There were a couple of additional places I would have liked to have visited in Jaipur, but I was tired of its horrendous traffic and so left on the morning of the 7th on a bus bound for Ajmer, 2 1/2 hours to the west. It was a fairly smooth trip for the first two hours on a six lane divided toll road, with not much traffic, although at one point our bus had to slow down to avoid a cow meandering across the highway. There wasn't much to see on the way. The scenery is better from the train. The toll road ended at the city of Kishangarh, where we wove our way through the chaotic, honking traffic. From there it was a two lane road to Ajmer, a city of half a million people surrounded by rocky hills.
From Ajmer I took a bus to Pushkar, only about 7 miles away over one of those hills. I found a great little hotel and spent a good part of the afternoon sitting on its roof in the sun while having lunch and talking to the other tourists. Late in the afternoon and in the early evening I took a walk through the narrow lanes of the little town (only about 15,000 people). The town surrounds a small sacred lake (maybe 1000 feet across) that is believed to be the result of Brahma dropping a lotus leaf. Pilgrims come to bathe in the lake and there are ghats (stairs) almost all around it. The town is full of temples, though most are not all that old as the town's temples were destroyed by the intolerant Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb who ruled in the late 17th/early 18th century. The main temple in town is dedicated to Brahma and is one of the few Brahma temples in India.
The most auspicious time to bathe in the lake is during the full moon in November, at which time there is also a famous camel fair here with thousands of camels being bought and sold. The fair just ended about three weeks ago, Regularly, well more than 100,000 people attend, with tents set up in the desert beyond the town to accommodate 100,000 of them. Perhaps the town and worshipers are exhausted by the just completed fair, because there don't seem to be many pilgrims here now. I did see a couple of colorful groups of pilgrims walking through the town's lanes. In one of them three women at the front carried urns upon their heads. I also saw a woman with a big platter of some sort of pastry feeding the pastry to 20 to 30 langur monkeys while her maybe one or two year old child sat among the much bigger monkeys, some of which were quite aggressive. A cow was trying to get some of the pastry, but was driven off by barking dogs and a kid with a stick. It was chilly at night, with a crescent moon, but the hotel had wonderful hot showers, by far the best I've had in India. In fact, I hadn't had a shower at all for weeks. I almost always have bucket baths, although with hot water.
The next morning I walked around the lake in the morning sunlight and then had a long breakfast in a good vegetarian restaurant while reading newspapers and magazines. Only vegetarian fare is available in Pushkar, no meat or even eggs. There are lots of cows wandering through town, and therefore, lots of cow (shall we say?) effluvia. I did step in one such pile while stepping back to avoid a honking motorcyclist. There are hardly any cars on Pushkar's narrow lanes, but there are a few motorcycles. All in all, it is a fairly relaxed place, especially compared to, say, Jaipur or Delhi. I enjoyed a fairly lazy afternoon, with a few walks around the town. Late in the afternoon there was a lot of kite flying from the rooftops. I watched the sun set over the lake from its eastern side and then spotted the crescent moon above the horizon. Later in the evening I saw a couple of wedding processions with the grooms on white horses and the usual retinue.
After breakfast the next morning I took the bus into Ajmer and spent most of the day there. First, I visited a 19th century Jain temple with a large two story room containing a golden replica of the Jain conception of the universe, including Mount Semeru at the center of the universe, various Jain temples and even gods flying around on elephant and bird boats (attached by wires to the ceiling). It is said to contain a thousand kilos (2200 pounds) of gold. From there I walked to a fort built by Akbar in 1570, but rather obviously much restored by the British in 1905, perhaps because it was the site of the first meeting of a Mughul emperor (Jahangir) and an emissary of an English king (Sir Thomas Roe on behalf of James I) in 1616. Then I followed the hordes of pilgrims heading to a Sufi shrine in the city. This shrine holds the grave of a Sufi saint who arrived from Persia about 1200. Supposedly, seven pilgrimages here are worth one to Mecca. Akbar came many times, it is said, on foot from his capital at Agra.
I made my way past the very slow moving crowds and around the shrine and to a ruined mosque beyond it on the edge of town. It originally was a Jain college, but was transformed into a mosque by Muslim invaders about 1200. Some of the pillars have defaced human figures on them. The mosque was full of people coming from the Sufi shrine, many of them very friendly and wanting their pictures taken (apparently just for the fun of it) or wanting pictures of me with them. There were also quite a few goats wandering around the mosque enclosure.
From there I walked back to the Sufi shrine, stopping to have a chicken lunch on the way. There was quite tight security to get into the shrine and I had to check my bag before I could enter. Strict orthodox Muslims consider Sufi practices to be contrary to Islam and in Pakistan the Taliban and their ilk have been blowing Sufi shrines up. The shrine was quite crowded, though much less so (judging from the crowds going in and out) than in the morning. The compound had two mosques and several other buildings in addition to the shrine itself containing the grave of the Sufi saint. Offerings of flowers and sweets were brought to the door of the silver, gold and marble shrine. Opposite, a young man with a decent voice sang, followed by an old man with a terrible one. There are other graves, including that of a daughter of Shah Jahan. I had forgotten to wear my hat (I left it in my checked bag), and a head covering is required, but only one person told me I should cover my head. A very few others had no head coverings. Indian Muslims seem, in general, much more relaxed than those to the west. I saw only two other western tourists in there. I got back to Pushkar about 4:30 and watched the late afternoon kite flying from my hotel rooftop.
I walked around Pushkar the next morning and had another leisurely breakfast. There are quite a few western tourists here. Apparently, the original attraction was the camel fair and over the years the town itself has become a draw. It certainly is a relatively relaxing place, for India. I did some reading and had lunch on my hotel rooftop and about 3 set off to climb a hill southwest of town and about 800 feet above it. It took a little less than an hour to get to the top, where there were great views of the town, lake, hills and dry countryside. The wide, dusty fairgrounds are west of town and I could see some tents still set up. There is a nondescript temple on top to Brahma's wife (though to call it "nondescript" overpraises it, as it is an ugly concrete box). I spent over an hour up there enjoying the views as the sun dropped in the sky and then walked back to town, arriving about 6. The sun sets here this time of year about 5:30 and rises, I think, about 7:30.
I took another walk around town the next morning (today). It has been quite chilly here in the mornings, maybe about 60 degrees or maybe even lower. I saw an article in the paper while here about a cold front coming down from the Himalayas, with a low of about 50 degrees reported in Jaipur and in the 40's elsewhere. Highs have been in the low 70's. I haven't seen a cloud in the sky since that four day period in November in Delhi, although it is always hazy. I happily spent another lazy day here, and late in the afternoon walked up to another hill, this one on the north side of the town, and closer and lower than the hill I had climbed the day before. It is only about 350 feet above the town and it took only about 20 minutes to climb up to it. It, too, had great views of the town and a temple on the top, this one to another consort of Brahma. I stayed up there until just after sunset.
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