‘Holly’ In Pushkar – Days Before The Sky Turned Black

After debating where to continue after the mess in Hampi, I decided to leave Goa and travel to Pushkar in Rajasthan by train with a friend. When we boarded, we realized we were the only tourists on the train. In the evening we wanted to stretch our legs a bit and walked between the carriages on the train. Many looks were sent our way. For a moment I did not understand what the fuss was all about and why everyone was staring at us like that. When I got back to my bed I realized that most of the people on the train hadn’t ever gone beyond the borders of India, most of them probably had not even travelled within India. I realized that what seemed such a basic thing to me, to travel the world, seemed insane to a person who was familiar with nothing other than his own country. I travel with a big bag that has everything I need in it and every place I go with it is equivalent to my home. The night I spent on the train I clearly felt it was my home for that night.

In India time has a different meaning from the Western world, probably because Indians do not get along well with schedules.

The train ride was longer than expected, probably because of the prolonged stops they made. After almost 30 hours by train we arrived in Kuta, a city five hours drive from Pushkar. This trip was also extended because we shared a taxi with Indians who seemed to do everything in their power to delay the drive.

During the time that I was in India there was a lot of discussion about the need to book a place to sleep during the time of the festival ‘Holi’, because Pushkar is filled with tourists. I did not reserve a place because I did not know where I wanted to be and so I was afraid that I would not have a place to sleep. Luckily, we got to Pushkar before the season. It was almost completely empty of tourists and everywhere we went, they tried to convince us to settle in, it was refreshing but terribly confusing. We finally chose a hostel that I very quickly realized was not really my cup of tea, mainly because the shower did not work properly and I imagined that after ‘Holi’ I would need a good shower.

After a few days of still not feeling comfortable in the room, I decided to move to another hostel. As I moved my things I found out I was going to share a floor with a group that I really liked. After a few days I discovered that the whole of the ground floor was reserved for another group of friends I liked and then my friends from home also moved in and occupied the whole of the top floor. So by the end of a week, I knew all the occupants of the building. The atmosphere there was really good and I was glad that I had listened to my intuition and moved to this place.

But nothing prepared me for what happened a few days later.

In the evening I was sitting in a room doing macramé when I received a series of messages from Israel from Elona, my best friend. She told me she had a friend who needed help in Puskar and asked me where I was. After a few minutes there were knocks on my door and I imagined it was one of my friends. Suddenly Elona and an Indian with a big bag on his back entered my room, for a moment I did not recognize the faces. I was in shock and did not understand how such a thing could happen, after all Elona called me on a video call from Israel the day before. When I finally recovered from the fact that Elona was actually in India I was euphoric.

Slowly with the arrival of more people to Pushkar, we started to hear more and more about Covid-19. I didn’t want to hear or participate in jokes about it. It was a topic I wanted to avoid hearing about because I did not want it to have anything to do with my reality. But at that point it didn’t look like it was going to endanger the rest of the trip, however just talking about it made me feel uncomfortable.

Eventually everyone came to Pushkar in time for ‘Holi’.

Friends I made during the trip, friends from home that I had not expected to see, friends from home I had expected to see, in fact all the people I knew that were in India at that time were in Pushkar too. It was fun to see everyone and move between different gatherings.

Pushkar is nice, it has a lake with a really good vibe, at sunset there are people playing music or playing with various juggling accessories. There is a huge market with everything you could want or imagine. Around the city there are many roof-tops where you can sit and see the whole view from above. Within a five-minute drive you can reach an open desert and a very different landscape. Sometimes in the evenings we would turn on the speakers in our hostel’s garden and have a kind of party. After all our shared experiences there was a sense of brotherhood, our friendship felt more like family.

We arrived to ‘Holi’ time happy and thrilled with no preparation for the possibility that our wave was going to crash.

Because of Covid-19 the party that is usually held in the market on ‘Holi’ was canceled. I decided to go for a walk in the market in the morning before it got too busy. Pushkar during ‘Holi’ is a mess, a lot of tourists from all over the world and from all over India concentrate in Pushkar. Let’s just say this is not a good time to hang out alone as a female so I went with friends.

The truth is that at first it was really fun, we threw chalk paint, colors were thrown at us, we went to one of the rooftops in the market to see everything from above and when we had had enough we headed back towards our hostel. On the way there 5 Indians ambushed me with so much paint that I could barely breathe and I decided not to go out for another walk that day.

Many hostels didn’t allow a party in there place, because they were afraid of the authorities, but the owner of our hostel agreed to open a party in the yard. The party had a really fun vibe and it was a really lovely view from my room’s window. The people were all colorful and threw ‘Holly’ paint all over the place. We had good music and were surrounded by friends and everything took place in my hostel so I was very pleased.

I knew that a few days after ‘Holi’, I needed to leave India in order to renew my visa. So I booked a ride to Jaipur with friends two days after ‘Holi’ and a flight from Jaipur to Nepal a few days later. Because there was already serious talk about Covid-19 in Nepal I decided to visit for 24 hours only and then return to India. A few hours after I booked the plane ticket, the President of India came out with the announcement that the borders of India were closing on the day of my flight, meaning that the next day I would no longer be able to return to India.

The truth is I had no idea what I was going to do.

I remembered that life is like a puzzle and that if I panicked while thinking what to do, it would not contribute anything so I spent the evening completely ignoring the situation. The following day when my friends needed my answer about our trip to Jaipur I started to get confused. I ran through all the options that would allow me to stay in India in my head. I decided to cancel the trip and flight and spend all my time extending my electronic visa from inside of India.

There was no precedent for this, before Covid-19 there wasn’t a possibility to extend an electronic visa without leaving India and the news was so fresh that no one had any answers. The vibes in Pushkar had changed, I stopped asking people with bags where they were going, because the sweeping answer was that they were returning to Israel. There was a sense of escape, there was no one who had not received worried calls from home with demands or requests to come home. I received them too but there was no way to convince me to give up the North, I just refused to accept it. I did everything in my power to extend my visa and travel north.