Night Bus to Pushkar

We were both a bit nervous about the evening bus to Pushkar; traveling by bus during the day is dangerous enough and we can only believe that it’s more so at night. We decided not to change the ticket though, as this was the only bus stopping in Pushkar (all daytime buses stopped in Ajmer and we would have to find another bus to Pushkar) so we left Udaipur around 9:15pm.

The bus experience is interesting in India, first we hand an address written in Hindi to the rickshaw driver and hope he takes us to the correct spot. There isn’t a central bus station, just various spots on streets where the buses stop. The rickshaw driver stopped at a storefront and we handed our tickets to a travel agent who ripped off a piece and told us to sit and wait. A man came about 30 minutes later and said to follow him. We followed him down two streets to the bus waiting and then he asked us why we were there, we had to go down a different street to catch our bus. We proceeded to find our bus the next street down after asking several people along the way.

The bus ride was fairly uneventful aside from coming close to colliding with another bus on the way out of Udaipur. It was a bit hard to fall asleep as the whole bus seemed to shake and rattle on every bump in the road. We both closed our eyes and slept for the first few hours.We made one stop that I remember for some Chai at a small town. We sat and talked to a camel driver from Pushkar who was on his way home. He was very nice, sharing his chai tea and sweets with us. The stop was longer than usual and various men from the bus were working under the chassis, altogether the stop took about an hour. We just prayed it would make it all the way.

We arrived at about 5:30am and awoke to the driver telling us to get off the bus. We thought we were in Pushkar but after looking around noticed all of the signs said Ajmer. We found the bus driver and told him we were promised the bus would take us all the way to Pushkar and this was Ajmer. He took us to a car and told us to get in; this man would take us the rest of the way to Pushkar. The man seemed nice enough and had his son with him but there is something eery about trusting strangers when you are in a strange place and unsure of where you are going. In any event, he took us the rest of the way to Pushkar (about 20 kilometers away). We were almost stopped at a road block on the way but the he veered off the road as guards were waving for us to stop. He explained that they wanted him to pay taxes for bringing tourists in and he wasn’t about to do it. He didn’t ask us to pay for the ride but said “if you feel like paying me 10, or 100 rupees…” so we gave him 20 rupees for the experience.