Searchings of a Kiwi lass

Hampi at sundown; a time for frogs to let their cacophonous croaks loose over rice paddies that are greener than green. Everywhere is nature so beautiful here, such blue blue skies, green green fields, golden rocks everywhere in the background and temples in every nook and cranny...
Today was unexpected. Waking up with a dodgy stomach (Hampi ain't known for it's culinary hygiene...) I decided to take it easy... but somehow found myself walking the three kilometres to the lake in the mid afternoon 30 degree sun... breezes make it not so hot though, the air so clean and fresh and definitely bearable - it disnae burn like the NZ sun anyway, and coming from a Scottish winter I'm not about to complain. Birds and insects are twittering in grasses near my feet and everywhere the gentle wind rustles through the breeze, bringing scents of these grasses nearer to me. As I pass a small stone house, six women are taking a break from a hard days work in the fields. They call me over, all shake my hand, try on my sunglasses and make me take photos of them. I leave with one of their bindi's stickered firmly on my third eye point - these moments, so little and so precious, they make my day...
At the river finally, I take a coracle (a circular cane boat) to the other side after a short rest and conversation with a small boy who after a while, as per usual, asks me the same questions ' eschool pen?' 'one rupee?'.
Hampi is a climbers dream I think, as I clambour over huge boulders not so suited to my plastic flip flops or my inconveniently placed shoulder bag. I meet two Germans, both called Sven, and one of them - the good looking one with no shirt on - pulls me up to their litle perch where they have been sitting Zen like for some time. We walk back together, take a juice in a little river side cafe and then part. Seems this is a day for Germans however as immediately I meet another one! A girl with bright blue eyes and red hair that matches her sun baked face who I meet at the foot of some ruins. We climb together to a temple upon a hill, passing gods and goddesses carved into rocks everywhere. When I realise it's a quarter to six, and the last boat back is supposed to leave in fifteen minutes (not a problem for my German friend as she is staying on this side of the river) I run down a mountain for the first time in my life... scramble pantingly all through the market much to the suprise of at least three locals who all ask 'hey, hey, slow down, what happened?' in that particular way of theirs that can either make me smile inside or just infuriate me. I have no time today to decide how I feel about that however as I am running, running for my boat.. as I make my way down the ghats it seems I needn't have worried though - sometimes I forget that this is India, with time so subjective... because as the sun sets closer to seven these days, the boats are still running. Lucky for me and the dozen or so other travllers who have also forgotten themselves in the drifting day...

So showered and content I write, here in this restaurant overlooking rice paddies that are now darkened to mine eye... There's just the frogs chorusing away, and the occasional firefly, as well as the ever present canopy of stars, so clear to the eye and so inviting to sit beneath and dream the rest of the evening away...

So much is happening in the market below.

A truck, sent by an old baba said to be over 100 and living in a temple upon a hill outside of Pushkar, drives slowly through the streets offering prasad (blessed food) to passers by. Two young girls in salwar kameez run after the vehicle, grocery bags outstretched, hoping to please their mother with the free carrots and grapes it is offering today. The other day I received an apple from a similar truck, its constant delivery making sure no-one in Pushkar goes hungry.
On the lakeside, a Brahmin priest is taking a Pushkar newcomer through the holy ceremony, anointing their forehead with sandalwood paste and rice, garlanding their neck with flowers and offering blessings for their family upon the holy Lotus lake. Perhaps demanding an exhorbitant price for this, perhaps not - not all priests seem to live by the same values it seems. A family of monkeys, 20 strong, sit looking down as I am, from another rooftop. They are munching carrots, acquired no doubt from the Baba Prasad truck. Some of the babies are teaching themselves to swing from powerlines nearby, others merely terrorise innocent passers by for food. The infernal tooting of motorcycle horns echoes up to me as always - seems I cannot escape from this ever present madness. Sometimse I shout back 'shanti!' at them, as if they would listen to me. All the while the sugarcane wallah churns his machine, over and over again - so much manual labour for one glass of sweet health giving juice! The sun is setting on the pigeons on the lake - they congregate in hundreds to eat the remains of a recent puja ceremony - the small white sweets offered as prasad, the flowers, the rice. I look over these Pushkar hills, all green and brown and golden in the setting sun and realise I am still in love with this town. Although I have been here twice before- three times actually - and have this time been feeling almost a little bored with all the same scenarios, the magic of this place still calls to me.

There is a party in the air tonight. Beside me at the chai stand are seated a group of scruffly travllers. I say seated, but mostly they just can't keep still, although none of them has` fallen off their chairs just yet so I suppose the word is valid. I think that they are Spanish; I'm sure that they are crazy. Three of the boys have matted rasta hair, tied for some reason in bunches at the tops of their foreheads and at other random angles. They are barefoot in these Indian streets, full of loose long-legged energy and monkey movement and unfortunately for the eye even a little bit of butt-crack, as clothes are obviously just a social necessity for at least one of them. His trousers just hang as they do, and in the few times I've seen these boys I don't think they've changed their clothes once. They make me smile, for their unconventionality is not hurting anyone and is actually quite entertaining to watch! Usually it's enough just to watch the cows eyeing up the vegetable stalls, or each other, or laugh at the local boys on their bikes speeding down the road in such a peaceful place. All the while beautiful Indian / Western music by Prem Joshua is playing, and the market teems with twilight noise.

