Traveling: What you see and what you miss - Ajmer, the Pushkar Camel Fair & Ahmedebab
The Lord Brahma procession nearing the full moon in early November.
Platform 14. Would my bus show up here?
Traffic in Delhi.
Delhi police station.
Amidst the squalor
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Help! Let me out!!! On a smoggy day in Delhi, I was feeling like Jesus. These photos are out of order, but the internet is doing funky things and I can’t rearrange them. It’s India. I trust you’ll figure it out. The diciest of the bus depot photos, the two with the cloak room and the ticket sales booth were in Ajmer. I couldn’t find it in me to check my luggage into the cloak room there while I explored. Would you have?
There were several ticket booths similar to this one, yes this is a ticket booth, each housing an agent who seemed reliable, but weren’t. Mine promised me a ticket on a bus at Ahmedabad on the three o’clock bus. I’d earned a place in her heart after leaping off a moving bus that a man in charge insisted I board even though I didn’t believe him that it was going where I wanted to go, and so, recognizing a kindred spirit, she relented and wrote down on a slip of paper that I was to return at 2:55 and she would get me on that bus. ChatGPT confirmed that local buses only offer tickets for sale ten minutes prior to boarding. When I returned at 2:45, the place was a clusterfuck of people wanting tickets. She personally wasn’t there, but another woman who’d witnessed her promise was. Nonetheless, she was helpless to do anything as the bus was full.
Had I not gone back for that bus, and had I stayed in Pushkar and gone on to the camel fair, which I had bad FOMO over as a cool guy I met said I really needed to see it and the pictures looked gorgeous, though over-the-top touristy, but what else is a fair, really? Just a place of amusements. Sure, it started out a couple thousand years ago as a camel trading fair, but 90% of the transactional value now is white people getting turbans tied on their heads, mustaches waxed and taking camel rides. If you’re burned out on watching people pose for selfies, you’d be miserable. Though evidently in the minority as Google maps includes ideal spots for selfies now, I’m in the latter category, so I tried to talk myself out of the desire by sprinkling in some reality. I was already feeling a bit jaded after my experience along the banks of the magical healing lake where Lord Brahma experienced a flash of enlightenment when some professional gurus looking humble and holy gave me rose petals, smeared saffron on my third eye, invited me to feel the mystique before I bathed in the miracle waters and basically told me that if I didn’t make a donation, I didn’t love my children and their lives would be fucked up.
And there was the cool looking temple where no foreigners were allowed. That didn’t strike me as a very sacred outlook. I just wasn’t feeling the love. Compounding that was the fact that I missed the cool temple, the blue Lord Brahma one because I didn’t follow the procession I’d stumbled into, to its end. I just don’t always follow the crowd, even when it looks like a once in a lifetime experience. It only takes one annoying American couple to impel me to drift in another direction.
I figure the world is filled with wonders and they don’t have to be the staged ones.
And so, after my delightful encounter with Ram, who even though he does sell the instruments he makes, was genuine in his heartfeltness… If that’s not a word, I hereby coin it for Ram. After my delightful encounter, although he wanted me to go to the camel and horse trading fair, I told him that I really needed to catch a ride back to the Ajmer bus station to catch my three o’clock bus, so he made sure to get me onto the local bus I could ride for only 30 rupees.
That was a bus ride worth twenty camel fairs. I had my backpacks, the heavy one overloaded and hard to squeeze in both places and a heavy day bag, stuffed with immediate supplies I might need at any moment like water, snacks, Imodium, sunblock, mosquito repellant, a toothbrush, that sort of thing. Not easy to fit with me on my half of a bus seat. The bus driver did not intend to depart until every molecule of space was filled with humanity. And so it was that there were over a hundred of us crammed in there, with even positively ancient, fragile people in the aisles. I was the only white person and it turned out, a bit of a curiosity to the locals.
So much so that an old woman…well, it turns out that she was younger than me, but still she was old and her mouth made it even clearer as she didn’t have all that many teeth and the remaining ones were black. I will always think of her when I read the expression ‘toothy grin,’ because she did not stop grinning. She was cracking jokes the entire time. In what language I do not know. There are many regional dialects that I am not clever enough to distinguish from Hindi. But she held fast on to my torso, whilst stroking my hair, the only part of me that I had up to that point considered fairly clean, though probably filled to the brim with dust. Her hand was sticky. Everyone here has sticky hands because it’s so hot and for other reasons I’m in no mood to entertain right now. I liked her well enough. Who can resist a joie de vivre attitude, especially in such a desperately filthy, impoverished place? One woman alone on the bus held the key to communication amongst us and she was generous with her translation powers. The bus was absolutely rollicking in good spirits as we chugged away and wound down the mountain the half hour to Ajmer.
