Pushkar Camel Fair

On Saturday morning we got a lesson in how seriously Indian hotels treat their mini bars. The fact that almost all the hotels we stayed in on this trip had mini bars was a wonder in itself. The additional fact that in all but one of these mini bars there was nothing you would associate with a bar (i.e. no alcohol) was also fascinating.

When we had arrived at the Plaza Park Hotel the previous Thursday afternoon we went on a mini bar binge, eating 2 chocolates, 1 pack of cookies and a small can of Pringles and drinking one coke. When we returned to the hotel on Friday after our day of touristing, I noticed that everything had been replaced, EXCEPT for the can of Pringles. That made me suspicious, so I made a mental note of it (I can only keep one mental note at a time, so my complete plan for World Peace, which I’m pretty sure would have worked, had to be jettisoned).

Our punctuality in meeting Sanju in the morning had so far been less than stellar, so we tried really hard to get to the car by 8:30 am that morning. But silly me, I left only 5 minutes for checkout. As I sat waiting for the receptionist to tally my bill so I could pay and leave, I was asked to fill out an evaluation form on our stay at the hotel. This, we had and would continue to discover, was something that every hotel and many restaurants pushed very aggressively for you to do. And they would stand there watching you fill it out demonstrating very expectant body language. Our stay had been quite nice so I gave them Excellents and Goods in most categories, leaving checkout experience unmarked (since I hadn’t completed that yet), but rewarding them with an overall Excellent (the highest mark).

The attendant kept assuring me that the bill would be ready soon, then he would furtively speak in Hindi to someone on his walkie-talkie. I was pretty sure they had sent a Bell- wallah up to count the items in our mini bar. We had consumed only a bottle of club soda since the day before, a fact that I had duly reported to the checkout guy. But Indian hotels have apparently been victimized by mini-bar scofflaws so often that they were taking no chances with anyone as shady looking as me.

Finally, many minutes, many “how much longer will this take?” requests from me and many assurances that it would be one minute more, I was presented with a bill and the great Pringles Misunderstanding consumed the next 10 minutes of my life. There was a mini bar charge from the day before that looked about right given the binge we went on. But the most recent mini bar charge, 130 Rupees, seemed high for one bottle of club soda. So I asked to see the detail on that charge. My decision to dump world peace in order to register the missing Pringles restocking was rewarded when I spied a charge for one can of Pringles on the morning bill.

We then proceeded to argue two completely separate cases for the next 10 minutes. I kept insisting that we had not eaten a second can of Pringles and they were mistakenly charging me for a can that they had carelessly not replaced the day before. Unknown to me, the hotel guy was arguing that they had not charged us for the Pringles the day before, but rather had left that item unstocked and then charged us for it the next day. I say unknown to me because no matter how clearly they explained their case, it was in such stultified English that it made no sense. Luckily, just as I was getting red faced, Peggy came in to see what was taking so long, and, quickly looking at all the documentation, she discovered the reality (they didn’t charge us the day before and had posted it this morning) and convinced me to pay the bill and leave. Which I did. But I demanded they return my evaluation form so I could mark a big “Poor” on my checkout experience and change my previous overall mark from Excellent to Poor. And from that moment on, word went out to all hotels in India that there was an American tourist running a new type of mini bar scam to try to get away with a free can of Pringles. The mini bar threat level in India was raised to red and security on mini bars throughout the entire country was beefed up overnight.

Luckily, we were on our way to Pushkar, the gem attraction in our week long adventure, and the prospect of thousands of camels prancing in the desert gave leave of the bad feelings from checkout.

Pushkar is home to the largest camel fair and camel auction in the world. It happens once a year, culminating on a full moon evening that is tied to the Hindu calendar (which is different from ours). We would be there a few nights before the full moon, when the spectacle should be in full swing. And it was amazing when we finally arrived in Pushkar. There were some distinct similarities to Sturgis, the big motorcycle rally in South Dakota that we used to attend before we remembered how uncomfortable conformist crowds are.

Outside of Pushkar there was a temporary toll gate set up. The toll for a car was 30 Rupees. When Sanju paid with a 50 and got no change back, he argued with the toll collectors. They argued back, refused to give him any change and waved him on. He said a few more choice words (in Hindi) then drove on. We asked what had happened and he just smiled and shrugged and said they were collecting an extra 20 for themselves for every car that came through. A very small example, but an example nevertheless of something that is endemic in India – corruption pervades almost everything here.

