Moti and Papu Lal

This is Pappu Lal with 10 year old Moti, one of his 4 camels on which he takes tourists out on Laxmi camel safari either riding or in a camel cart across the desert.  We had such an interestiing chat, along with his wife Mumta and his daughter Puja who all spoke a fair bit of English. Life has been hard, particularly this year with the rupee fiasco and lack of tourists.  We discussed the changes in Pushkar which when I visited years ago was little more than the lake surrounded by the ghats and loads of temples – although for the camel fair traders from miles around piled in too.  The place is jam packed with shops now selling everything needed by villagers from knives and cooking equipment, sticks, warm clothing and horrible cheap but cheerful Chinese plastic toys, endless shoe shops selling ‘genuine’ camel skin shoes with pointed toes and multi coloured blankets were selling well too. For the hippies there are pipes and grungie skirts and jewellery, There are loads of hotels and restaurants but the saddest thing was looking at the desert outside which was awash with plastic debris. There were lots of begging sadhus which a real one would not do and I was followed by innumerable begging women saying one chapatti, food for baby etc. The locals are fed up with them.  I heard wedding music and came upon a bus of wedding guests – 80 people piled out and were ‘received’.  There are pictures of the feast being prepared if you wish to sample my day