The flowery picture was just a surprise I stumbled upon in Delhi in front of a temple just when I badly needed to see something pretty. I’d just handed some rupees to a gentlemen missing both legs only to come upon his neighbor in the alley, who was missing arms. All I could do was laught. Obviously a horrible reaction. But Delhi and India are so overflowing with misery… and what are my resources?
Why did I expect a more formal police station in Delhi?
The photo of the bus was to remind me where one of the drivers thought my evening bus in Delhi might pull in, although the ticket said Arrival Block, which unfortunately was nowhere near this one. The Delhi bus station has too many platforms to cover in eight minutes. There’s entirely too much honking to allow your thoughts to connect. In fact, some of the buses have this crazy horn that sounds like Woody Woodpecker on steroids and is mildly terrifying. Unfortunately, these jokers seem to love showing it off. There are too many toxic fumes to feel good about breathing. And well, it’s simply a scene of unbridled chaos, changing flavors with each moment.
The real story here, well apart from the Pushkar to Ajmer bus ride, is about that statue in the traffic circle in Ajmer. Because just when you think there is zero sense, absolutely no continuum, it underscores how old and deep are the strains of culture which run through blood and society here. And that people can be respected throughout the ages for simply being ethical, for considering their impacts upon others, in their business dealings
This guy is Maharaja Agrasen. He lived long ago. He was a warrior prince, the eldest son of King Vallabh of Pratapnagar in northern India, trained in governance, warfare and spirituality. His turning point came when he was witnessing a Yamuna, a scared fire ritual where animals were sacrificed. Horrified by this, he halted the ritual declaring and I quote, “I shall not seek a kingdom built upon violence. From this day, my path shall be one of ahimsa, non-harm.” Moved by this, the goddess Lakshmi appeared and asked him what he most sought: riches, power or renown. He said none of these for himself. Instead he wanted a kingdom where every soul could live in dignity, and where wealth is earned through fairness and compassion. She blessed him, telling him that he would found a city that would become a beacon of prosperity so long as his people uphold truth and kindness. And so Ajmer flourished as a merchant site for thousands of years and still is in its own special way. It’s not on par with say, Dubai or Singapore, but folks are still getting by. In the 7th century the city was a beautiful mix of Hindu, Jain and Sufis all getting along just fine and doing business together. In the 12th century, pilgrims began pouring in and the Arawak traders quietly funded pilgrim rest houses (dharamshalas), step wells (sites where travelers could get water and rest in the cool shade) and langurs (free kitchens) around the temples.
As in the Irish culture, hospitality was huge in long ago times and remains so today. I think in my tales of Ireland I noted that a king’s greatness was measured by how long he could generously support travelers and that it was a great shame to run out of provisions. I’ve been invited to several homes on this journey to stay as long as I wish and each person has noted that their sense of responsibility is rooted deeply within their culture.
Agresen was all about integrity: fair commerce and hospitality. His descendents formed eighteen clans, known today as the Agarwals, and who to this day take it upon themselves to sponsor programs founded upon the ideals of hard work, charity, integrity and social responsibility. The Agarwal Samaj believe that a kingdom’s greatness is measured not by its armies, but by the fairness of its markets and the kindness of its people.
So it is here that I will include photos of the Adalaj stepwell in Ahmedabad, so you can picture what that’s all about. It has a romantic story attache
No foreigners allowed in here, thank you very much.
Ram and one of the hauntingly beautiful instruments he makes. Ram lives at one with nature in a stucco house with a thatched roof with his wife and children outside of town.
Maharaja Agresen, the local hero.
These two photos, above and below, could have been taken anywhere. There’s a painful disconnect here in the culture’s comprehension of their connection to the planet, to the effect of their actions upon our biosphere. I understand the interiors are generally kept spotless.
Ticket booth.
I arrived at the Ajmer bus station after two nights of buses canceled without warning. I had given the Ahbibus customer service representatives every opportunity to apprise me that my bus wasn’t coming. My ticket did not indicate a platform number. The Delhi bus station might be one of the most crowded, noisiest and chaotic places on the planet. Think about large cities for a moment and realize that this is not hyperbole. This is fact. I don’t know if their Arrival/Destination screens ever work, but this was IT for information.
