Pushkar

I arrived at the ghats before sunrise, which I had been told was the right time, and the town was already awake in a way that has nothing to do with tourism. Pilgrims descended the broad stone steps to the lake in small groups, carrying marigold garlands and brass vessels for the water, and the priests on the ghats were already conducting puja — flower offerings being released onto the dark surface of the lake, floating out toward the center in concentric rings. The air smelled of jasmine and camphor and something underneath both of those that might have been the lake itself, old and mineral and specific. I sat on the top step and watched until the sky went from black to indigo to the particular pale gold that sunrise in Rajasthan produces, and felt, for the first time in a while, genuinely present somewhere.

The town of Pushkar itself is small and labyrinthine and shares with many pilgrimage towns a slightly schizophrenic personality — on one side, the deeply sacred Brahma Temple, one of very few in the entire world dedicated to the creator deity, its red spire visible from almost everywhere and its stone floors worn smooth by centuries of bare feet; on the other side, the main bazaar street that flanks the lake, which runs on chai stalls, German bakeries, hash brownies, and the general infrastructure of backpackers who arrived in 1975 and whose cultural descendants are still here. I found both sides interesting and resisted the impulse to prefer one over the other.

The Pushkar Camel Fair in November is something that the parent article mentions and that I think deserves its own insistence: it is the most overwhelming congregation of animals and humans and commerce I have encountered on any continent. Fifty thousand camels, roughly, and their traders descend on this small holy town over five days, the desert around the lake turning into a vast encampment of tents and cooking fires and decorated animals with painted hooves. The racing happens in the afternoons. The trading happens all day. At night the music is relentless. I slept very little and remember almost everything.

The food in Pushkar, outside the tourist street, runs on sweetness: malpua (deep-fried pancakes soaked in syrup), kheer so dense with reduced milk and cardamom it qualifies almost as a solid, and the famous Pushkar lassi that comes in clay cups so thick the cold travels from the cup into your hand. I drank three in one afternoon and did not regret a single one.

When to go: October and November for the camel fair (check dates each year; they shift with the lunar calendar). February through March is quieter but pleasant. The lake itself is holiest on the full moon, and any full moon visit carries an unusual atmosphere even outside fair season.