Jaipur to Pushkar

After a few days in the busy town of Jaipur, we headed for Pushkar, a quiet town surrounded by mountains. It was a lovely, our hotel overlooked a huge lake, however there was not an awful lot to do here. We decided to spend the afternoon reading and chilling out on the rooftop of the hotel, looking out on the lake. However, this was not that easy as there was a loudspeaker playing over the whole town which made it very difficult. We were not sure what it was saying but the lake was supposed to be a spot used by pilgrims, and so we assumed it was a collection of prayers. It was quite interesting at first to be a part of the daily ritual; however, after 3 hours of the same man's voice it grew to be quite annoying.

Our evening in Pushkar was spent camel riding, which was very amusing! Despite being very scared at first at the sheer size of the camel (Joel) which I threw myself on, it turned out to be really nice. The guide I was with was really friendly and told me all about the camel, about where he grew up, and about the village which he came from. It was really nice to get to know the locals. He had me going really fast though, until I nearly fell off; a funny moment in hindsight, but not when I thought I was going to land head-first in camel spit! Natalie had a somewhat different experience; her camel (Johnny) was really lazy and always seemed to be a mile behind mine. I don't think she appreciated going so slowly, especially being an experienced horse rider. We rode around for a few hours as the sun was setting and ventured further and further into to the countryside. On the way we passed a family of gypsies living in a tiny hut in the middle of nowhere. It was funny to see them all laughing and clapping at the children of the family who were putting on a show for their family.

I am definitely glad we got to experience this, despite being surprised to see camels walking the streets of India!

After the ride we went for dinner in a small family run restaurant which was lovely. It was outside in a small garden and was surrounded by lanterns; a perfect way to end our short stay in Pushkar.