There is a little, very holy city called Pushkar in Rajasthan. Once we spent some time there… Encountering saddhus – holy men who had given up all worldly possessions and aspirations – striving only towards enlightenment.

Life in Pushkar was like it has been for thousands of years. Slow. Spiritual. Strange.

With cows galore.

Every day people would come to bathe in the holy lake. Saddhus gathered and lived as close to the holy water as possible.

There was nothing touristic about Pushkar. It was thousands of years old, spritual and real.

The town had some serious rules as it was starting to draw in us unruly Westerners. The city authorities actually literally forbade opposite sexes from holding hands or engaging into other indecent activities publically.

Every evening there was a march through the city’s narrow main street, with an elephant (dressed and painted in her best), horses, camels and a huge podium for a golden elephantine figure of god. There were all possible instruments making loud music – that I’d rather describe as cacophonic noice – and some holy men with nude torsos surrounding the Godly figure.

The whole recital was deeply respected by locals, and totally peculiar to the rest of us. But impressive nonetheless.

The backcountry of Rajasthan was so cheap that we were able to stay in an ancient palace of a maharaja – and after the dusty camelrides that really was sweeeeeet…

I did yoga on a breezy rooftop with a local yogamaster very early in the mornings or after sunset, as the temperatures soared well above 40 at daytime.

A very sad characteristic of Pushkar was that there were plenty of women there, who offered to read or predict the future from men’s hands. The prediction always happened in some little hut nearby. The code was clear; if a woman said she was from Jaisalmer (city closest to the Pakistani border) and wanted to read an man’s hand -and touched the hand while proposing to read his future (men and women simply don’t touch each other casually in India) – she surely was a prostitute. So many of them were very young, and almost all were carrying babies with them. It was very difficult to understand the phenomenon deeper, as all the Jaisalmeri women I met were illiterate, unschooled and spoke no English. But they were extremely kind, sweet and welcoming to anyone who bothered to give them a little smile or take a moment to admire their babies.

The sunset from the balcony of our palace was absolutely stunning. Breathtakingly beautiful. Although I took hundreds of pictures of it, I couldn’t quite capture it’s exquisiteness… This is as far as I got with my pocket camera.

Pushkar has a soft spot in my heart because I felt how real it was. Is.

An authentic piece of a continent that is India.

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