Another Saturday, Saturdays being the scale by which I measure the time we have left travelling – something in the region of six weeks, we reckon. Saturdays are special because of Saturday Special – which obviously sounds silly. I mean the Saturday night sports programme, of course, which I enjoy quite as much as I used to enjoy Match of the Day on a Saturday night when I was but a lad.
The day began with a small panic, as I had to wake Val quickly as we pulled in at Ajmer Stn. As usual, we headed immediately to the station café to sate our stomachs + relax our minds. There we met 2 other travellers, a Yorkshire couple who seemed pleasant + sociable. We travelled with them on the bus on the short journey to Pushgar. Our fears about accommodation in Pushgar were mostly unfounded, in that there were all sorts of places for us to stay. The problem was that, altho’ for tonight the price was normal, as far as we could judge, every hotel in town was putting their rates up 6 times + more. So when one rather scrappy + scruffy middle-aged man told us he had a guest-house which would be keeping its rates the same, we agreed to go + have a look at it. And it seemed perfectly alright to us, even tho’ the touts who had accompanied us all the way gave us all sorts of scurrilous information about the place. It didn’t deter us at all, but did make us feel slightly nervous – we certainly took great care over locking our doors when we went out.
Val + I wandered around town for a little while, cursorily looking at clothes to buy, + looking at the town. We liked Pushkar a lot, full of fascinatingly intricate buildings. We then strolled out to the fairgrounds themselves, outside town on the edge of the desert. It was a fascinating sight, with hundreds of horses, cattle, + camels tethered there. Our favourites are definitely the camels – we have taken far too many camel photos already. There was a positive eve of festival atmosphere in the air, with the finishing touches being put to various tents + apparatus, children running round excitedly but, as yet, no crowds. The heat was fierce tho’ so we were driven in soon enough. More news on the radio of the funeral, + the 1000 or so Sikhs killed so far. Why can’t their slaughterers remember the other Gandhi?
The camel fair looks set to provide lots of colourful sights (and therefore, we hope, photos.) Though there is a good deal of relief that we seem to have been able to find accommodation of an acceptable price and standard.
