c. 2006 Religion News Service
PUSHKAR, India _ We came a long way for a camel fair, and we left with a blessing.
The town of Pushkar, on the edge of a sacred Hindu lake surrounded by stone steps and a sea of sand, was about as far from home as my wife and I got in a three-week tour of northwestern India. We rode into Pushkar in a camel cart. We slept in a tent. We ate only vegetarian fare. And we bared our feet to walk down to the lake for a priest’s blessing that put the journey in perspective.
Pushkar is just a tiny piece of Rajasthan, a vast region of India’s northwest that borders Pakistan. The land is dry and tough, its history full of traders and invading armies who ran into powerful rulers and their warriors sitting in red rock, cliff-top forts. Rajasthan is rich with bold colors and ceremony, such as Pushkar’s tradition-bound annual camel fair.
Once a year, in October or November depending on the cycle of the moon, the town is populated past its capacity with people drawn to the two-week festival. First come the serious buyers and sellers and barterers of hundreds of camels and horses. At the end of the two weeks, thousands of Hindu pilgrims arrive on foot to bathe in Pushkar Lake at the holy time of the full moon, on the final day of the fair.
In between come the travelers from all over the world who crowd the mela _ the fairgrounds _ to witness the spectacle of it all. They find booths with bangles and beads and false teeth, spectator sports including camel races, musical performances and monkey shows, roadside food stands, movie tents, farm products and implements for sale, and peep shows with not much to see (but even a little flesh draws a crowd of men in this part of the world).
In recent years, the fair has expanded to accommodate tourists who are more in the market for an experience than for a camel. We saw hundreds of Westerners all over the mela, buying souvenirs, watching shows, riding camels. The fair was packed with people and animals, the air full of swirling particles of sand and a mingling of smells from roasting nuts to camel urine.
We had a wonderful time.
Pushkar is without airport or train station _ or highway. The only roads to town are country lanes that cross and merge with other paths that were not designed for modern vehicles. The task of getting us to the fair fell to our driver, Baluinder, who had been assigned to us by Far Pavilions, a New Delhi tour company with which we had contracted before we left the United States. I had been warned not to drive in India because of the country’s treacherous roads, which are made all the more difficult by a frenetic style of driving.
Baluinder was a master of motoring. Drivers of cars are aggressive, as vehicles, animals and people move at significantly different speeds. Baluinder’s style was pell-mell at short intervals, then braking or swerving before reapplying his foot to the accelerator, always beeping his horn. The car did not need a cruise control device, because no speed was maintained for more than a few seconds, given the assortment of participants in the highway parade: fast cars, slow cars, slower cars, slow overpacked trucks with bursting seams, buses, scooters, motorbikes, three-wheel chugging tuk-tuks, bicycles and people walking, not to mention the occasional stray cow and the more frequent broken-down truck.
In the darkness of the one-lane country road from the last town of Ajmer to Pushkar _ a lane we shared with trucks and buses and camels moving in both directions _ I sat, eyes closed, in the back seat of a Toyota SUV. I left the watching to Baluinder, who giggled whenever my wife, in the front seat, praised his efforts. After 250 miles over seven hours from the train station in New Delhi, Baluinder had beeped his way safely into Pushkar.
Because Pushkar draws crowds only once a year, the town has few hotels, and they fill up way ahead of time, especially the elegant Pushkar Palace, which sits at the edge of the lake.
Outside of town, on the roads leading to the fairgrounds, entrepreneurs have set up tent cities where as many as 1,000 tents of various quality surround the festival like military encampments. When more tourists arrive, more tents are erected, only to fall when the fair ends.
For our first night, we had reserved a tent at the Royal Desert Camp, which was royal only in its rate of $200 a night per person _ geared to wealthy travelers, many of them Americans.
Our “home” was a sandy field off a dusty road a few miles from the fairgrounds. To get to our tent, No. 251 of 400 in the camp, we had to slog through heavy sand from the entrance. Like all the others, our two-person tent had two single cots with an electric light bulb hanging from the top. Behind a flap at the rear were a toilet and washbowl, as well as a shower head. Outside, several men stoked wood-fired boilers that moved heated water through plastic pipes under the sand to each tent.
You could tell who was staying at what tent encampment by the style of the camel carts that provided transportation to and from the mela. Some carts had roofs adorned with colorful fringe, and most of the tourist carts had sideboards so no one fell onto the rough dirt-and-stone road. Our cart from the Royal Desert Camp was more utilitarian: no fringe, no sideboards, only a dusty sheet and some hard straw separating our bottoms from the wood floor.
With our guide, Gomesh, who was contracted by the same agency that booked our transportation to Pushkar and our tent lodgings, my wife and I were carted into town on a hot, dry morning, rocking and rolling over every stone and hole on the road.
Pushkar is the town of the great Brahma, who Hindus believe created the universe. In the language of Sanskrit, Push is flower and Kar is hand, so the town is a flower in the hand. Except for camel fair time, Pushkar is a quiet getaway for the spiritual. Gomesh said that once in a lifetime, devoted Hindus make a pilgrimage to Pushkar to pay respects at India’s only major temple to Brahma and for a ritual dip in the sacred lake to purify their souls.
Pushkar Lake is considered so sacred that everyone must remove shoes within 40 feet of the water. The lake also serves as the site for Hindu funeral ceremonies. After cremations, ashes are dispersed into the water. The lake is surrounded by ghats, which are broad flights of steps that lead down to the water. On special occasions, such as the days just before the full moon at the end of the camel fair, many of the ghats are a swarm of pilgrims washing with holy water.
