The Consumer Demon of Pushkar

Now I'm in Pushkar. Pushkar is a wonderfully appropriate place to update my blog, for there is nothing to fucking do here.

Wait, I tell a lie. One can shop. One can shop and shop and shop. It's ridiculous. I haven't felt like this much of a consumer for years, eyeing the merchandise upon the shelves, a little fat white devil on my shoulder giggling and rubbing his thorny hands together in glee and pointing out how much cooler life would be with a sword or dozens more Ali-Baba pants or colorful striped shirts or utility belts or curly-toed leather shoes or psychedelic striped hats or a two-foot Shivalingam or albums of Rajasthani music or books and books and books or carved wooden toys or, fuck, look at that thing, I don't even know what it is but it's fucking awesome and I want it. I'm throttling the leash on this miserable creature, the undying, All-American, whitewashed gobbler of unquenchable purchase-thirst, yet his strength is such that I barely control him as he gnashes his teeth ravishingly at overpriced, mediocre commodities as though dying of materialist starvation.

I've got to get the fuck out of Pushkar. But I have to be here for four more days.

The reason for this, though I'm proud of how little I've actually purchased from these grinning street vendors - one pair of patchwork chord Ali-Babas, one colorful striped shirt, sunglasses and a black kurta for myself, and some gifts for friends - is that I made the one big buy I'd planned on since I originally decided to come to India. I'm getting a hand-tailored, pinstriped magician's coat, old-school with coattails and all types of pockets. I can't freaking wait.

But until it's ready, four days from now, I have to stay in Pushkar. Which, as I've mentioned in odious rambling, hasn't got anything to do except spend money. So I suppose I'm going to be hiding in my hotel room for a while. And, occasionally, updating my blog.

So, where were we?

I finally arrived in Jodhpur. Legs and buttocks aching from the ridiculous, crowd-straddling train ride from hell, I hobbled out of the station avoiding and ignoring the immediate hustle for my rickshaw business, and scouted for a phone shack. Pulling out my slowly-deteriorating wallet, I searched for Actually's phone number, accidentally dropping a few dozen rupees in the process and attracting even more attention from the touts. I picked them out of the dirt, wiped them off, and sat down at the still-to-me-ludicrously-named STD booth. I tried the number. No beans. Either her phone didn't work here or it was out of juice or something similar. I hung up and moseyed into the throng once again.

"Hallo sir? Guest house?" cried the nearest rickshaw-wallah in near-desperation.

"Uh, yeah," I said. "I want something very cheap though."

"Good price! Three hundred fifty rupees!"

I shook my head. "Hell, naw, I want something for like a hundred. One hundred rupees." He looked appropriately aghast, as is their wont, and shook his head, managing with this simple gesture to somehow convey that although the task of finding a guest house was arduous, painful, and difficult, he was going to help me out of the goodness of his heart.

"No, sir, no available for one hundred. Two hundred fifty, maybe. Very difficult."

"Uh huh. It's ok, dude, I know you want your commission higher than a measly fifty rupees. I'll find someone else." I began to walk away, and he predictably grabbed hold of my arm.

"Ok, ok, two hundred rupees! Two hundred only! Good place!"

Ah cha. Oh well. I'd only be staying there a night anyway. I accepted his ride and we bounded off over the potholes.

The five or six workers in the place, lounging around bored watching Bollywood TV, lit up when I walked into the room, only to have their faces fall when I was followed by the rickshaw-wallah. Jodhpur is infamous for the unreasonable commissions rickshaw-wallahs demand from guest houses to which they bring tourists, nabbing for themselves anywhere up to fifty percent of the price of the room. What I should've done is walk around and find the nearest cheap place to the station. The guest house managers are usually so happy that you've shown up without a money-grubbing rickshaw-wallah creeping in ahead of you that the rooms can be haggled down to three or four times cheaper than you could get otherwise. But alas, this time the poor guys were going to lose out. The rickshaw-wallah shook my hand enthusiastically on the way out.

Pictures of the guest house owners shaking hands with Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Adrien Brody, attired as they were for the film 'The Darjeeling Limited', lined the walls. I dumped my shit on the bed and was excited to learn that not only was the room pretty nice for the price, the internet was free, and I had actual, honest-to-Shiva hot water in my bathroom. A hot shower! The likes of which I hadn't seen in a month! Lordy, lordy, lordy! I used the internet to check my email, and found one from Actually vaguely stating the location of the place she was staying, 'by the clocktower'. I went out exploring and, surprisingly, found it without much hassle.

There was a room available there for 200 rupees that would be big enough to sustain the both of us, with very high ceilings and a nice painting of a camel on the wall. I had to go and check out of my old room not 20 minutes after I'd checked in, with the unlikely excuse of 'we've decided to catch the train to Jaisalmer tonight'. The folks at my recently-retired guest house were sad. I'd been the only one staying there.

Jodhpur isn't exactly the nicest city in India. Ultimately, despite a mammoth, picturesque fort overlooking the whole city, and many buildings being shaded a pleasant sky-blue, it's just another city teeming with the usual cows, touts, and litter. There was an elephant. That was cool. And there's this one omelette shop where I had, seriously, the best fucking omelette I've ever had. But ultimately, it wasn't an ideal place to linger for longer than a day or so.

However, one attraction in particular had been on my to-do list since planning my trip to India in the first place. As I'd read in my travel guide, the gigantic fort itself had recently been equipped with a criss-crossing course of six ziplines that would send one hurtling over the walls and surrounding environment. That sounded like my cup of tea, along with a couple other attractions scattered around India, such as paragliding off the Himalayas in Menali. Most of these sweet-sounding rides were priced at roughly $20, so I figured I could splurge a bit here and there.

I remember back in Varanasi, my enthusiasm for these sorts of attractions had been completely deflated by a punk-rock lesbian chick at the Blue Lassi. I'd been talking to the people next to her, excitedly listing off the things I want to do, and she'd made a point of interjecting how stupid all my plans sounded at every bullet-point, making me feel small and insignificant.

I'm going to call her Tnuc. Because she was a total cunt in the insulting sense of the word, but the word 'cunt' literally means goddess, and her condescension was the complete opposite of a goddess. Backwards, even.

Well, actually, no, lots of the goddesses of mythology worldwide were total condescending ho's. Maybe she was a cunt.

Whatever. I'm calling her Tnuc. Tnuc was a bitch.

"...I was thinking of going on these ziplines over a fort in Jodhpur -"

"My friend said that was really dumb," she'd interrupted.

" - and then up in Menali you can apparently go paragliding off of the freaking Himalayas -"

Tnuc let out a snort. "Yeah, for like five fucking minutes."

" - and also in Menali I heard you can roll down a mountain in a huge inflatable ball - "

At this, she'd thrown her emptied clay cup with a smash into the street, making a startled cow look up, and glared at me in withering scorn.

"That's the faggiest fucking thing I've ever heard," Tnuc sneered.

I don't know why I'd let this bitch get to me - I only ever met her that one time, for that one conversation, and she obviously had something against having fun - but for some reason all my childlike joy at the anticipation of these type of activities had suffered a blow in the damp cold of her cynicism.

Luckily, in Jodhpur, once I realized I was in the very city where you could fucking zipline over a fucking fort, Actually also thought it would be fun. So up to the fort we went.

Fucking Tnuc. It was really fun. We met up with a group of tourists from all over, including an overly rambunctious Australian (aren't they all?) and some of his travelling friends, one of whom was from freaking Santa Fe, New Mexico! I'm gonna call his Balsamic.

We're fucking everywhere.