Jaipur to Pushkar

We left Jaipur the following morning and rode the short journey to Pushkar. The road surface conditions are really good so we got there in good time.



Pushkar lies at the edge of the Great Indian Thar Desert, situated around Pushkar lake. It is deemed a very holy city by the Hindus hence no meat, eggs or alcohol - although eggs and alcohol can be found if you know where to look. There are 52 bathing ghats (a ghat is series of steps leading to a body of water) and it is believed that a dip in this holy lake will cleanse sins and cure skin diseases. I've never been in to find out. I'd rather suffer for my sins and keep any skin conditions I develop than bathe in a highly polluted lake, even though a few years ago they did dredge it an clean it up. Pushkar is a really small chilled place and a very common place for backpackers to head to. Even though it's small it boasts 400+ temples.

One of the temples is called Savitri Temple and is situated at the top of the hill in this photo. It is called Ratnagiri Hill and the one hour walk to get there is worth it, as the views from the top are excellent. Many people head off very early in the morning to reach the top before dawn as the views are meant to be the more breathtaking at that time of the day. We wouldn't know of course as we are never up early enough to see dawn.

Pushkar is one of the oldest cities in India and still looks that way today. Some of the buildings date back centuries. There are no modern built buildings, fast food chain restaurants or crazy traffic. These things give it a really quaint feeling

Although Pushkar is at the edge of the desert there are still a lot of plants and trees surrounding it.

Pushkar is made up of inter-connected narrow alleyways. This photo
shows the one main road that travels through Pushkar. There are no cars or bikes permitted to use this road which gives it a strange sense of quiet as usually Indian roads are extremely noisy and polluted. The only really noisy thing about Pushkar is fireworks. They just fire them off any time of the day or night. There's always someone at it.
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We headed to Sai Baba guest house. Colin has known the owner, Fatu, for nearly 20 years and Fatu is completely bonkers. The guest house is in a haveli where all the rooms look down onto a central courtyard. We got a really nice room on the top floor and headed out to enjoy Pushkar once again. We planned on staying in Pushkar for one week.