A Hindu priest named Giri approached us with an invitation to go down to the lake and participate in a blessing ceremony.
Giri is a Brahman, which means his family long has been entrenched in the highest, though not necessarily wealthiest, caste in India’s ancient societal hierarchy. Legally, castes _ from Brahman down through soldier and merchant to the lowest including the Untouchables _ no longer exist. But Brahmans still are considered spiritually superior beings, and Untouchables still hold the lowest, least appealing jobs.
Pushkar Lake is in the heart of town. We walked through a stone portal and down a flight of marble steps, removing our shoes for the final 40 feet of a ghat that was nearly empty. A few pilgrims nearby were quietly splashing water from the lake on their arms and legs. The full moon was still two days away.
Giri had brought a thin silver plate for each of us. On each he had placed flower petals, red and yellow sandalwood paste, string and rice. In our private ceremony, he spoke in Hindi and English, and we repeated the English words, offering blessings for family members alive and deceased. With his forefinger, he dabbed sandalwood paste and rice on our foreheads, a bindi between our eyebrows just above the bridge of our noses _ a cool mark believed to offer an auspicious future. He guided us in throwing flower petals into the water to wash away bad karma for the living, and to offer blessings for the dead. He tied red and yellow strings around our wrists _ symbols that are said to be a reminder of Hindu purity, self-restraint, nonviolence, patience and love for one’s fellow beings.
Pushkar was my first all-vegetarian city. Here, as in many Hindu cities, meat and alcohol are forbidden.
At Royal Desert Camp, where meals in what looked like an army mess tent were included in the exorbitant price, we ate a tasty rice concoction with vegetables, a filling noodle thing, vegetable soup, a spinach and cheese dish, mixed vegetables like ratatouille, overly sweet banana custard and coffee.
The next night, dinner was at the lovely Pushkar Palace hotel on a terrace above the lake. Savoring the cool of the desert evening, in this magical center of Hindu faith, we listened to music and chants as blinking lights reflected off the holy water below. The buffet was nothing special _ a starchy affair with noodles and rice, rice pudding, and two vegetable dishes, one with cheese. But the view, the clear night air and soft sounds of the pilgrims made for an unforgettable feast for the senses.
(OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)
Baluinder, the driver who had delivered us from New Delhi and who remained with us throughout our Rajasthan journey, invited us to eat a meal at his Sikh temple. The Sikh religion, which goes back to the 16th century in northern India, combines some practices of Hindu and Islam. Baluinder’s invitation came from the heart, so my wife and I couldn’t refuse. He was proud of his temple, an imposing concrete and white marble building that he said was the Sikhs’ newest and best in India.
But we worried. We had been so careful to eat only in restaurants, ignoring street vendors. Visitors to India are urged to drink bottled water and not to eat any foods that cannot be washed or peeled that has been touched by bare hands.
So, with trepidation about cleanliness but with gratitude to Baluinder for his invitation and the opportunity to share food with pilgrims, we walked to lunch at the temple on our last day in Pushkar. The temple offers Sikh wayfarers a place to take a shower and sleep _ on a concrete slab for rolling out a mat _ as well as three meals a day.
A massive open-air room with a concrete floor serves as eating and sleeping quarters. This is where our driver had spent his nights in Pushkar while we were hanging out in tentville.
Baluinder directed us to sit on a long dark carpet, about 18 inches wide. Heads covered, feet bare, my wife and I joined a few families and a dozen traveling men for the midday meal. Two large cooking pots and a folding table sat at the end of the carpet. A man passed out tin plates. My wife and I surreptitiously used antiseptic wipes on our hands before accepting nan _ the Indian flat bread _ from the hand of a man distributing food.
Next came a ladle of dal, a stew made with lentils, onions and spices. I declined a cup of tea, saying I would drink from my water bottle. Slowly, as slowly as I ever have eaten, I sopped up my spicy dal with nan, hoping that my small portion wouldn’t offend my hosts. I declined seconds.
After the meal, we spent a few minutes in silent prayer. I offered a thanks for the graciousness of our hosts. I admit I prayed also that our antiseptic wipes worked, that the plate and the ingredients in the dal were reasonably clean, as well as the nan man’s hands.
(OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)
At the end of the camel fair, we sat on top of a sand dune, maybe 100 yards west of the mela, where an entrepreneur had set up folding chairs facing the setting sun.
Below, throughout the late afternoon, hundreds of camels were tethered to the ground near small fires, around which sat an owner or three eating an early dinner.
On the dune, 50 rupees, about $1.10, bought a seat and a Coca-Cola with a straw. For the hour before the sun set, travelers made their way up the dune, and as the orange ball disappeared over the desert toward Pakistan, we watched lines of camels being led out of Pushkar toward their new homes.
It would be a long walk for some, a hundred miles or more, and they would move during the night’s cooler temperatures. I listened for the fabled moan of the mother camels as they realized they had been separated for good from their young ones _ a reminder that the fair was not fun for all.
MO JL END MOLYNEAUX
(David Molyneaux is travel editor of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)
Editors: With four photos, of a scene from the camel fair, Royal Desert Camp tents, colored pastes for Hindu ceremonies and camels decorated for the camel fair. Go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
With sidebar, RNS-INDIA-CREMATIONS
