Day 3: January 21

On the train we were even fed twice; the food was, of course, so-so, but still. The first time they fed us as soon as the train started moving, bringing each of us a pack of cookies, a small thermos of hot water, and bagged tea. The second time they brought two slices of bread, beautifully wrapped but practically inedible, butter, jam, and fried potato balls. The balls were tasty!

After 6 hours we arrived in the city of Ajmer. As soon as we stepped out of the station building, tuk-tuk drivers kept running up to us one after another and offering their services, but we were determined to find a bus to Pushkar on our own. Soon it became clear that where I expected to find buses, there were none. We asked some passerby how to get to Pushkar by bus. So we kept walking. It was an ordinary noisy Indian city. Along the road they were selling all sorts of things; we bought a bunch of bananas.

We reached a large fork in the road where we asked again about the bus to Pushkar, and the man very confidently said that we should wait for the bus right there, it would come and stop on its own. So that’s what we did — we started waiting. Soon we saw that Indians were gathering somewhat near us, and one man even said that he was also going to Pushkar and that we should follow him. While waiting for the bus, we ate the bananas, which turned out to be tastier than the ones from Kyiv.

Soon the bus arrived, and we even got seats in the royal spot behind the driver. It was very good that we sat down. I thought it would take only about 10 minutes to get there, since Pushkar is only 11 km from Ajmer, but in fact we traveled for quite a long time.

We liked Pushkar right away: a small town with shabby and half-ruined but very beautiful buildings. We walked along the main street, where they sold lots of clothes, souvenirs, and leather goods, toward our hotel. Our hotel was located a little away from the very center of town, but not far.

At the hotel, they wanted to give us a room on the 1st floor, but apparently I had such a disappointed look on my face about it (the room is located right by the reception and the entrance) that the Indian guy got pretty flustered himself, thought for a bit, took some piece of paper, thought some more, and then finally assigned us someone else’s room one floor up. The room is very simple, but it has two windows.

We decided to go for a walk right away while it was still light. We went down to the lake; it’s beautiful here. You can walk around the lake only barefoot. At the same time, there are a lot of pigeons there and everything is covered in their droppings. So we didn’t walk like that for very long.

We put on our shoes and kept walking around in our shoes, where it was allowed to walk in shoes. An Indian came up to us and handed me a little flower; I took it for some reason, and then he handed a flower to Volchyi. We were about to keep going, but he and one of his buddies started persuading us to go down to the lake and throw these flowers into the water for good luck or something like that. I didn’t like any of it right away, but they were so persistent, and Volchyi said, well, let’s go throw the flowers, come on…. Volchyi somehow took off his shoes first, and while I was going down to the shore, he was already sitting with that Indian, and the Indian was telling him something.

Then a second Indian ran up to me and started trying to seat me too. I firmly refused and said there was no need to put me through something like that. In short, the Indian was telling Wolfy something and telling him something, then I got tired of waiting and walked over to them, and the other Indian started blocking my way, it turned out very funny, he says that you can’t interrupt some kind of ceremony. Just a circus.

I saw Wolfy give his Indian 20 rupees (about 8 hryvnias) as payment for the ceremony, and the Indian told him, well, you’re from Europe, you should pay in euros :)) Wolfy said take the 20 and that’s it, I don’t have any euros. And that was that. The Indian left upset for some reason, only God knows why. Earned 8 UAH in 5 minutes….

That’s India for you. All of this is very funny, they just try to scam you somehow at every corner, but at the same time they’re all very… kind in their own way, there’s no negativity or aggression coming from them like there can be from some of our guys in Ukraine. So they’re not scary at all, you just realize at some point that you’ve fallen for their trick and that’s it… Well, you’ve got to be more careful next time and more cunning.

Pushkar is a pretty little town, but it’s very small and there’s not much to do here. We had planned to stay here for 2 more nights, but we started to doubt whether it was worth staying this long.

We ate roasted peanuts in the shell — Indians sell them from carts. Then we had dinner at some slightly sketchy-looking eatery, but the food turned out to be pretty good.

In the evening, we decided to cancel our hotel for tomorrow, which was booked for 2 nights, and stay in the same one for 1 more night, to give Pushkar a chance to win us over… We’ll see tomorrow how it goes.