STILL in Pushkar

I've been in Pushkar for eight days now. Originally I was thinking I might bypass it altogether, taking the bus here that arrived early morning, then hopping on a bus straight to my next destination. Then I decided to at least stop for a day or two and take a break from the long bus ride here. Then, I discovered internet access at ten rupees an hour, which I'd been keeping my eyes open for for a while to get assorted things done. Plus, it's just a really easy and pleasant place to hang out, not too crazy or noisy and lots of good people-watching, and good shopping if I needed to actually buy anything, which is exactly what I need not to do. But basically, other than today I've spent 5-6 hours each day here in this internet cafe working both online and offline, the main accomplishment being getting Part 1 of my travel book edited, so that at some point here I can send it out again to potential publishers.

Other than that nothing too exciting has happened. I've barely wandered out of the main bazaar area other than walking up to one temple on a nearby overlooking hill, and walking around the lake a couple times. But one cool thing that happened was that I ran into another guy I'd met in Jaiselmer. Actually we met on the bus between Jaiselmer and Khuhri, the little desert town that I stayed at after Jaiselmer. But this was when I initially went there just for a daytrip. The bus was packed and we were the only other foreigners on it and ended up sitting next to each other. He's from Spain and his English isn't great so communication is a little wobbly, but still with a few attempts both ways we eventually manage to get the idea across. So we ended up talking a bit on the bus, then afterwards were wandering in the same direction towards the village, and ended up hiking up to the nearby dunes together. We caught the bus back to Jaiselmer a couple hours later, then back in Jaiselmer said see you later. We'd figured out that we both might be going to Pushkar, although he was first going to Bikaner (where I was before Jaiselmer); but figured since neither of our plans were very definite that running into each other again would be pretty unlikely.

So, the day after I'd arrived here in Pushkar, I was on the computer, next to a window that looked down to the street below. A big, loud procession started going by (apparently related to a wedding, there've been a bunch of them) and I decided to take a photo of it. When I did, the guy sitting next to me, who had been there for a while, looked over at me and said, "Hey!" It was the Spanish guy and he had recognized the noise of my camera, since not many people have film cameras. So, he and I have mostly just hung out in the evenings when we both have gone to the same little street side cafe that makes really good Israeli laffas (basically a tortilla wrap). Then, last night we ended up talking with a German girl at the same restaurant, and she mentioned that she had a pool at her hotel, which non-guests could use for a fee. So today we all met up there for the afternoon and hung out in the sun by the pool, which was a little strange because it was a fairly nice hotel, the pool was in a courtyard with a garden so that you couldn't see or here the street. So you could have been at a hotel just about anywhere in the world, whereas usually even in your hotel room you've still got the sounds of India percolating through.

So its really about time for me to get my butt in gear and start heading for Nepal, since I meet my friend John in Pokhara, Nepal around March 10th. That's two weeks from now, which would be tons of time if I were headed straight there, but with all the stops I've got planned along the way it's going to end up being a little rushed. Or else, I may end up just skipping a few of them. But then, the trek that we're planning to do only takes about a week roundtrip, which would get me back to Pokhara afterwards around March 18th or 19th. My flight leaves out of Delhi on March 27th, so if I wanted, then I could still come back to India and see a few other places right before I fly to Thailand. But on the other hand I may also want to do some more exploring of Nepal instead. I haven't gotten a guidebook for there yet so I don't know really what other places are interesting, although I'm sure I could easily use up another week there.

From here I'll be catching a bus, I'm thinking day after tomorrow so February 27th, about 6 hours to the medium-sized town of Bundi, which is supposed to be an atmospheric but untouristy town set in a canyon, with a great palace overlooking it. I was originally thinking it sounded like a good place to stay for a while, but of course now I won't have much more than a few days. But I'm sure they'll have internet access, so most likely I'll be writing next from there. By the way here's a link with some info on Bundi:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundi