Once a year the holy city of Pushkar is the site of a grand mela; the Pushkar Camel Fair. Thousands of people congregate for a
combination county fair/animal market.
This year the mela coincided with a massive religious convocation as
well.
Tramping feet raise swirling clouds of choking dust. People,
camels, cows and goats…everyone is going to the fair. Brown skinned women glow in immaculate bright red, orange and yellow
saris. Men
hawk, spit and smoke as they shuffle along in a loose flowing mass that stretches for miles. Ahead the organic torrent eddies and clusters. Elbowing and pushing the masses pass a narrow
entry gate.
The crowd surges forward in anticipation of the excitement
that lies within. I pause at the gate to gaze down the long midway lined with
booths selling literally everything from soup to nuts. In the distance several spidery ferris wheels
tower above the teeming horde below. A caucophony of sound assaults the
ears. The concentrated murmur of the
crowd becomes a roar. Loudspeakers blare
music along with exhortations to buy this or try that. (At least that is what I surmise because not
only do I not understand the language, I don’t even know what language(s)
is/are being spoken).
Behind the arena are hundreds of tents housing horses and their
attendants. There are horses of every
size shape and color; some white with crazed
blue eyes; others dappled and high strung.
Three men dwarfed by the
size of the animal, attempt to lead a large stallion into the back of a small
truck. The wild eyes of the horse hold
promise that this will be a difficult task.
Finally, the horse is coaxed into the truck, tied and driven off,
stomping its hooves in fear and frustration on the steel
truck bed.
Brightly decorated
camels, some with saddles, others pulling carts, push through the throng offering
rides to Indian and European tourists alike.
Swaying to and fro with vacant drooling faces the camels seem bored by
the whole charade. Touts cry out, “
Camel taxi mister?” We ignore them dodging the plodding feet of the camels as they pass.
Beyond the animal tents the fun zone with dangerous looking
carnival rides whip the ever growing crowd into whirls, dips and swirls all the
while screaming with delight. The heat
of the crowd and the intense mid-day sun begins to overwhelm us. The idea of an ice cold beer in a quiet restaurant becomes a compelling
quest but first we must work our way through the throngs to find that cool
oasis. We join the mob on the midway to
head for the exit, now nearly a half mile away.
Passing through the crowd proves an impossible task so we resign
ourselves to pushing along in a mob of tens of thousands of people. Disheveled and overheated, we finally gain the exit. Quickly, we dive down a side street
to escape the crush.
We wander backstreets navigating by a sense of dead reckoning only to be funneled back into the main market street, now a slow moving mass even denser than
the one in the fair. The crowd starts to
clump closer and closer as the already narrow road narrows further. Someone in the rear begins to push. I feel
the masses around me start to squeeze tighter and tighter. Deb and I are separated by a small current. I yell at her to work to the side and duck into a shop. Unfortunately, she can not move through the
crowd and is swept away... out of sight. I
jump out of the river of humanity and step up on the raised floor of a shop but
I have lost track of her. I plunge back
into the river which thankfully opens out into a small square where I find Deborah.
We flow along until we come to the entrance of a roof top café. We climb the four flights of stairs and flop
down into chairs and have an ice cold beer far above the crowd below.
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| Full moon puja (prayer service) |
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| Puja offerings are floated on the holy lake of Pushkar |
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| Early morning bloggin' |
