Thursday, December 5, 2013

Pushkar Fair - The people of the Dunes

The camel herders/owners who bring their camels to market set up home for a few days on the desert dunes while they go about their business. Watching these folks was maybe the highlight of the trip for me.

Before we even moved to India, safely closeted in San Jose, I watched the bollywood movie - Jab We Met, a Hindi romantic comedy with Kareena Kapoor.  Its a typical easy watch happy movie which has a wedding scene in the heroines home town in the Punjab. My absolute favorite scene is when the males of the wedding party dance to 'Nagada Nagada'.  Indian guys can certainly dance and these Punjabis in their wonderful turbans take it to a different level.  Even since then I have had a thing for turbans - in Pushkar I was in my element!!!

These are just a few of my favorite turban pics......



and of course real men can wear pink! Even in the desert everyone has a cell phone.




Turban wearing does I guess make dressing a little more complex in the mornings!!


And these three guys hanging out all in red probably had me down as a stalker by the time I had finished taking their pics every which way.


And this guy with both turban and a beautiful mustache of which he was suitable proud really was something else.


Moving on from my turban fetish and back to life........to make your morning cup go chai your need milk and where best to get it warm and fresh......

Make a fire and your brew is nearly ready


 Time to sip your cuppa while someone else starts kneading the bread while the camels just wait.

Pushkar, it's camels and its people are of course a photographers mecca. So many of our potential photographic masterpieces were bombed by other folks with lenses at least twice the size of mine - but I'm sure we did likewise!


Strangely my fav pic has nothing to do with camels or turbans but this little old lady, her face, teeth and clothes tell a story of a life of toil and hardship but her eye still  twinkles and in her piercing stare an inner strength shines forth.





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