Travel Tips

They say that, ‘Brahma dropped a lotus flower on the earth and Pushkar floated to the surface.’ A sacred lake, ringed by bathing gats (steps) and temples which, in turn, were besieged by cheap hotels, tourist restaurants and thousands of hippy shops.

Pushkar was Holy Land meets Rocky Horror Picture Show. There were more baggy trousers and tie-dye tops than you could poke an incense stick at. Every kind of traveler gravitated there, with a promise of cheap ganja, banana pancake and a fitting ambience to do absolutely nothing to.

Gangs of gap-year kids hunted through the hippy stores, trying – sometimes a little too hard – to look more interesting and more ‘Indian’ than their friends. There were original hippies, who looked like they’d been there since Partition in 1947; forests of grey, lice-infested beards, withered frames draped in the faded rainbow rags of a lost generation, sitting at cheap chai shops staring into space. And a few normal people, who stood right out of the crowd, looking very odd.

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I had heard about the Pink Floyd Hotel. To chose somewhere to stay solely based on the fact its themed upon your favorite of all-time rock band is to succumb to a clichéd tourist trap and a bit sad. As it happens, I am a tourist and a bit sad, so we booked in – after over an hour of trying to find the damn place in the tiny town.

Each room was named after a Floyd album. We were in ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, their greatest album ever, which pleased me even more. And actually, the hotel was very nice and not too expensive.

In fact I liked Pushkar a lot. It made me smile. Those poor sadus and pilgrims, completely swamped by a mass or psychedelic freaks from all four corners of the planet. It must have scared them ******** !

Juliet succumbed to the vibe and indulged in a little low-key tie-dye. Enough to melt into the milieu without making any radical statements or risking bad photos that might haunt her for years to come.

I never fit in anywhere. I didn’t even try.

Pushkar is the sort of town you meet a lot of foreigner who will tell you they live in India. It got me to wandering if that was Pushkar India, or Goa India, or NGO Compound India or Real India. It didn’t bother me. I just wandered.

We took the bikes out of town to visit some Hindu temples, lost out in the hills, down a maze of dirt tracks. It was a 16km round trip. Or should have been. It wasn’t surprising we cycled over 30km! We pedaled right around the lake and back to where we started at one point without even realizing it.

The Hindu temples were just… well, temples. I’ve seen dozens over the years. These smaller, countryside temples were just white-washed buildings containing a shrine with some Disneyesque figures daubed in flowers, offerings and splashed haphazardly with red and yellow paint. A slightly lonely-looking sadu was sat, half-naked in a tiny niche nearby, hoping for a handout from a pilgrim of curious westerner.

I understand the concepts behind most religions. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism… they all make sense. But Hinduism? Something to do with a million different deities, all manifestations of a single god? I don’t know. Ask a Hindu. It goes right over my head. But one thing is for sure; no Hindu has ever made any attempt to convert me. Probably too much like hard work. Assuming they understand it themselves.

A thought occurred to me as I sat on a rock in that quiet little valley, watching the lonely sadu watching me; If a man grows up on a desert island, never having contact with another human being, will he understand or be aware of the concept of god? If he has to be taught the concept by another human being, doesn’t that make god man-made?

Perhaps someone had put something in my banana pancake that morning.

It took three days to get to the lakeside itself on the bathing ghats, even though they were never more than a hundred feet away. We were far too preoccupied with doing nothing to have time for that.

I noticed a degree of ‘play’ on my front wheel. It seemed the hub had loosened. I put out an S.O.S. on the Crazy Guy On A Bike website and was inundated with help. “Be sure not to oil the hubs. It will displace the grease inside,” one cyclist advised. Damn it. Id never oiled the hubs before – until Bikaner, just a few days before.

I took Hagar to a bicycle repair shop up the road and the wrong sized tools were somehow made to fit and the hub tightened.

Juliet had her hair trimmed and haggled like hell for an Indian head massage. I was becoming quite impressed by her bartering skills. She wouldn’t take any nonsense from anyone. I needed my haircut too, but being tighter than a ducks rectum I cut my own hair in the shower. I nearly succeeded in gouging out an eyeball in the process and I don’t think it will win any style awards.

The original plan had been to cycle to Goa. The idea of having a tropical beach as a final destination was possibly what had persuaded Juliet to do the trip in the first place. But back in Iran, with some help from the Bikers Of Esphahan, Id persuaded her to change our destination to Nepal. Id argued that she lived by a beach anyway, (though hardly ‘tropical’) it would be too hot by the time we got there and, most importantly, the beauty of the beaches could never, ever match the beauty of the Himalayas.

So Pushkar was as far south as we would go. We now turned east-north-east and cycled for four days, by-passing huge Jaipur, to reach Bharatpur.

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