Culture Shock part 2 started once we hit the center of Pushkar. There were camels, cattle, women in colorful sarees, carnival barkers, hawkers, dogs, farmers, gawkers, tour buses, pilgrims, children and soldiers everywhere. While Sanju tried to simultaneously park the car and find our tour guide, we charged into the fray, not knowing where to go or what to do. We were immediately propositioned with all manner of kitschy goods and cajoled to take camel rides – either in a pulled cart or right on the camel’s back.

Within a few minutes we got a call from our guide, Ashok, and we managed to find our way to the car park area. Having only dipped our toes into the mayhem, we were anxious to get back into the scrum, as we wanted to ride on a camel and we were curious about seeing the actual auction part of the fair. But we were also hungry and Ashok thought it best for us to check into our hotel and have lunch, so that is what we did.

Sanju bashed into the desert outside of Pushkar, and we almost felt transported to Mexico. The dry desert was similar, everybody worked on Manana time, we had to ask three times and get three assurances before anything really happened, we ordered specific items from the menu but were brought whatever our waiter felt was best for us, the air conditioner and fridge in our room did not work, and everybody who worked there pretended to be happy to see us. But when it came to the aggressiveness of the hawkers, that’s when all similarities to Mexico stopped. In India the in-your-face crowd is x-squared more aggressive than anything I’ve ever seen in Mexico.

Once back at the fair, we tried some local candy, called Agra Sweets, which turned out to be dried and heavily sugared pumpkin. Ashok wanted to take us on a camel cart so he could explain the various elements of the carnival that had turned this chunk of desert into a very down-scale county fair. Even though he claimed he wanted to explain things to us, he was way too busy answering his two cell phones and making arrangements with other customers to pay much attention to us. While we jostled through the maze of carnival lanes, two snake charmers approached from the rear, started playing their horns and opened the baskets they were carrying to reveal two cobras, both rising up with necks flared and weaving to the music. That was very cool. Tips were in order, of course, and I didn’t want either of the charmers to decide to toss his snake in my lap to show his displeasure at my generosity, so I gave them each 20 Rupees.

After trundling about in the camel cart for 30 minutes or so while Ashok conducted business on his two phones, he charged off toward the temple on foot, but at breakneck speed. When I encouraged Peggy to step it up so we wouldn’t lose him in the crowd she shot back that we would save our 100 Rupee tip and probably discover more by closing our eyes and chanting “OM” for an hour than we were going to learn from this particular guide.

But she was wrong. It turns out we learned a lot on this meticulous day. Pushkar is a small town with very little going for it, except for a tiny lake in the middle of town, called, appropriately enough, Pushkar Lake, and a major temple to Brahma, the Creator and the first (but not necessarily most loved) god of the Hindu religion. In a nutshell, it seems that Brahma planned to wed Savitri, a goddess herself, and the marriage was scheduled to take place at the most auspicious time on the most auspicious date according to astrological calculations. Astrology is an artifact of the Hindu religion and people here really do schedule major, and many times minor, life events to conform to astrological guidance.

Well, Savitri, like the occasional woman, was late, and Brahma was anguished because he felt he had to marry at exactly the time prescribed, so he grabbed a woman from the crowd, Gayitri of the Gujarat (lowest caste) tribe and had her cleansed by drawing her through the mouth of a cow (who as you know is a sacred entity, and I am not making any of this up). Brahma and Gayitri were married at the exact moment of perfection, but when Savitri showed up she was not happy, demanding to be married to Brahma as his second wife, but then putting a curse on him and predicting that he would not be worshipped like the other Hindu gods and furthermore, that any Hindu pilgrim that ventured to Pushkar would always visit the temple to be built in her name before the one that was built on a lower hill in Gayitri’s honor. And to this day, Hindus who make the pilgrimage to Pushkar always make the long climb up to Savitri’s temple before making the equally long trek up to Gayitri’s.

Because of Savitri’s curse, Hindu’s do not worship Brahma in the same way they do the two other major gods, Vishnu and Shiva. To tell you the truth I’m pretty confused about all this and Ashok could not explain it to me because he was way too busy monitoring his two precious cell phones to actually answer any questions. Still, even though Brahma is lower on the popularity scale than the other two Hindu Dudes, when pilgrims come to Pushkar they always do a Puja in Lake Pushkar in honor of Brahma.

Ashok took us to Brahma’s temple where he used the opportunity to start setting the hook for our upcoming Puja by telling us that all the money donated to the various scams - oops, I mean legitimate charities - in town was used to help the poor, the lame and the widowed. His English wasn’t that great so when he first started down this road I didn’t get it that he was basically saying this – “Hey, you guys are rich, we want lots of your money and we’re going to lay this continuous guilt trip on you until you cough up a bunch of it.”

Lots of camels, lots of colors:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622758873542/