Now I am in Pushkar, a magic city with a small little lake, where the Hindus worship Brahma. It seems actually to be the only place in the world where there is a Brahma temple (because he misbehaved and his wife made a spell on him that he only be worshipped here...). There are many pilgrims here in town, who come here to take their ritual bath in the lake, which is surrounded by staircases leading into the water, so called "ghats". It is quite impressive if you see the masses bathing, throwing colourful flowers in the water and pouring milk in it... most of the people do it in the early morning and so I got up at 6. Fortunately, my guesthouse is right on the water with a view on the ghats so I could see at 6 from the terrace right in front of my room that it was still too early and went back to bed. By the way, this guesthouse is the worst of my whole trip, while the "Guide Routard" puts it in the sections "medium to fancy" !!!! There is definetely nothing fancy about it,... it looks actually quite dirty and so I sleep in my sleeping bag in order not to have to touch the bedsheets... But I could not fall back asleep as there was too much noise.. actually almost all night through you hear music or drums from the many temples in town. In the end, the masses started arriving at around 7h30... there was a little bit of fog and therefore, it was an especially mystic atmosphere... that is probably also why all these hippies (many with rastas and crazy clothes..), from all around the world, come here and sit in the temples and play drums and move to the sacral music.. quite strange actually... but they seem to enjoy it... ;-)
The kite festival, taking place today, made this day even more special. Already right after sunrise, the first kites started to fly in the sky.. beautiful !!! I observed for a while two boys on the neighbouring roof terrace, one 5 or 6 and probably his younger brother of about 3. They tried to make their kite fly, over and over again, but did not manage.. but they did not get frustrated and even after 40 minutes they kept trying... the younger one, once he saw me, smiled and started to perform the latest Bollywood-dance-moves for me.. really funny !! ;-) His brother got however a bit irritated about this, as he did not get the support he wanted, and therefore blamed him for the lack of succes.. (well, if I unbderstood the body language correctly...)
Later in the afternoon, when I was looking for the post office to finally get all my postcards posted (sorry guys, the cards will arrive much later that I do.. but I never managed to get to the post office anbd it is not that easy to get stamps here..). I therefore entered a more residential area, where there was enourmously loud music playing from the roofs.. I looked upwards and some guys waved at me and asked me to come up.. and that is what I did.. and what a surprise: All roof terraces were packed with people, whole families, many had huge loudspeakers installed (and when I say huge I mean huge.. like in a disco!!!) and played Indian pop and some times even some kind of Indian hip hop / rap and even kind of techno music.. and there were hundreds of kites flying in the sky !!! AMAZING !!!!!!!! And the people had so much fun.. It was more the teenagers than the kids, but also quite some adult men who enjoyed flying the kite, cutting the string of other kites so that they fall down.. then it is the game to get them, pick them up as a trophee and start flying them as well.. Many however end up in trees, on electrical wires, etc... the roof terracre I was one was real fun.. the teenagers actually moved to the musci while flying their kite and wre really professional.. they "won" many many kites... the music was fantastic and so I joined them for some dancing ! GREAT !! Indians really know how to have fun... I stayed almost three hours, until after sunset because I enjoyed it so much !! The festival is called Makar Sankranti and heralds the transition of the sun into the Northern hemisphere. Everyone joins in this riotous celebration on the rooftops to the accompaniment of drums or music and shout " Woh Kata Hai !" as adversaries’ kites are cut down. And everyone’s an adversary! Any kite in the sky is fair game. This was certainly a highlight of my trip and I will never forget the experience !!
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