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Pushkar lake is ringed
by five hundred beautiful whitewashed temples, connected to the water by 52
ghats - one for each of Rajasthan's maharajas, who built separate guesthouses
and employed their own private pujaris (priests) to perform rituals during their
stays here. Each is named after an event or person, and three in particular bear
special significance.
Primary among them is Gau Ghat , sometimes called Main Ghat, where visiting
ministers and politicians come to worship, and from which ashes of Mahatma
Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri were sprinkled into the
lake. Brahma Ghat marks the spot where Brahma himself is said to have
worshipped, while at the large Varah Ghat , just off the market square, Vishnu
is believed to have appeared in the form of Varaha (a boar), one of his nine
incarnations. At all the ghats , it is a respected and unspoken request that
visitors should remove their shoes at a reverential distance from the lake, and
refrain from smoking and taking photos.
Indian and Western tourists alike are urged by local brahmin priests to worship
at the lake, that is, to make Pushkar Puja.
This involves
the repetition of prayers while scattering rose petals into the lake, and then
being asked for a donation (these days often an astronomically high one) which
usually goes to temple funds, or to the priest who depends on such benefaction.
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On completion of
the puja , a red thread taken from a temple is tied around your wrist. Labeled
the "Pushkar passport" by locals, this simple token means that you'll no longer
attract pushy Pushkar priests, and can wander unhindered onto the ghats .
In years past, the lake used to be prowled by dozens of man-eating crocodiles
that would often pick off unwary pilgrims. Elderly brahmins can still recall the
days when they regularly used to have to beat the rapacious reptiles on the head
with long sticks before entering the water, but their strict vegetarian
principles prevented them from doing anything about the problem. Eventually, the
British intervened by fishing the crocodiles out with nets and transporting them
to a nearby reservoir.
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