Camel taxi - the only way to travel

I had a great time at the camel festival in Pushkar. Not only were we in the midst of thousands of camels and camel traders we had our own personal taxi complete with a camel, a covered cart and camel driver. Dinesh, our camel driver was 24 years old, he had been married four years, had a two year old son and was totally illiterate. We knew he couldn’t read English but we were surprised when he couldn’t read the Hindi menu board posted on the wall of his favorite chai stand. When asked what it said he pointed to the board and read the numbers. We unknowingly laughed and said we too could read the numbers, but what does it say? His look and casual shrug made it clear he couldn’t read Hindi any better than we could.

Even though Dinesh has never had any formal schooling, in the small village of Pushkar he is a rich man. He lives in his own house, drives his own camel taxi and speaks English just well enough to get his point across, most of the time. Dinesh learned his broken English from tourist, just like us, who pass through Pushkar. “Me talk you Mama” was how he started the conversation every morning and for hours as we rode in his camel cart we helped him with his English and he taught us Hindi. I am proud to say I can now count from 1 to 5 and say ‘I don’t want any, please leave me alone, good food, and I would like one bottle of water please.’ Not enough to have an in depth conversation but enough to open the door to a conversation in broken English.

Dinesh was not only our camel driver but also our tour guide. He showed us around several of the 400 temples in the small village of Pushkar, took us to watched people bathe (fully clothed) at the ghats of the holy lake, helped Patti buy shoes at the market and answered all our questions about the food and festivities of the fair. So far eating in India has been based on a combination of guess work (is it safe or not), faith and do we have a good bathroom that night. Most of the time we don’t know what we are eating or if we’ll be expelling it in an unpleasant manner later that night. Since Dinesh was there to encourage us to try what the street vender was selling “Mama, try sweet, good” we ate many foods that we never would have tried.

The camel festival was has been the highlight of the trip so far but the real joy was the time we spent with Dinesh and the friendship that developed. We left Pushkar weeks ago and Dinesh still calls every couple of days. He starts with the conversation with “Hey Mama, me talk you” and friendship continues.