Still on the move...

Phew! I have a lot of catching up to do.

After Bharatpur we headed for Jaipur. We stopped to do some shopping and then went to Amber Fort. Here we had the option of riding an elephant up the hill, but decided to walk instead. Amber Fort is an impressive structure, but I was really tired and not in any mood to appreciate it. Frankly, I was a little burnt out on cities and most of Jaipur was wasted on me.

We decided to move on to Pushkar and do some relaxing. There we stayed at a brand-new hotel located a few minutes walk down a dirt road from the main bazaar. It was a lovely, quiet place surrounded by flower fields and hills with a friendly staff and bright, clean, airy rooms. The restaurant was excellent and the cook made really good Italian food.

The first day I stayed in the hotel room relaxing and recovering from my headache while Tom went walking through town. He came back and told me he had booked a camel ride for the next day. Now, camels are very tall and I've heard lots of stories about grumpy camels throwing off their riders so I was a little nervous, but how many chances do you get to ride a camel?

Two young boys came with the camels to pick us up and they seem even taller when you're actually on one. However, the view from 10 feet up is pretty good. They led us down the road to a drinking trough where the camels slurped up some water, then the boys climbed onto a nearby brick wall to get into the back seat of the saddle. Tom's camel was fine with the arrangement, but mine was balky, backing up and swinging his head while complaining loudly. The boy, Dendri, eventually jumped down and went back to leading him until we got to another wall where he was able to try again, successfully.

Our ride led through the back roads of town and out into the desert to a small lake where we had a chance to get down and rest. I was able to take several pictures of the camels and noticed that they seem to really enjoy having their picture taken. If the camera was pointed at one camel, the other one would swing its head and flutter its lips until it was the object of attention again. Then it would adopt a look of comedic dignity and pose for as long as the camera was aimed its way.

The ride back to the hotel led us through the main bazaar where we became quite the attraction and even had pictures taken of us. I was only able to take a few pictures during the ride because it's almost impossible to keep a camera aimed at one subject from a camel's back. After we got back to the hotel, we decided to stretch out legs and walk into town.

Pushkar is a small town with narrow streets and friendly people. The lack of touts and pushy salespeople, along with dececnt prices in most of the shops makes it a fun place to roam. When it started to get dark, I discovered I had left my glasses back in the room and only had my sunglasses, so we had to cut our shopping expedition short. We still managed to do some damage in the time we had, though.

The next morning we were a little sad to leave Pushkar. A few more days of peace and quiet would have been nice. Our next destination was Bikaner. The driver, Vicky, took a wrong turn and ended up on the old road; a single lane of patchwork asphalt with fairly heavy traffic to negotiate. That road proved to me that if our driver was a fair example, Indians must be some of the best rally car drivers in the world. We eventually got back to the main highway but not before seeing three mongoose (mongeese?) cross the road in front of us.

Just before Bikaner we stopped at the Rat Temple in Deshnok. We weren't sure what to expect, but it was actually really clean and not completely swarming with rats, which was fortunate becasue we had to go barefoot. We did have to keep moving because young rats would come to inspect our feet if we stood still too long. We saw the white rat which is supposed to mean good luck. The rats are actually more like large mice than the size I was expecting. We took several pictures of the rats drinking from a large bowl of milk and they looked like a rat wreath. Merry Christmas!