It's getting harder and harder to tell the travellers from the locals here... more and more prevalent, at certain times of the night or early morning, are those wispy western ghosts who've stretched their love affair with drugs too long... their hair turbanned or a mass of matted locks, I see them occasionally staring from corners, brandishing big sticks reminiscent of Shiva's trident and staring with big hollow eys...
All over town a certain graffiti is scrawled in English 'Jews! The comforter has come! AIDS is cured! www. the-comforter.com' I have yet to look this website up, but it seems in Pushkar it is easy to go off the rails a little - for a holy town with an apparent ban of meat, eggs, alcohol and drugs there sure are a lot of junkies... But then again, it is easy to miss this... I only know cause I was told and happened to stumble across a couple of staggering souls last year at 6 a.m when I went for an early breakfast...

Two years ago when I first came I swear this place rang with more innocence.. then again, perhaps it was just me as I'm told this change in tourism has been happening for more than five years now. That what was once a nice shanti town with a few clothing boutiques and jewellery stalls has now exploded into a mass of haggling, colour and sensory overload... so much that I am sure this is why I got sick as soon as I came here this year. I have spent the last two days pretty much in bed with a cough that has hacked at my chest, a cloudy head and no appetite. This has meant very little chance of spending time with Verma-ji, or Chandra (Chanu) and his family and I hope they will understand. After all, I have time to spend, I am easing slowly slowly into this India journey. Venturing out for my first proper, full meal in a few days I have just eaten to the sight of half a dozen Western ragamuffin children skip around in the sand and do yoga - so perhaps there is still innocence here after all...

First day in Pushkar after a slightly hellish but amusing night bus journey... sadhu's lighting up chillums in the middle of the bus, in the middle of the night, passengers bringing whisky for the driver among other things and the absolute worst toilet in the world outside in the midnight dhaba (food stall) we stopped at around 1 a.m. Just two bricks to stand on above a dirt floor! Which leads me into a discussion with some other people on the bus about our worst toilet experiences, we laugh hysterically cause we'd cry otherwise... This is India. Safe in my little sleeper compartment later on I am awoken by Maya, an Israeli woman, giving an old lady what for as the bent-over being insisted on stroking and prodding Maya's legs before beginning to sing incoherent bhajan's, much to everybody's chagrin. Just to let you know, the whiskey never got consumed as far as I know - Maya saw to that - gotta admire the balls of these Israeli lasses. I would like to think I would be so outspoken if my privacy was being invaded...

So now I am back here again, to my old paradise... I have to say though that I have felt confused and a bit scattered since being here. Perhaps it's the lack of sleep and this cough that has been creeping into ma chest, but I'm seeing the energy here in new ways...

I been seduced by this beauty before. Travellers sitting pretty in all the latest, covered head to toe in trinkets... straggly bohemian Jesus-lookalikes epitomising the image of 'shanti shanti'... bearded bedraggled begging men all grey and rusty and scruffy and expectant, their baksheesh cans ever present by their side... Rajasthani gypsies so mesmerising in all their coloured cloth and jangling bells, their eyes so hawk-like to spot all the new tourist girls in town... One I remember well, Pani (Hindi word for water also) greets me like a long lost friend - I like her a lot actually, she still has a photo of us from two years ago which she carries round in a shoulder bag with all her other faded memories.. she makes me promise not to let any other gypsy woman henna my hands and feet as I am 'hers', but I am happy for this and she looks well actually, with the new baby of a friend all covered in desert dust beside her and grabbing my fingers as I say goodbye...

Maybe we oughta strip all of this colour away eh? That's what I've been feeling, so surrounded by external beauty that it takes me a while to remember to look inside. So many tourist entrepeneurs stake the streets here... Sasson, head of the Chai mafia, see's that no other chai stall can be open past 11 p.m but his... he gives me a smile but I am just no longer the right clientele for him... I don't smoke, tobacco or grass, I don't even drink chai any more! Although perhaps my throat could do with some ginger-lemon lovin'...

Tomorrow, tomorrow, Pushkar, I hope to rediscover your magic. For it is there I know, beneath the veneer of multi coloured cloth, behind the sunglasses of all the holy 'priests' who line the Lotus Lake waiting for business... I know it is here, I've found it before. Tomorrow I visit with Verma-ji, my old yoga / Reiki teacher... I drink much pomegranate juice... I visit with my Indian 'family' and meet North's new baby daughter... Sitting with Chanu (brother of North, both who are good Pushkar friends to me) just now, he tells me his first born son recently died at two and a half months and I ache for him, marvelling at the same time the rugged acceptance of life and death here.

Goodnight, goodnight, holy lotus lake... I am off to find me some good kana (food) and let this tired body sleep...
Namaste