Pushkar

Brahma puja on the holy lake.

Did the same, with the brahmin in the foreground earlier in the day. It's the reason I came back rather than staying north. A puja for the dead. And today, on the lake, I wept.

Otherwise am here for little time, just for puja, the changes are too much for me. Here especially, this place of my heart, I mourn. And yet, again talking to locals, I share the loss of something which I was lucky enough to have found and delighted in. And I will return, there are still glimpses to be found and dreams to be woven.

I write this listening to shit trance music on loudspeakers, and I mean shit, thoughtless boredom with a beat, played LOUD. It seems that there are a group of folk who are just into 'a scene' and not so much where they are, as it's pretty much a self contained bubble, freed from all geography, reliant upon the season alone to define their route.

Here there's a garden so there's really little need for them to exit the homestead...and if they did there's more falafel than thali on sale in the main street.

Pushkar has changed, the tranquillity is gone to be replaced by the stereotypical travellers ghetto, though I become more and more reluctant to call them such. More cynically I wonder what's the point? This substrata who never really leave their culture behind but appear happiest when they superimpose it upon others. I don't know. I've met enough people who carry the desire to see, participate and learn from their travels to allow me to shed my anachronistic tag....but...the proportion of the uniformed...a different generation, I was told today, not so interested, only in themselves...the proportion has increased and, possibly, with this so the dilution of difference. Main street here not so different from, varkala, rishikesh etc, same shit different postcode....

But it's India and there's always some kind of beauty to be found, quiet places. Thanks lake is still serene, the skyline changed slightly as hotels protrude, but same wonder, same sense of the holy and ethereal...but when you move back into the daily reality....

Otherwise a tired day after a long journey in a coffin bed on a local long distance bus...and the realisation that much of what I'm writing doesn't really fit in my blip page...and so began a blog, maybe, although not as I would have it look...

And so ends day one of my return to pushkar. I am truly delighted to be back, although my gripes may sound otherwise. Between the release of the puja, the beauty of the lake and the friendliness of the locals there's more than enough joy to be had. But it's peace I look for over these last week's and so tomorrow I look north again, having changed the route in my head. Shimla for a game of golf I think:-)