After the night in Barathpur, lovely asylum in Rajeev's house (just 130
rupees/night!) we headed for Jaipur, which took us about 3-4 hours.
Checked in the guest house and went for a stroll in a Pink City, as
they call it. The whole old town is painted in pink (maybe it was pink one
day, nevertheless now it's rather orange'ish, in all honesty), full of
miscellaneous stalls with all kind of products you can only think of.
On a street we were caught by a Nepalese guy, as it turned out, who recommended us to go to some good restaurant (which name we forgot
after 5 minutes..) and the Monkey Temple just a few kms away (this
one we decided to leave for the next day). Somehow we got to his house, where he moved to with his family (from Nepal). I was introduced to
every single women in there (even the tiny barefoot one ;) ) and then
we carried on our walk to eat sth eventually!
We promised to come for
an Indian chai afterwards (small sweet & milky tea with masala spice).
Neither we had found the recommended restaurant nor we had eaten in
the Lonely Planet shot. Yet finally we found on a way a small local
restaurant, full of people where we ate loads, filling our stomachs
nicely. Good one.
The next day
we went to the Monkey Temple – to everyone's surprise – full of
monkeys :) Really beautiful and relatively chilled out place, despites
the “caretakers” of the temples who wanted to either sell you
some flee-market'ish stuff or force you to pay a donation (we put just a small note
and the lady looked almost offended that we didn't pay more..) what, again, spoiled the atmosphere. In a holy place I wouldn't expect
so much focus on tangibles, but now I've got an impression that India is
soaked with it into the last thread unfortunately. Then at every corner again –
kids without parents (allegedly), paid photo with someone's cobra
snake or cow donation box with an old guy clattering into it with a
metal tool every time someone was passing by. Although the
monkeys and landscape with scattered temples around
were breath-taking and utterly entertaining.;)
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| sweet monkey kiddo |
Afterwards, the same day, we drove on our Enfield further to Pushkar, the
pilgrimage town with its holy lake and ghats (the story tells, that the lake appeared when Brahma dropped a lotus flower). There are very few in the world in general, and one particularly dedicated to Brahma in whole India.
And how the landscape changed, we were stunned! Hills and semi-desert landscape started to embrace us all around, passing by natural pools and lovely roads, with not much traffic. Moreover once we got to our destination point the
tranquility of it and really few people struck us instantly.
We got (with
a bit of help) to the guest house we were looking for and... set off
on night safari on camels. What a glee! :) Each of us was riding a
different camel, Pedrak with a guiding boy and I - with his friend. We
got to the camel's caretaker house (the
same boy) and after a nice dinner, cooked on a fireplace in the front
yard, we were set up on the rooftop in a warm lair for a night under
the bright moon. So nice! (even if a bit cold just before dawn).
The rest of a day we enjoyed slow-paced rhythm of life in Pushkar, walking around and absorbing its peacefulness. So we did the next day but jumping on a bike and having a charming ride in the town's surroundings. We visited small hindu temples and had some chai with them, grasping every moment amongst the hills and tortuous roads we drove through. Lovely and very relaxing day.
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| a temple on a top of a hill cutting above the town |
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| "Shiva-Parvati/Adam-Eva, all religions same same" ;) |
Beautiful Pushkar!
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