After a couple of days, Dalma was feeling much better, so we took off early in the general direction of Pushkar. I’d visited Pushkar long ago and in another life, but hadn’t seen much of the place as I was looking after a two-year-old at the time. I was keen to see it again.

Pushkar is just outside the much larger city of Ajmer. Ajmer is large, busy, and ugly. Pushkar, by contrast, is smaller and more hippy. There’s a holy lake and a hundred temples. There’s also an industry that caters to foreigners seeking a spiritual experience—of which I am not one—but it’s hard to avoid being sucked in.

But right now, all this was in our future. We set off later than we expected, and quickly fell foul of Google Maps’ propensity to take us the quickest way, not the best or easiest way. Between my beeline and Dalma’s phone—both working off the same Google Maps and constantly arguing—we ended up heading…well…not quite in the wrong direction, but certainly not quite in the right one. An oblique direction, perhaps. We wound up at Mukundgarh, a small town a few dozens of kilometres outside Mandawa trying to work out the way forward. However, we did see our first camel, which gave us a thrill in a low-key fashion.

A camel on the road to Pushkar.

We got back on the road and chewed up the kilometres. It was destined to be a long day of 244 km and 5 hours of riding. Riding in India isn’t like riding in Australia. You can’t go as fast, with cows, sheep, camels, and occasional small children as obstacles. You’re never quite sure if that road is going to suddenly turn to sand, or there’ll be one of India’s famous (and annoying) speed humps. Every so often there’s an exuberance of five or so in a row. So five hours of travel is quite a lot.

Dalma looking extremely competent.

Today, for the most part, we were lucky. The roads stayed pretty good—occasionally excellent. We kept going. About 30 kilometres outside Pushkar, we missed a turn, and Google rerouted us along some broken concrete and sand roads. Dalma’s bike had been making a sound from the back (which I was sure was just an old chain) but it was disconcerting to her. But mine now started stopping whenever I idled. This isn’t a great feature in the stop-go traffic of India. When, for example, I slowed to go over a speed hump, or for sand, Billie2 spluttered to a halt. I had no doubt that we’d fix it, with the help of the rental company, but it was annoying coming into Pushkar along these narrow and inconsistent roads.

The outskirts of Pushkar

Eventually, we spluttered our way to our hotel, a very nice place, quiet, and just outside the main centre. We had a couple of deserved bottles of Kingfisher, and settled in for the night. We texted the rental company and the kindly manager assured us they’d make everything right. Encouraged, had a quick walk, and went to bed.