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Other entries in Pushkar

peds 1. nance 1.

update on the betting front: I lost the next one - I kicked poo.... thankfully, it wasn't a huge amount, but had poo on my shoe, nonetheless.  :(

my punishment is a beer and at least I got to stall on the buying since pushkar is a holy place, and consequently a dry place. no access to beers (horrors!) or meat or eggs or any other vices. heck, couldn't even hold hands without presumably looking like sluts....

but despite this, pushkar is a pretty cool city and amazingly holy if you're hindi. I guess vishnu appeared in the lake in the vision of a boar. don't ask me why he didn't just appear as a vision of himself but this is how the story goes.

now if you're NOT hindi (and let's face it, I'm not passing for it any time soon), you're basiacally just prey for fake preists hoisting flowers on you and asking for a donation amount "as you wish" but when you give a little, they reveal that 'as you wish' really has a set price in mind. and they get downright ornery if you don't cough it up.... so once again, the religious experience potential was a little tainted....

but despite that, had a great time in pushkar. we were 2 weeks early for the camel fair but we did manage to find it! instead of seeing loads of other tourists, we actually saw gypsies and camel herders and loads of camels and cows, got hounded by dirty but cute kids, drank chai with the locals.

day 2 we rented a (too tiny) scooter and tooled around town riding past camel trains and taking pics of locals with the biggest smiles I've ever seen (unlike the hmong in vietnam, there appears to be no fear of soul-stealing here). at one point we hiked to this temple and the fathter of the family demanded pics with us. he wouldn't stop holding my hand - for sure felt like my blonde-ness was a novelty for them. but once again also figured I'd happily 'take one for the team' given all the shots of locals I'm taking. it's only fair to be the spectacle in return.

hard to leave as every day more andmore camels will snort into town, but have to head to agra and the taj mahal. at least we realized the best plan for the future is to get a scooter and get out of town to holler 'namaste' to all the locals. they don't want to swindle us and are genuinely happy to meet us. what a needed switch from swindle-central....(which feels like basically every place we've been to so far).

ps - pics uploaded soon....

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