Each of the seven posts in this series includes a song at the beginning. These songs have their roots in the culture of Rajasthan and are intended to instill in you the same feeling I experienced during this trip. Tip: Use picture-in-picture mode to let the video play in the background while you read the post.
Around two and a half hours from Jaipur lie the twin towns of Ajmer and Pushkar. One houses a sacred religious temple for Hindus, and the other is a revered holy shrine for Muslims.
After spending a not-so-good evening in Jaipur on my first day of the solo trip to Rajasthan, I hopped on a Janshatabdi train the next morning and reached Ajmer.
I first headed towards my hotel located near the bus stand. I hadn’t been able to find a hostel in Ajmer. Only later did I realize that there is a Zostel in Pushkar – and a rather good one.
An Uber from the hotel dropped me off just in front of Diggi Bazaar. I guess cabs are not allowed to go any further. There were shops selling flowers, incense sticks, chaadar, dhaaga (a thin cotton-string wore on the hand), etc.—all the typical items you might find at religious places in India.
I only purchased a simple bouquet of flowers and kept my bag and shoes securely in the shop. The shopkeeper advised me to leave all my belongings behind, as there seemed to be a lot of pickpocketing in Ajmer.
I wrapped a handkerchief around my head and went inside the Dargah. The surroundings inside were quite peaceful. Photography was not allowed, and yet some people kept sneaking out their mobile cameras.
I reached the main shrine just in time as it was about to get closed in the afternoon.
After paying my respects, I sat for a while in the quietness of the large courtyard around the tomb. Men, women, and children prayed with equal devotion. Some had dismayed faces that spoke a hundred words about their sorrows and troubles. I saw several people tying knots on a wall and urging the almighty to shower his blessings.
At that moment, I had a flashback to the time I’d been to Mathura-Vrindavan on a road trip from Delhi. My experience here was more or less similar to what I had experienced at any other temple in India.
I wished for people’s prayers to be heard, took my stuff back from the shop, and headed towards the bus stand to depart for Pushkar.
A stroke of destiny
Now, I could’ve taken an auto-rickshaw to go to Pushkar. But at that very moment, my gut decided to turn frugal and take the local bus.
I went to the depot and waited for the bus to arrive. Twenty minutes later, an old Tata vehicle loaded with people showed up.
While the passengers disembarked one by one, a horde surrounded the gate to get up quickly and claim the best seats. I was obviously one of them.
After a few in front of me had gotten inside, I stepped on the staircase to get onto the bus. That’s when it felt like someone had just ripped out a part of my limb or soul from my body.
I’d been pickpocketed.
At first, shock took over me and I couldn’t understand anything. By the time I tried to spin around and spot the person behind, it was too late.
All those convincing answers that I had prepared to fool my brain before leaving on this trip had fallen apart – just like that.
I stretched out an arm to block the people behind me from getting in, but they just pushed harder to barge through. I held 2-3 people who’d stepped onto the bus after me and inquired them about my wallet.
A lady opened her purse to show that she didn’t have it. A guy raised his hands and asked me to frisk him. Sweat broke on my forehead as quickly as water condenses outside a chilled bottle of coca-cola on a peak summer day.
Inside my head was a guy shouting left, right, and center that his wallet had been stolen. But hysteria had sucked my mouth so dry that in reality, no words actually came out of it.
A shot in the dark
When I finally mustered the courage to shout, no one paid any attention. Absolutely no one. People were busy finding seats, laughing and chatting with each other, or just trying to ignore me.
More than 70 people must have boarded the bus at that point, and finding a stolen wallet in there seemed like a task more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack (unless you had a haystack trying hard to hide the needle).
Just the second day of this solo trip, and all my money, credit cards, and ID proofs had vanished into thin air—poof!
I took a minute to regain my natural state of mind. I figured that with a calmer head it may be possible to find a solution. It was strange because I was neither feeling scared, nor dejected. All I felt at that moment was anger and revenge. I couldn’t let a thief ruin my trip like this!
I went to the person sitting in the driver’s seat and told him about the situation. I told him that he and I together will be searching every passenger in the bus. He started laughing at me.
He clearly was not on the same page as me. So I had to walk up to him, look him in the eyes, and make a promise that unless we searched every passenger on that bus for my wallet, the only place that good old bus would go that day was Ajmer police station. His smile disappeared after that.
To be honest, I had no idea if the thief was actually in the bus. A smart one wouldn’t be. But I had to take my chances. A couple of minutes passed as the argument escalated.
Then, something happened. A girl came forward to support me. She volunteered to frisk the female passengers. Probably after seeing that the bus was going nowhere until this query resolved, a couple more passengers spoke in unison. The driver had to submit and he agreed to check the passengers one by one.
A Dargah Sharif's Blessing
When I was a kid, my father used to tell me bedtime stories. “Where there is a will, there is a way,” he would say.
By the time I became an adult, I started thinking of it as a cliché. But that day, my perspective changed.
Two Rajasthani women sat in the first row with their faces covered. As soon as the driver asked them to stand up and show their belongings, someone blurted, “Is that your wallet?”
I first turned right, then left, then knelt down, and looked under the seat. There it was!
(Only later did a guy reveal that those women had thrown the wallet under the seat as soon as the driver had agreed to frisk the passengers).
Everything was intact. They didn’t even get a chance to enjoy the reward. While everyone else took a sigh of relief, I was feeling ecstatic!
This one incident changed everything. My apprehensions had disappeared. The worst had happened – and I had survived.
The next 45 minutes of the journey went with the driver boasting and preaching stories of how many crimes he had prevented on that bus. He even asked for 100 bucks as a prize. I didn’t argue.
Because my focus was on something else.
I realized that I’d been escaping my fears for a while now, in both my personal and professional life. But with this episode, I was forced to challenge my fear head-on and conquer them. When the anger subsided, I could feel my heart brimming with renewed confidence.
If there was one thing I now knew for sure, it was that from here on, I was ready to face any challenge in life, and my trip was only going to get better each day.
I went to Pushkar on that bus sitting at the front, opposite to the driver, right behind the windshield. My heartbeat was normal. I wasn’t anxious.
In fact, I felt victorious.
*****
This story is part of my solo trip series—Backpacking Rajasthan.
Check out the entire series here.
