Pushkar Fair blog - My story of meeting friends!

Pushkar Fair, or Pushkar mela, as it's locally known, is an annual fair in the town of Pushkar, Rajasthan where camel and other livestock are traded among the local communities. The fair goes for for about five days from Karthik Ekadashi to Karthik Poornima, but the festivity remains in the air for much longer. There is a belief that on the fifth day lord Brahma sprung from the Pushkar lake, and so it's an important day for Hindus to come and take a holy dip in the temple lake.

Over the last many years, it's also become a favorite place for photographers to capture the beauty of Rajasthan. I love clicking people and Pushkar fair is the prefect time for this! Plus there is great music, food and lots of fun rides at the fair.

Pushkar is a small town and if you know someone, you will surely bump into them! Though we did miss a close friend, we kept bumping into NIDians everywhere, starting from the musical concert on the ghat. And with NIDians, its always a chain...it keeps extending and extending. Having made the first contact, we soon did everything which we wanted to for the complete Pushkar experience.

A set of women arguing to make some absolutely non-essential purchases!

We met numerous NIDians here, the concert was great too!

Little Hanuman

Studious kid at the shop!

Needless to say...I am inspired with the hair!

Akash took us to a restaurant which served chilled beer, and we had that with dinner. Just as we were getting a little tipsy, more charsi friends from NID found us and we chased them to their hotel terrace for some out of the world moments. It was great to get updates on people we are no longer in touch with, hear interesting gossip about people we were in touch with, and generally talk crap about our own selves!

Ah the beard!

The crooked tooth lady!

Cataract man, but he still stared hard at me!

The clock turned its hand, and it was soon 2AM, which was also our deadline for leaving for our hotel...a couple of kilometers away. Filmy drama followed, we lost our way and walked in the wrong direction, least bothered about sleeping and more interested in animated discussions. Of course we reached back safely and slept blissfully, and also ate humongous amount of food the neat morning. But this is what Pushkar does to you, you can do all sort of random stuff and still get up early morning, eat an English Breakfast and behave like a perfect well-groomed couple :)

Laughing camel

Beautiful hot air balloons in the morning from the terrace

Very pretty lady, M's favorite!

Meeting friends also means that you get some great recommendations for eating even more food, especially sweets. And Pushkar is famous for Rabri Malpooa, which is a must to gorge on! Foreigners love Pushkar and so almost any decent place would serve great pancakes, I especially liked the nutella pancake with some black coffee. The place is pure vegetarian, but you might find eggs in some obscure corners if you look hard enough.

The ever attentive Indian policeman :)

Another pretty lady :) Red rocks!

The fair is high on music all through the day, but evenings come alive with live dance and play performances at the mela ground. Its a must watch, and trust me you would love it! The songs, dances, costumes...everything is pure Rajasthani to the core and essentially out of this world! One can sit for hours and enjoy the show, taking food, cigarette and loo breaks in between.

The dance!

The dance again!

Meditating Krishna...in the middle of the dance performance!

Also highly recommended (at least by me) is walk at the ghats late in the night. We went there around 11PM, and the place was absolutely deserted. There are enough policemen around to make you feel safe, yet they remain inconspicuous. You can click the numerous ducks floating around, or just click some beautiful night shots; or just walk and talk. You can also walk hand in hand, sing stupid songs, make movie-like promises, jump steps, pretend to be dead, or basically just fool around.

The typical Indian Sadhu! One day I will have beard like him...

Women getting ready for the holy dip!

Another Sadhu, quite an interesting one!