We took an early morning bus from Jaipur to Pushkar, this took about 4 hours or so. The bus dropped us off in Ajmer which is the main town next to Pushkar. From there we hopped on the local bus which took us into Pushkar. All relatively straight forward!
Once in Pushkar, we started walking to find a hotel Jeremy had found online called “Hotel U-Turn”, on first impressions we thought the place looked a little run down but once we got a tour of a few rooms, the downstairs coffee hang-out and the rooftop restaurant, we were in love! Such a nice little place. Also, the owner of the coffee shop downstairs was a lively Spanish lady who had a really cute sausage dog in tow, major brownie points! We also got upgraded to the biggest room a few moments after check in which was nice, so we had a lovely balcony with a view over Pushkar lake. How bad. We checked in for two nights.
Pushkar is a really small little village, there is one main street filled with gorgeous markets selling local crafts (mainly pashminas, notebooks and traditional footwear). The whole village is almost overrun with cows, like there are cows everywhere, and they are not small! Especially at night outside our hotel door for some reason. There is also quite a “spiritual” vibe about the place, lots of people come here to complete their yoga teaching accreditation, so you see lots of “yogis” walking around in leggings carrying their yoga mats. Also a strong Israeli representation, a popular place for them to travel. As a result many places sell yummy falafel wraps! We spent the first day wandering around the village and getting a feel for the place.
The next day we were up early to admire the morning views over Pushkar (See below). To my horror we found a mouse in our room. So we proceeded to spend the next hour or so trying to catch it (by “we” I mean Jeremy tried to catch it and I sat with my knees tucked into my arms and my eyes closed). The hotel gave us a trap and put some chapatti in it (Indian bread, it’s yummy) so we decided to evacuate once that was all set up!
We went and had breakfast with the sausage dog downstairs. Got chatting to the Spanish girl who is married to a local Indian man. Such a lovely girl. Checked on the trap – chapatti was gone and the mouse was nowhere to be seen. Great.
After that we walked to “Deepaks Ayurveda Massage Center” and booked ourselves in for Ayurvedic massages at 3pm – when in Rome and all that! Ayurevdic treatments are available all over India so we thought we better go and see what all the fuss was about. Essentially this was just a full body massage using lots of different oils and then afterwards they tell you interesting facts about your body and mind (which they can apparently assess from giving you a massage). Lots of stuff about digestion and a few tips on what kind of foods suit our bodies – all a bit personal so I won’t go into the details, but I will say that pretty much all of it was bang on! We left very impressed! That said, the massage itself wasn’t the best massage I have ever had, nice but not amazing!
Jeremy got a haircut in a local barbers while we waited, and he also treated himself to a shave! Quite the pamper day. Unfortunately the barber took the “tight around the edges” request to the extreme. His hair is…interesting now! But who cares we are traveling. My hair is still completely lop-sided from a bad hair cut in Sri Lanka. We are a sight for sore eyes these days!
Afterwards we went and sat by Pushkar lake, taking in all the views and watching the locals pray. The lake is surrounded by “Ghats” which they use to bathe in and wash their clothes. Really lovely to sit and watch. No shoes allowed! And again the place is run by cows – and monkeys.
Deepak told me that the colour orange should make me happy, so I went and bought an orange notebook because yes I am that gullible! We also saw a camel on the side of the road – poor fella looked miserable all tied up 😦
That evening we had dinner up on the rooftop and tried to figure out how to get from Pushkar to Jodhpur. In classic Indian style, no information was available online, it all seemed really complicated. We decided to just go to the bus station the next morning and see what happens.
Pushkar has been I think one of my favorite places in India so far. Really nice relaxing village (in relative terms people, this is still India!), a nice break from the hustle bustle. That said, two days is plenty here as there is not much to do. Unless however you want to go and do yoga training, that would be brilliant!
Aoife and Jeremy's Travel Blog 