Pushkar, City of Swindlers

When you walk through a tourist market or attraction you get hit on by women with small children looking for money.  The children are taught to say "hi" and give you a flower or something and you're supposed to give them some rupees.  You get people with armfuls of trinkets asking you to buy whatever they're selling.  They're pretty insistent.  Women and children come up to the car window when you're stopped and ask for money.  Attendants at the attractions ask if you would like your picture taken with your camera and they expect a tip for it.  Musicians come by if you're sitting and they'll start playing and expect you to give them some gratuity when they're finished.  It's a constant barrage because we're at a hotel each night, eating in restaurants and taking in lots of attractions.  The hotels have guards at the front entrance controlling who gets onto the premises to prevent these sellers onto the property.  And ignoring this constant barrage makes you feel guilty because you know that these people are poor.  And inside the hotel, the porters not far off from the beggers.  Their uniforms give them credibility to their begging but they seem to find ways to help pad their pockets, such as the porter in Jaisalmer who was asked to bring an extra laundry bag and laundry form and made two trips and wanted a tip each time.  

But Pushkar has taken this to a new level.  Today we went to a Brahma temple.  Although we had been properly warned by our driver Amrik, about not to take anything that anyone offers we still ended up falling for one of the scams.  We got dropped off near the temple and left our purses in the car with Amrik and walked past booths selling the regular trinkets and trash.  One of the lasts booths offered us a rose flower for an offering in the temple which we declined.  But he went onto tell us to leave our shoes in the shoe trays.  It is required that you remove your shoes when entering temples.  You always see a whole bunch of shoes outside the temple steps--which I noticed as we started up the walkway towards the temple.  It then became clear that we just placed our shoes with a commercial operator.  Damn.  

So we hatched a plan to just grab our shoes slip them on and get walking.  On our getaway, a little boy from the booth came up to us and said "shoe charge" so I said "no" and we kept walking.  I was sort of expecting them to chase us a bit--we were led to believe this might happen.  Fortunately, that was the end of it. 

We then went to a sacred lake that's known for a beautiful sunset.  Here, there was a man who offered us a flower to offer to Brahma but we declined this.  I don't know if these offers for flowers are legit or not but even the Lonely Planet guidebook warns about Pushkar's scammers, so we thought it was best to ignore these unsolicited offers.

We're staying at the Jagat Palace Hotel which is another haveli type hotel.  It's a beautiful property with gardens.  So here are my obligatory pictures starting with our room pictures taken from opposite ends of the room.

The checking in process involved signing into their oversized guest registry book.  There it is on the counter.  No computer system here.  

And this is the entrance to the building where our room is located.  The architecture is done in a period style, using carved red sandstone.  

And this is Judith struggling with locking the door lock.  There is a sliding bar and and old style lock that goes into the sliding bar and then turned with the key.  The sliding bar sticks.  There is also a screen door.  

And here's the pool.  We've stayed at a few places that have had pools.  I've yet to see anyone taking a dip in any of the pools.

A few days ago I started taking pictures of street life, with a focus on the women, because they seem to be more active than the men.  Here's a random selection.  

I took this picture at the water wheel site.  This woman was walking down the road with this load balanced on her head when we pulled over to check out the water wheel.  She is veiled as are many women in the countryside.  The little boy boy has dark colouring applied around his eyes.  That's typical as I am told that they believe this is good for their eyes.  She made sure I would pay her before I could take her picture.  

We saw this couple at the entrance to Jaisalmer Fort.  They just got married.  

This picture was shot from the car.  I took it because she didn't have a head covering and I liked the fact she was using a cell phone.  Everyone here seems to have a cell phone.

She had just finished staring at Judith, so I missed the shoot.  I still liked the photo because she's wearing traditional clothing and he's not.  It made me wonder why.  

A shot from a fast moving car, so it's not really clear.  But the size of her load was amazing.

These women were washing clothes at the riverside.

These women were waiting for the bus.  The stop is in the middle of nowhere and it's not apparent what they're doing out there.  But their clothes were very colourful and it stood out. 

These were all young boys and girls.  The sticks are used as firewood for cooking.

Another shot from a moving car.  She's sweeping dirt.  The whole area has a dirt base so I'm not sure what she intends to accomplish or the purpose of the sweeping.  

And that's it for tonight.  Tommorow we go onto Jaipur.  I think we're only in Pushkar's because it's too long to drive to Udaipur to Jaipur in one day, particularly with the amount of road construction currently going on.