We rose early today for another long day. We spent the first portion of the trip in the tourist/pilgrim city of Pushkar. This city is famous for two reasons. It's camel fairs and its some 1000 religious sites. The camel fair is sometime in January however we were not lucky enough to visit the city on this date. Instead we chose to visit one of the only Brahma temples in the world. As we stepped out of our car we were greeted by a couple young boys more than eager to be our "guides." Before I even knew what was going on, Rob had made a friend and we were being carried off to the temple entrance. At first I was quite happy with the city, it has narrow streets that wander past vendors selling anything and everything possible. After a very short walk, we make it to the entrance of the temple where we find the designated place to take off our shoes. There we are also told that we will not be able to even bring our cameras or cell phones or they would be confiscated by the police. I am trying to keep a good opinion of all Indians however it seems that there are a good number that are not to be trusted. These people were not to be trusted. We took our stuff back to the care for safer keeping. We toured the temple with a boy as our guide that could describe the temple in some detail although I didn't really speak his version of English. The temple was underwhelming at best. I was looking forward to going down to the lake and the Ghats that the city is famous for. Down to the Ghats we were greeted by so-called Brahmin priests that were to preform a prayer ceremony for our families and ourselves. I am sure that the prayer ceramony is a large part of the Hindu faith but as soon as he started to ask me for hundreds of US dollars I knew that he was just a crook. When he realized that I would not give him the money he wished for he quickly went through the rest of the prayer and appeared a bit disgruntled.
It is experiences like this that prevent me from trusting anyone here except for those that I know personally. Everyone sees a white face and automatically assumes that you are rich (relativly I am) and willing to drop all your bills at the drop of a hat. Despite this distrust I am able to appreciate the unique beauty and diversity of this country.
For the rest of the day we traveled to the small city of Jaisalmer to see its famous fort and to visit the Sahara like desert nearby.
As we checked into our hotel on the edge of town we were greeted by the friendly hotel staff as well as the roar of the army jets taking off from the army base nearby. From what the locals say there has been a strong army presence around the city since the 70's during their wars with Pakistan.
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