Vegan for a Day

Jaipur/Pushkar

Our second stop on our Spring Break is Pushkar, a small town that has banned meat, eggs, and alcohol and does not allow cars downtown. A bumpy rural road (we drove for over an hour of the trip without seeing anything in a familiar alphabet) took us to maybe the nicest hotel we’ve stayed at so far. Our hotel in Pushkar is not nearly as new as some of the other places we’ve been (it has padlocks on the doors—a far cry from key cards), but it’s very cozy. Each room has a nice little balcony, and they have a great pool area. As soon as we arrived, we were regretting getting to stay only one night.

My newfound love of cricket is being embraced by everyone in India, save for the people who have to carry my luggage. Most everywhere I go, people are happy to talk with me about the ongoing test match, and they usually find it entertaining that a Westerner (especially an American) would take such an interest in Indian cricket. But when my cricket curiosity manifested itself in a bat that is quite heavy, that created an externality that (through the additional weight in my suitcase) landed square on the backs of India’s hotel employees. My suitcase was already pushing 30 kilos without the bat, but now it’s getting ridiculous to lug around. I really do feel badly for the bellmen at these hotels, but they insist on taking your luggage so they can earn tips. Today was especially bad. Employees are apparently not allowed to use the elevator at our hotel in Pushkar, so the poor man had to walk up three flights of stairs with the thing on his head.

Our activity for the afternoon was a camel safari that we were greatly anticipating. We rode two to a camel, getting on the camel as it was kneeling and hanging on as it rose to its feet. Jenny asked our guide whether our camel was going to be good. He said, “If he is bad, I will kill him.”

As we were walking out to the desert, I asked our guide the question Rob asked Kiran: How expensive is a camel compared to a horse? He said that a camel costs about 20,000 rupees, while a horse will probably cost a lakh (100,000 rupees). The only other notable thing on our trip out to the desert was seeing numerous signs for the Pink Floyd Cafe & Hotel, which gives you a pretty good idea of the foreign clientele Pushkar often sees.

The desert was cool. It was a bunch of sand with a big lake in the middle.

After our camel ride we went out to a hotel downtown, where we watched the sunset and the goings on of some of the people arrayed along the cascading steps in front of us. Watching some of the other people who were there to witness the sunset left just one question in my mind: “When does Widespread Panic go on?” Pushkar’s laid-back attitude is exemplified in its foreign tourists, most of whom are European and Australian hippies. Functional hippies, with proclivities for music and juggling-type activities.

Then we went to dinner. What do you eat in India when you can’t have meat or eggs? Enchiladas and hash browns, of course. The hash browns were about the eighth different way I’ve seen them prepared in this country—these were cubes of potato with onions and peppers, and it was about three times more food than I expected.

The food of the day, however, was the butterscotch ice cream I had at lunch. I don’t know what to say about it except that it’s the best ice cream I’ve had in a long time.