Pushkar Camel Fair

Nov. 16, 2008

A major reason I decided to explore Rajasthan was that my visit to India happened to correspond with the timing of the Pushkar Camel Fair. Each year Pushkar, a holy town in the Hindu faith, hosts the world's largest camel fair featuring competitions such as the "matka phod", "moustache", and "bridal competition."

Thousands of people from all over India go to the banks of the Pushkar Lake where the fair takes place. Men buy and sell their livestock, which includes camels, cows, sheep and goats. The women go to the stalls, full of bracelets, clothes, textiles and fabrics. A camel race starts off the festival, with music, songs and exhibitions to follow.

The festival falls each year around Kartik Purnima, the night of the full moon, the day, according to legend, which the Hindu god Brahma sprung up the lake.

OK, so that was the Wikipedia explanation of the event. For me though, my experience of the fair was that I spent most of the time avoiding it as I fought off a brutal bout of food poisoning. Welcome to Asia.

The smell of cow and camel dung mixed with whatever spice it was that was in the food I spent a long night vomiting up, hung thick in the air around the town. I could only bear walking around the grounds under the desert sun for brief periods of time. But the short time I did spend there were well worth it if only for the photos I got. Check out those colors and those dancers and those beautiful, beastly animals.