Ajmer to Pushkar

After 20 hours on the train, we finally arrived at Ajmer station.

To get to Pushkar, you have to take either a taxi or a local bus. On leaving the station, we were immediately hounded by taxi drivers trying to get us to drive direct with them and rickshaw drivers asking for exorbitant amounts of money to take us to the bus station 2 km away.

It was quite frenetic, and I felt more eyes staring at us than I had in Mumbai. Our first port of call was to buy our ongoing train ticket to Delhi on the much fancier Shatabdi Express. One nice thing about travelling by train in India is that at all reservation offices there is a special line for foreigners, senior citizens, disabled persons etc. This means that you can skip most of the long queues and is definitely one perk to being foreign. Also, in order to make travel easier for foreigners, the train companies reserve a certain percentage of tickets for tourists, meaning that you can generally book your ticket on the day or the day before for even the most popular train routes.

The tickets bought (about Rs 600 for one adult, Rs 300 with senior citizen discount of 50%), we headed outside into the thick of the taxi drivers.

Disorientated by the yelling from all directions, it’s easy to be rushed into choosing a taxi to escape the madness as soon as possible. But its far cheaper and takes just as much time to take a rickshaw to the bus stand and catch the local bus to Pushkar ( The taxi was overpriced, Rs  50 for 2km, but the bus is only Rs10 per person and leaves every 10 minutes). Once on the bus, it’s a leisurely ride through Ajmer, where you drive past a beautiful lake and crawl up over a winding mountain road to the town of Pushkar itself.

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