Another early start for a 6am train which meant it was trusty breakfast biscuits again although I did make it even less healthy by adding a bottle of Pepsi and packet of salt and vinegar crisps that I bought at the station.
The TukTuk ride in the dark was quite a scary experience - at least the driver seemed able to predict and swerve the potholes! The train was more like our first train ride and assigned seats and more room.
4 hours on a well worn seat did make me glad to be off although the station was almost more crazy than Delhi with and I think our taxi driver fancied himself as a getaway driver overtaking cars to skip through what appeared to be a roadblock!
We arrived at our very nice hotel and ordered lunch and settled in - I had another shower as my hair is still full of oil from my massage yesterday!
Lunch was pleasant enough, but more basic to some of the food that I've become accustomed to and was a very mild palak paneer and vegetable Biriani.
At 4pm as it started to get cooler we headed off for our camel safari. I was nervous because I've never ridden a Camek before and they are so tall! It was actually great - my camel - Maharaja was so placid and well behaved (until his few detours on the way back to eat flowers) and it was much easier to get on and off than I had anticipated - the key is to lean back when they stand up or sit down.
Our safari took us through the village into sand dunes where we stopped so that the camel handlers could start a fire and boil up some chai. We all had a little cup of chai and a biscuit whilst the camels had a rest and some gypsies who'd spotted us came over to play us some music.
We set off again to get to Pushkar and have a city walk. We stopped briefly to visit a very holy temple of Brahma which was interesting, but strictly no photos and then we walked through streets with many weapon and clothes stalks as well as some selling creepy looking dolls!
Pushkar is a holy city which means no meat or alcohol and the most holy place is the lake.
To get back to our hotel the quickest route was via the lake, but we had to take our shoes off to walk past it and cross a footbridge!
I took another shower before dinner and signed up for a voluntary early start for a sunrise hike tomorrow. Dinner was a bit disappointing as the "kebab" I ordered was more like a dry veggie burger, but the Gulab Jalam dessert was delicious!
