Overview
- Features: People from different walks of life attend the Fair
- Opening Times: All day
- Best Time to Visit: 2014 – October 30-November 6; 2015 – November 18-25; 2016 – dates to be announced
- Duration: 7 days
- Travelled By: Foot
- Cost: Free
- Address: Pushkar Maidan, Pushkar, Rajasthan, India
- Type: Event
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Summary
The Pushkar Camel Fair draws people from far and wide to attend the largest fair in the region. Whether they are there for trading camel and livestock, or to perform religious rituals and prayers at the temples, each of them add a different dimension to the Pushkar Camel Fair making it so much more colourful.
People Watching at Pushkar Camel Fair
People come to the Pushkar Camel Fair for numerous reasons. Over 200,000 people make their way to Pushkar for the important business of buying and selling camels and other livestock. Others come to perform religious rituals for the Hindu festival, Kartik Purnima. Whatever the reason, the Pushkar Camel Fair draws thousands of people to Pushkar to celebrate this annual week-long merriment.
People watching is one of my favourite pastimes and the Pushkar Camel Fair was an excellent place to see diverse people from all walks of life.
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The people who have come to Pushkar to trade their livestock need somewhere to sleep at night. They set up little make-shift tents in the fair grounds with their cattle nearby. As we walked around the area, there were several temporary shacks set up everywhere the eye could see. People were sitting in front of their tents cooking, talking to each other or just enjoying the atmosphere of the Fair.
While they attended to their business, their children ran around playing or asking tourists to take photos of them. Some kids were really friendly and just wanted to talk in English with us. I think they just wanted to show off that they could speak English, which is delightful and admirable.
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I am fascinated with the Rajasthani turbans that men wear in the state. At the Pushkar Camel Fair, they seemed to wear the most colourful and fancy turbans I have ever seen. When I thought I had seen the best, there was someone else with an even more beautiful turban. I have picked my top two turbans to add to this post.
Turbans seem to add another dimension to the men’s faces. They somehow embellish a man’s face, making the wrinkles or the mustache stand out.
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In India, where there are tourists, there are street acts and people trying to make a buck or two. The Pushkar Camel Fair was packed with street acts from monkey dances to girls performing tricks.
This is a huge business in India, and parents make it their business to earn money on the streets. While they are unable to draw on the heart strings of people, they make their children perform tricks for money. As a result, street children end up not going to school and become dependent on earning a livelihood on the streets.
While I am used to street begging as well street acts due to growing up in India, there were several Western tourists who felt really sorry for these kids and gave them a lot of money. While this is a really generous act, they are perpetuating a culture that isn’t beneficial to the education of children in India.
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The Pushkar Camel Fair is the biggest fair in the region and people make their way to Pushkar from nearby towns to enjoy the festivities and atmosphere. It is an outing for many people who live in Pushkar and other neighbouring towns come dressed in their Sunday best. They eat the food, partake in the rides at the Fair, buy toys and other items at the Fair stalls.
While we travelled between Pushkar and Ajmer on the public bus, the buses were packed with dressed up visitors who were heading to and from the Fair. Buses operated all night long in order to ferry people to and from the Fair.
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A big part of the Pushkar Camel Fair are the numerous stalls that line both sides of the streets and in the fair grounds. These stalls sell everything under the sun – from kitchen utensils to tourist souvenirs.
The Fair is one of the biggest markets in the region and a place for villagers to buy whatever they need back home. Women come here to buy kitchen utensils, while camel herders buy camel herding sticks and new camel owners can buy decorations for their new purchases.
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Where there’s a Fair there has to be lots of food and drinks, no where more so than in India. At the Pushkar Camel Fair there were several vendors selling all sorts of street food and drinks.
Given that it was very hot and humid in Pushkar, one vendor we really loved was a man who made sugarcane juice. Freshly squeezed with a dash of lime, it made a delicious and refreshing drink during the hot afternoons.
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While the Pushkar Camel Fair is a cattle and livestock fair, it is also held to mark the festival of Kartik Purnima, a Hindu festival to celebrate the full moon.
The Fair draws people from all over the region to Pushkar to perform religious rituals, such as bathing in the holy Pushkar Lake and praying in the temples.
As we walked around the streets, we saw several Brahmin priests, that are religious Hindu priests, praying on the street or waiting on the street to enter a temple.
The Pushkar Fair brings people together from far and wide for various reasons. We certainly enjoyed watching the people who attended the Fair and who made it so much more colourful.