There was an individual at a counter to answer questions, but all she could tell me was to call customer service. Which I did. Six times over the course of two hours, mostly because they told me to call back and the other times because we were “disconnected.” It did not work in my favor that my language was English, that I could barely understand their thick accents and that neither one of us could hear the other very well and there was no quiet place to situate myself. The bottom line was that the agents didn’t know which platform out of sixty might be the one where my bus would pull up and wait for anywhere from five to eight minutes. They provided me with the number of the bus driver, which gauging the horrendous bus traffic, I doubted would help because he could hardly know which space he might get to pull in to. It didn’t matter. He didn’t answer. And whilst I couldn’t be sure bobbing around 60 platforms at 10:15 pm if I’d missed it or not, someone admitted that in fact it was canceled and not to worry, my money would be refunded within 48 hours.
That was hardly my biggest concern.
What I did learn was that there were far more options than I’d realized. That there was more than Ixigo, the large train and bus booking platform and Ahbibus and Redbus, but actually a number of travel agencies running buses as well as the trusty regional government buses, which might look too jacked up and old to make it the entire trip, but at least they’d try. I came to realize with a certainty when the same thing happened the next night that the business models of the bus lines partnering with Ahbibus and Redbus is to wait until the last minute to see if a bus fills and if there aren’t sufficient bookings to justify the trip, cancel it. Notice would be nice, but in the case of Ahbibus that wasn’t going to happen as there was no way to enter a country code for my phone number if it wasn’t India’s. Try as I might it would default to India and even though WhatsApp is free international calling and most businesses do indeed communicate over WhatsApp, if they have the wrong number in the system you are not going to get their messages. And I didn’t. Redbus is hit or miss. You can enter your country code, but each time you log out and in again, it’s gone. At what point during my peaceful sleep, it switches to an unfavorable default, I have no idea. I did get a notice from Redbus of the cancelation of an imminent departure a couple weeks later in my trip. So that was something. So not only did I learn in Delhi that there are other options, I learned that some bus lines have higher percentages of last-minute cancellations than others, but that most are crap shots. Except the government buses. So while they may be ratty as in unhygienic, hot and probably unsafe and fairly likely to break down, they will put the pedal to the metal and spew out that greasy black smoke and chug you on out of the bus depot, taking you as far as the vehicle can before giving up its ghost.
So what’s an stepwell anyway? The photos below are the Adelaj stepwell just north of Ahmedebad., finished around 1498 CE. It was the vision of King Rana Veer Singh of the Vaghela Dynasty, but he died before completing it. As you can see, it was destined be an exquisite structure and of course it is a charitable act to build a stepwell, so his widow Queen Rudadevi wanted to see it through. Well, your ordinary frothing-at-the mouth financier agreed to finish it if the lovely widow would then wed him. She agreed. But he must have been a real troll, because instead of fulfilling the agreement, she threw herself in the well. Not exactly an auspicious christening, but a charming tale of dedication.
And while I’m here, since it’s in the neighborhood, I’ll include a photo of Ghandi’s ashram along the Sabarmati River where he lived with his wife and a team of people for over a dozen years promoting a nonviolent expulsion of the British government from India. I did not know much about Ghandi really and was fascinated to find out that his movement was inspired by Tolstoy’s Letter to a Hindu; that he wrote two letters to Hitler pointing out that he himself had admitted that his deeds were monstrous and suggesting he take a different route; and that Einstein wrote to him, which, recalling that Einstein had also written to Freud asking him if he thought humanity is capable of world peace, made me more curious about his dreams of elevating the spirituality of humanity. And it made me more curious about Tolstoy and why he too was considered a game-changer.
And finally, I’ll sheepishly admit here that I didn’t go into India’s oldest and arguably most beautiful mosque while I was in Ahmedabad. I got as close as unfastening my sandals, but I couldn’t do it because it had rained and was horribly muddy and grimy and I was slated to take an overnight bus with no opportunity of washing beforehand. It sounds so prima donna white lady from a first world country, but I have already picked up a mean fungus on my big toe from these shenanigans everyone else seems to submit to with such ease. I did however trudge through the messy, crowded alleyways of Ratan Pole in Ahmedabad where the ladies were shopping with abandon for clothing and jewelry.
So here is just a taste of that.
