One area, three places, three different views:
Pushkar Town - with its bored shopkeepers, touts and tourists.
Njoy
The periphery of the Thar Desert - a refreshing change with clean, fresh air. So many birds and wildlife and people hidden amongst the undergrowth farming the land. The countryside looks surprisingly lush with crops thanks to the monsoon. It will only be a few weeks before that all changes. This is the main area for growing roses for rose water, and an abundance of marigolds for funerals and festivals amongst an array of vegetables.
We saw the early arrival of Pushkar camel festival in November, already setting up their plots. 100,000 people will be attending the event.
The few people we met were very lovely including an eighty year old shepherd who came running out of the wilderness and jumped onto our jeep for a lift - he was off to buy medicines for his goat. He left running down the sand track, looking fitter than most 50 year olds.
80 year old shepherd hitched a ride with us.
Desert Family
The front
The back
Harvesting Cabbages
The city of Ajmer, based around the artificial Ana Sagar Lake is real-life, it’s gritty and it’s very, very noisy. This town has a genuine, friendly and honest feel to it, although a little squashed sometimes.
We get a lot of attention.
Sweet shop crush
The requests to have our photograph taken and the looks of curiosity we receive takes quite a bit of getting used to. We met a 90 year old apothecary, who was still working and very proud of his surgery and finally we found ourselves in the middle of a festival that could have been straight out of a Bollywood film set with a cast of hundreds.
Apothecary’s surgery
That’s the end of our time in Pushkar, next stop Jodphur.