am not sure why except that I wasn’t in the right mood. Many the tourists, and the Sadhus, the holy beggars of India, were all sitting around consuming bhang. I didn’t really care except that as a holy town, there is no meat or alcohol and also annoyingly no eggs. I would have liked eggs in my breakfast or my apple pie, but no, can’t have that in Pushkar, it’s a holy town. My last thought on the priestly scam is that India has to be the only country I know of where nothing is holy. I cant imagine the priests of any other religion trying to steal money from people for themselves in such an obvious way. I cant imagine Christians or Muslims knowing about it and let it continue, but in India nothing is sacred. Every rule is broken. The Muslims would treat the degrading of their religion quite seriously, which is why you wouldn’t see something like that. Really its given me a bad impression of Hinduism and given me a wary eye towards its authenticity that still hasn’t recovered. On the second day I went for a walk up to a temple on a hill. Really I just wanted to go for a walk. The hill had a height of about 100 meters and great fews looking over Puskar the surrounding countryside. It took me about 30 minutes to walk up there from the relaxing banana lassi that I was enjoying. The last man selling water before the hill told me it would take me 2 hours to reach the top and that I would desparate and thirsty and have to pay a high price for water at the top. It took me 20 minutes to make it, and I didn’t have a drink of water before walking back to Pushkar. But me knowing that didn’t stop him heckling me for not “trusting” him. The walk was nice and there were some stairs cut into the hillside. At the top there was a drink stand, a temple, and sadly, a man selling music. The music was loud and what I wanted more than anything was a small amount of peace at the top of the hill. So I walked past the madness and found a small path leading to the other side of the hill where I couldn’t even hear the music anymore. I sat for an hour thinking about the universe and watching the large birds fly around. The surrounding country side was some part desert and some part irrigated fields. It was a great place to sit. I had no interest in visiting the temple at the top or stopping for a drink. So I walked on down the hill and enjoyed some more Lassi. Drinking lassi at the Pushkar Juice Center was becoming epidemic, but they knew how to make a mean good lassi, and they were cheap also. I easily could have spent a few more days in Pushkar, but I could already here the singing coming from new destinations. They were calling for me, and I had a lot more places to visit in India. Incredible India. And for all the crap I tend to complain about in India it should noted that the culture is quite unique, often amazing and surprising. I endeavor to rise up past the stupid shit, but I also don’t want to gloss over it. India was one of the places I wanted to visit most when I left home, but I always new it would be a love and hate relationship.

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