Camelmania!

We are in the Indian state of Rajasthan which is full of camels!

I have ridden a camel on a couple of occasions in the past-- in Rajasthan with my family in India about 16 years ago, as well as in Egypt a few years ago. Even with a saddle, they are not the most comfortable (some people ride sans saddle!), and you really have to hang on for dear life during the "lurching" of the camel getting up and going down to the lying position, as it is a very rocky ride! However, Kelvin and I took a day camel safari outside of Pushkar and had a great time! After getting over the anxiety that we would be stood up at our 9 am start time, our guides, Ramu and Khan, were wonderful and really helped us have a fun day. I tried to post a pic of Kelvin but it was too blurry :(, and then the internet's power went out (leaving me to finish this post at a later date), but I swear he rode a camel, too!

We wandered by the actual fairgrounds, where there were literally hundreds- thousands of camels lounging about. Some were being "trained," others were just being noisy, but it was quite a site to see. We learned some interesting camel facts, including that they need 3 large meals per day (and favorite food is cauliflower, or gobi) but can go a week without water. They apparently can run pretty fast, too, although the fastest we got was a trot, which was enough for our groins :)



We then took the camels a few km outside of town and wandered through some smaller villages and farms (where we got to play with few-day old baby goats, drink chai, and weather another monsoon shower, which, fortunately, abated).



We had a fresh-cooked lunch of spiced rice at the home of a "baba" or holy man. He apparently subsists on (by choice!) just nuts and chappatis made of dried rose flowers . Pretty cool :)



We have really enjoyed the pace of our time in Pushkar. It is a holy city and a Hindu pilgramage site, and has hundreds of temples, including Jain, Sikh, Brahma (one of the only in the world) and other Hindu temples set around a holy lake with bathing "ghats" surrounding it. Accordingly, there are strict rules, including minimizing photography of the holy sites, and absolutely avoiding alcohol and "nonveg" food (bummer!), as you can see from the sign below...



The sacred cows wander everywhere


Although we tried to time our visit with the start of the camel fair (there are apparently horse and camel races, contests such as having people balance on a camel), and other shows, we were informed yesterday that (unlike what was posted on the India tourism website, among other places), the fair actually starts tomorrow, the 14th. As we have had to do for most days of our trip in India, we had to accept this and "go with the flow," as we are headed back to Jaipur. Ke garne (or "what to do") as they used to say in Nepal... In any case, we did get our share of camel-mania!

We had some great views with which I will end this post:

Beautiful sunset over the lake at "sunset point"

(The most peaceful we have felt since being in India!)