Pushkar: The Drunk Love Zombie

I arrived in Pushkar by bus, after several hours of relatively pleasant travel. I had been warned countless times about the dangers and discomforts of Indian bus travel, and decided to make my longer trip an air-conditioned one. This contributed greatly to my enjoyment of the trip.

A guy from my guesthouse picked me up at the station and I had the experience of riding a two-wheeler with both my camera bag and my 50-lb. backpack (keep the core tight, move with the bike, and don't lean back). A mere two minutes later, we were at Milkman Guesthouse.

This. Place. Is. Awesome. Recommended to me by my friend Julia, I was attracted by the low, low price. Usually, a dorm bed is only 100 rupees, but I was paying 250 because it was festival time. Up several flights of stairs, the dormitory area has a friendly, funky feel, and is decorated with colored lights and hippie tapestries. Two turtles slowly roamed the area, moving around tattered backpacks and duffle bags. Outside, there is a grassy terrace, filled with potted plants. To accommodate festival patrons, this grassy terrace became an extension of the dorm, with 7 or 8 beds around its edges. I was on one of those.

The dormitory area is right inside that door
(you can see the stairs leading down to the rest of the building).

The restaurant in the guesthouse was cheap and tasty, and was a clear gathering place for the hippies and 20-something travelers that drifted in and out. In the mornings, bright sunlight shone through the windows, illuminating everyone's curd and muesli. In the evenings, the air was thick with the smoke of hand-rolled cigarettes. There was an air of camaraderie about the place-- one of those places where you could sit down and start a conversation with anyone at all. I loved it.

Contentment.

Pushkar itself is a wonderful little city, and was totally refreshing next to my noisy experience in Jaipur. Many of the streets were too narrow for car traffic, so it was much more pedestrian-friendly. The lakeside ghats were beautiful and quiet, and the sunsets were framed perfectly between the line of the city buildings and the temple hill in the distance.

There are many stand-out memories that accompany me from Pushkar, but I will share a couple choice moments with you.

I met up one afternoon with Nicole and Ella (friends I had made in Delhi--remember?), and they invited me to join their evening plans, which involved meeting up with several of their friends and going to a Rajasthani cultural performance. I walked with them to their hotel and met the people we would be spending the rest of the night with. They had been pre-gaming (always a good sign) and, after changing into some warmer clothes, we all set off. 

We arrived at a tourist tent city. This is a pretty common feature of tourism in Rajasthan: people who want an "authentic" experience in the desert, but don't want to put up with the inconveniences that go along with "authenticity," will often book stays in these weird little gated tourist communities. You stay in a small tent (some of them are ridiculously ritzy), eat buffets in a large tent, and enjoy nightly cultural performances like puppet shows, dancing, and fire-breathing.

We were fairly early to the performance, so the dancers amused themselves by making us get up and dance with them. It was pretty fun in that touristy sort of way, and I worked hard to get myself into the correct mindset. The fire-breather was by far my favorite, less because of his skill and more because of his incredibly sparkly kurtha (we started calling him Sparkles) and for his amazing dance moves. This man could swivel his hips and pelvic thrust like no one else--and believe me, many of the drunk French tourists watching got up and tried to compete. Sparkles thrusted them right out of the arena.

After a little puppet show-watching and dancing, we got our dinner. Our host, a man who had gone to a school that rivaled Woodstock, was fairly drunk and was sitting across the fire from me. He looked at me over his chapati and said, "Katherine, I am very fond of you." Wow, what a nice guy. I thanked him and he stared at me some more and confessed, "I think I am falling in love with you." I had no idea how to react to this news, since we had only known each other for an hour and a half, so I said, "Wow, well, that's sweet of you to say…" 

This man was probably one of the most harmless drunks in the history of drunks, so I wasn't concerned for my immediate safety, per say, but it was quite shocking, when we were dancing with the performers, to see him stumbling towards me with zombie arms, whining about how he wanted to dance with me. What ensued was an elaborate game of Keep Away with Nicole, Ella, and myself on one team and Drunk Love Zombie on the other. Needless to say, due to his condition, we were able to successfully keep away.

The only problem came when we needed to go home. Both our host and his friend were drunk, and we had all driven here in a jeep with a stick shift. That was a problem. None of us knew how to drive a manual. Another friend in the party had driven a manual before, but wasn't very confident in his abilities. After he accidentally drove over a small tree while reversing, we decided to test our luck with one of the drunk Indians. So, with four white people in the back and two Indians up front, we set off.

As we swerved along the road, passing other vehicles and narrowly missing several people on bicycles, Drunk Love Zombie decided to turn on the car stereo. "All I neeeeeeed is a rhythm divine," crooned Enrique Iglesias. I'm going to die, I thought while Drunk Love Zombie sang along. I'm going to die to the sounds of Enrique Iglesias in a car accident at a camel fair. I covered my head with Ella's arms to avoid DLZ's attention. The song changed. Oh lord. "I dedicate this song to Katherine," slurred DLZ, and "Right Here Waiting For You" by Richard Marx floated through the speakers. "Oh…good," I muttered, wanting to sink into the seats. DLZ sang to me as we came back into town, changing the lyrics oh-so-cleverly to say "I will be right there waiting for KATHERINE" every time the chorus came around.

When we stopped close to my guesthouse, I quickly exited the car, along with Nicole and Ella, who volunteered to walk me home before a certain someone could realize what was happening. DLZ tried to get out to say goodbye; we firmly requested that he remain in the car. Thus endeth my most ridiculous night in India.