Pushkar

Pushkar's importance is religious and very old. Hindu tradition holds that the lake formed where a lotus fell from the hand of Brahma, and the place appears in the Mahabharata and the Puranas as a tirtha, a crossing point where pilgrims come to bathe. Its association with Brahma, who is worshipped in very few temples anywhere, gives the town a status out of proportion to its size, and a circuit of bathing steps and shrines grew around the water over many centuries.

The surrounding country was ruled from Ajmer by the Chauhan kings, then by the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals and, for a period, the Marathas, before the British took Ajmer and governed it as the small province of Ajmer-Merwara. Temples at Pushkar were damaged during periods of conflict, most often cited under Aurangzeb in the 17th century, and were rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries with patronage from Rajput rulers and from merchant families; the Brahma temple and most of the ghats around the lake date in their present form from that rebuilding.

The autumn fair grew from the pilgrimage: traders who came for the bathing days brought camels, cattle and horses to sell on the open ground outside town, and the livestock market became a large event in its own right, drawing photographers and tourists from the later 20th century. Pushkar became a fixture on the backpacking route in the same period. The lake itself has needed repeated attention, drying badly in drought years and being desilted and refilled, and water management remains a municipal preoccupation.

Everything in Pushkar is arranged around the lake. The day has a shape set by worship: bathing and prayers in the early morning, temple bells, the closing of shrines through the hot middle hours, and lamps and singing on the ghats in the evening. Pilgrims complete a circuit of the ghats, priests perform rites for families at particular steps, and the fifty-odd ghats each carry their own name and associations.

The town's rules follow from that. Meat, eggs and alcohol are not sold, shoes are left at the edge of the ghats, and behaviour that would pass unnoticed in Jaipur is out of place here. At the same time Pushkar has been a travellers' town for decades, and the bazaar sells beads, embroidered cloth, silver, leather and drums to visitors as readily as it sells offerings to pilgrims; music and yoga schools and long-staying foreign visitors are part of the mix, and the two economies exist side by side.

Rajasthani folk culture is on show most strongly at fair time, with Manganiyar and Langa musicians, dancers, moustache and turban competitions and camel decoration contests. Local families breed and trade camels, horses and cattle, and rose growing around the town supplies petals, rose water and gulkand for offerings and sweets. Kartik Purnima, the full moon of the autumn month of Kartik, is the year's greatest day, when the lake fills with bathers before dawn.

Pushkar is small: about 20,000 people live in the town, and life is dominated by the two things that bring outsiders — pilgrimage and tourism. Guesthouses, temples, shops, camel and horse owners, camp operators, guides and drivers account for much of the work, alongside farming in the valley, where roses, wheat, millet and vegetables are grown, and stone and marble trades in the larger towns nearby.

The rhythm swings between seasons. From October to March the town is full and the lanes are busy into the evening; in the fair fortnight the population multiplies, tents cover the fairground and every room is taken; from April the heat empties the place and many businesses close or run at half speed until autumn. Ajmer, half an hour away, supplies hospitals, colleges, the railway station and the wholesale markets, and many families have members working there or further afield.

Local concerns are the state of the lake, which depends on the monsoon and on periodic desilting, water supply, crowding and waste at festival times, and the balance between a working temple town and a visitor economy. Municipal rules about shoes, photography and behaviour on the ghats are enforced with more determination than they once were.

Pushkar's food is entirely vegetarian and, by custom, without eggs, which sets it apart even in a state where most people eat little meat. Restaurants serve the Rajasthani standards: dal baati churma, hard wheat balls with lentils and a sweet crumble; gatte ki sabzi, gram-flour dumplings in a yoghurt gravy; kadhi; seasonal vegetable curries; and thalis with chapatis, rice, pickle and buttermilk. Jain cooking without onion or garlic is easy to find.

The town is best known for malpua, a thick pancake of flour, milk and sometimes fennel, fried and soaked in sugar syrup, sold from sweet shops near the bazaar and associated with Pushkar across Rajasthan. Kachoris and samosas are the standard street snacks, lassi comes thick and sweet in clay or steel, and masala chai is drunk from morning to night. Rose products from the surrounding fields — rose water, gulkand, a preserve of petals and sugar, and rose-flavoured sweets and drinks — are a local speciality.

Decades of foreign visitors have added a second layer of cooking to the lake-side cafés: pancakes, porridge, pasta, falafel and Israeli dishes appear beside the thalis, and German bakeries of the kind found in other Indian traveller towns sell bread and cakes. Alcohol is not sold anywhere in town, and the drinks of choice remain lassi, chai and fresh juice.