No Pain No Gain, or Day 60 in Pushkar

Like I mentioned, we are taking a night bus (but sadly not the Harry Potter one) tonight, but we're chilling in an internet cafe for a little bit before the bus leaves. We just showered at our hotel from last night, where we also left our bags during the day, so are feeling slightly better after the layers of dust and dirt and sweat came off.

Because, as the title suggests, we did a lot today, and my thighs are going to love me tomorrow.

I had three lassis throughout the day, which helped me get through it.

First off, we decided to do the 1.5 hour hike up to the Savitri temple at the top of the hugest hill around. We started at 8:30, when there was still a nice cool breeze, but soon, the steps got really intense.

The hike up was a lot of my looking at my feet, but there were just a few interesting things. Like the monkeys. There were baby monkeys and adult monkeys (and one dead monkey). There were monkeys eating and monkeys getting chased by dogs.

Other interesting wildlife included parakeets, lizards, stray dogs, and hippies. (Just kidding about the hippies being wildlife. I would want to offend anyone... peace, love, and all that.)

The temple at the top had marble panels that people donated inscribed with their or a loved one's name. Hauling marble up that hill must have been hard, but we did pass a marble quarry in the bus, so using it for building material makes sense now.

After the giant hike, we made our way back into Pushkar, to rent bikes to try to find Shiva temples eight kilometers (five miles) away.

Well, the first issue was renting bikes. We had lunch, then got pointed in a few different directions before finding one guy (who was out), then another. So for a dollar each, we had one-speed bikes.

We might have started out in the right direction, but we never really asked anyone, and the map in the book didn't go that far, so we basically just rode through the countryside.

Rajastan (the state-like entity that Pushkar, Ajmer, and Jaipur are all in) is not my picture of India at all. It is by Pakistan (but not too close, no worries) so very barren scrubland. While we were biking, there was a woman herding goats along the road. We also stopped at some small town were Max got a glass bottle of some lemon soda.

We ended up (well, climbed up) to some aquaduct so we could ride along the flat-ish, less sandy path. There was quite a wind, and with one-speed bikes, it was tough, but we made it back to Pushkar after an hour or two.

After sitting at a cafe by the "lake" to recover (and buying some water, sunscreen, and ice cream), I pushed to take one last jaunt with the bikes around the lakes.

And so we started passing the camels. This city hosts the biggest camel festival in the world, but not right now. Still, there are signs everywhere for camel safaris (which always puts the Beach Boys' "Surfing Safari" stuck in my head).

We got the holy ritual at the lake done (in the one spot that wasn't drained), then quickly washed off the gross water, and headed to showers.

We have sleeper tickets for the bus tonight, so crossing our fingers that we sleep!