Cows, birds, and a few worshippers around Lake Pushkar

As we were planning this India gig that includes a Grasshopper Adventure bike tour with fixed dates we had a couple extra days to deal with. So we decided to take a little side trip down to Pushkar, a Hindu holy city that is supposed to be visited at least once by devout Hindus. The town is built around Lake Pushkar, supposedly created with Brahma – the Hindu creator – dropped a lotus flower there. Today the city is a strange mix of Hindu mysticism and backpacker funk. One peculiarity of Pushkar is that, because of its religious importance, meat and eggs consumption is prohibited throughout the city. Fortunately we were staying outside the city proper, so we weren’t terribly affected except when we wanted to go into the city for lunch. That didn’t work so well.

Actually, our hotel was one of the weird things about our visit. We stayed at a Westin that opened just last year, about a 20-minute drive out of Pushkar. The strange thing was that for the life of us we couldn’t figure out why there was a resort way out there. Our experience is that when we’ve stayed at remote resorts they’re either on a beach or they focus on the remote, rural surroundings. Not this one. No beach within hundreds of miles and the comparatively small footprint was surrounded by walls with all the rooms facing inward toward an unimpressive pool. There was nothing wrong with the place, but there was nothing particularly good about it either. I don’t know what Westin was thinking…

The kids of rural India on our walk into town

The good news was that while it was a long walk into town – an hour and forty minutes or so, so definitely a long walk – parts of it were beautiful. This was true rural India and the first time in the two weeks we’ve been in India that we felt we were seeing more than just urban insanity. No spectacular scenery or anything, just quiet rural peace (or at least an Indian version of tranquility). The bad news was that the long walk was not injury-free. Just about half way into town I tripped on some broken pavement, went down with a crash and twisted my ankle. Ultimately nothing too bad; no sprain and certainly I didn’t break anything. I pretty much had to finish the walk in since, at the half-way mark, it was going to be as far either way and way out there were no tuktuks offering rides. But for the next few (several?) days I’m going to be lying low. After 103 consecutive days of surpassing my “Move” goal as set by AppleWatch my streak was broken. Sad!

As for the town itself, it was fun. We’re starting to get into the swing of this India thing, rolling with the intensity and chaos and squalor and all that and appreciating the parts that we like. Lake Pushkar was nothing like I’d been expecting. When I think “lake” I expect greenery, nice paths maybe, something approaching a park setting. Not here; it was remarkably small, really just a pond, and completely surrounded by cement sidewalks and mostly ugly buildings. It is holy, though, so there were lots of people around the edges bathing and otherwise partaking of the holiness. The surround area was definitely more bohemian backpacker than holy which adds a special flavor.

Pushkar’s main tourist/backpacker street

Enough of our side trip. It was a three-hour drive out to Pushkar and after our visit we had to get back to Jaipur to catch a flight to western Rajasthan. We scheduled a 6:30 AM departure which meant we left on Christmas Eve while it was still dark and thus got to enjoy a sky full of stars. That might have been my favorite part of the whole stay!

Lake Pushkar from Laura’s, a café where we thought we might have lunch. When we discovered the all-veg menu (which translates to “all-carb”) we left after just a bottle of water.

We love the bright colors in India

A woman outside one of the many temples lining the lake

Mark on the lake

Cute monkeys!

Cute door

Another of Pushkar’s temples

Mark takes a lot of pictures of cows. Oh, and there are a lot of cows in India.

More rural peace – and a cow of course

Mark with Deepac, a server at the Westin who poured good glasses of wine

And me with just a little festive Holiday spirit. Merry Christmas!

Arrowhead, in all her majesty

From Agra we took a train to a little town called Sawai Madhopur, just outside the Ranthambhore National Park. Or at least, the plan was to take a train to Sawai Madhopur. The problem was that it was a connecting train, first from Agra to Mathura, then on to Sawai Madhopur. When we got to the train station, though, our train was delayed by at least an hour, meaning that we would miss the connection. “What should we do?” we asked an official. He suggested we hire a taxi to Mathura; if we left right away we’d get there in time to catch the train. “Can we get a refund on this leg of the journey?” No. Oh, and if the car gets stuck in traffic – by no means an impossibility in India – then we’ll miss that train, too, and be no closer to our destination.

Pretty much all the trains through here were late

So for $25 we hired a taxi and made it to the train with only a couple minutes to spare. Except that train was an hour late. Until it was 90 minutes late. And 15 or 20 minutes after that schedule, eventually our train showed up. Our experience from Delhi to Agra had been so good – train on time, comfortable seats – but this one, not so good. Essentially every train out of Mathura was late, some up to three or four hours late. And when we did get onboard it was definitely not as comfortable as the train from Delhi either. Mark has found the process of buying tickets online incredibly frustrating (one site he went to asked “What train do you want?”, rather than where you are going from or to, as though of course everyone knows the name of the train), and then this. First lesson, then, about traveling in India by train: don’t do a journey requiring a connection.

These are definitely not Japanese trains. Fortunately, the first class cars are *slightly* nicer than this. Not that much, though.

OK, so eventually we made it to Sawai Madhopur and caught a tuktuk to our resort. We were splurging to stay at an Oberoi, a very upscale place so surely this would work, right? Not so much. The security guard at the gate checked his list, and there was no Mark Sullivan scheduled to arrive that day. How could that be? Mark checked his confirmation email – he’s learned to keep those well-filed and accessible – and it sure seemed we had a reservation. They checked again and still nothing. Eventually we worked with the manager and she said they would honor the reservation we had even though they couldn’t find it in their system. Nice of her, particularly since our credit card had already been charged for the stay! But it would take 30 or 40 minutes to get the room ready, not something I was too happy about after our lousy journey.

Finally we got to our room, and a day or two later learned what had happened. Turns out there was another Mark Sullivan scheduled to arrive that day but he had rescheduled to arrive two days later. Somehow they either deleted our reservation or moved both of them; either way, that explained why they didn’t have us on their list the day of our arrival. If the resort had been full, we’d have really been in a pickle. Fortunately, though, it all worked out. We got to meet the other Mark Sullivan and had a fun 15-minute chat about all the Johns and Dans and Corneliuses in the family. Better yet, when we checked in they had told us our package included not just breakfast but free dinner and half-priced cocktails at happy hour. “Really?” we asked. “We don’t remember that on the reservation.” Yes, we were told, that was the package. In retrospect, we suspect that the other Mark Sullivan’s package included all that and by the time they figured it out they were too embarrassed to tell us we’d have to start paying full price. All in all their mistake worked out pretty well for us. The only downside was the way staff have been trained to pounce the second you move to make sure that you never have to pour water or wine or serve yourself food or … anything. Definitely a little annoying but if that’s all you have to complain about you’re probably doing fine.

Mark Sullivan on the left and … Mark Sullivan on the right!

Ok, now we can get to the tigers. The only reason tourists would ever go to Sawai Madhopur is because of the proximity to Ranthambhore and the tiger reserve. The reserve was created in 1973 when Prime Minister Gandhi recognized that India’s famous Bengal tigers needed protection from hunting and poaching. This was one of the earliest reserves created but even so the number of tigers is relatively small, maybe 65 or so, though that is a considerable increase over the 25 or so tigers there as recently as 2005. Ranthambhore is considered a good place to see tigers, though, as the deciduous forest in the park makes spotting them much easier than in the rain forests further south. Still, they estimate only a one-in-five chance of seeing a tiger in any one outing.

We got lucky. On our first morning we were paired with a friendly British couple who were on their third and last outing; they were leaving after lunch. They had been out twice the day before and saw a fleeting leopard but no tigers. So we’re bouncing around the reserve in a jeep with a driver and guide, stopping here, listening, watching, stopping, and so on. Suddenly after perhaps 90 minutes there she was, a beautiful three-and-a-half year old tiger out marking her territory and rubbing herself on trees, trying to attract a male while keeping other lady tigers away. She took little notice of us as she’s learned the jeeps are no danger. She’s not tame or anything close to it, though; the guide was clear that she’d eat us if we got out of the jeep and she happened to be hungry.

Arrowhead

Leaving her smell on trees in case there are any guys around looking for a good time

So for 10 minutes or even longer we watched as she wandered around. If she wanted to go where our jeep was sitting we moved the jeep. Simply put, she was magnificent, the colors, the paws, the fur, the eyes; just an incredible animal. Eventually she went deeper into the woods then, but those 10 minutes were pretty phenomenal. It’s worth noting that while tigers are the main draw, they were by no means the only wildlife we saw on our three-hour mini-safari: there were spotted deer, wild boars, a mongoose, a sloth bear, plum-headed parakeets, peacocks, lots of monkeys, even crocodiles. And we haven’t even gotten to Africa yet!

Lots of these plum-headed parakeets in the woods

We could have gone out on more rides (if we wanted to pay for them, of course) but beyond the expense we just figured why? Given the one-in-five odds of seeing a tiger, another trip would likely have been disappointing and anticlimactic. So instead we spent the next full day just hanging around the beautiful resort. At one point in the afternoon after I’d done my chores (laundry, some tax stuff, time on the treadmill) I was lying on a lounge chair outside our room. The trees were lush, the bougainvilleas vibrant, birds were chirping, the laundry was drying in the breeze, and I was reading my Lenin biography while listening to Chopin. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

From here, then, it’s back on a train and on to Jaipur, known as the Pink City and capital of Rajasthan. Back to real India!

Just a shot of one of the “workers” at the train station

Once they let us in, the grounds of the hotel were beautiful

They even keep their own elephant around just for fun

A sloth bear crossing our little road

Untold numbers of these rhesus macaques out there

A wild boar mama cleaning her young ‘un

Crocodiles out there, too. We decided not to go for a dip.

That’s the head of a cute little owl peeking at us

A tree full of bats they call flying foxes

There is apparently a famous picture from Ranthambhore of a tiger sleeping in the windows of that building across the lake

More pictures of Arrowhead

She was incredible