pushkar

I could have made so many more friends out here if only I knew the slightest of things about the game of cricket and how it is played. But the truth is I don't even know the basic rules, or the names of any cricketers except for Ian Botham and Geoff Boycott. There's no point in trying to pretend either, my lack of knowledge is immediately transparent, and saying: 'I'm sure going to a match makes a lovely day out,' wins me few favours. It was the same with football in South East Asia (my knowledge of football extends to knowing who David Beckham is) where everyone wanted to talk to me about the Premiership, West Ham, or Arsene Wenger.

I'm writing from Pushkar, which may be my favourite place in India yet. The small town, which has a population of 15 000 people, sits surrounded by tall sheltering brown hills under a misty blue sky. There is a holy lake in the centre around which the houses and community are built. The lake is said to have appeared after Brahma, while he was in the area, dropped a lotus flower to the ground. Pushkar is highly populated with tourists, and I find here the highest concentration of European/American faces I've seen since I arrived in India. I think I like it here because the setting is beautiful, it's less in your face than Jaipur, Agra, or Delhi, and it's very easy and easy going. Pushkar, like Agra, also seems to be a place of regular power cuts. I've checked in at the Hotel Kanhaia near Mali Mandir. It's my favourite hotel to date (Pushkar is doing well!). The family who run it are lovely, the rooms are well decorated and well kept, and yet it is still very very cheap. If you come to Pushkar I'd very much recommend staying here. I've just had breakfast on the roof of the hotel. As I ate I watched the monkeys roaming and jumping from roof top to roof top around me. That reminds me: one evening while I was in Agra I was unlocking my hotel room door and saw a shadow appear to my left. I assumed it was the person from the next room waiting to pass, but when I looked properly saw that a monkey was sat may be five feet from me watching me unlock the door.

I enjoyed the journey across here from Jaipur which was made on a clackety old bus. It only took us three hours (I thought it would be five) and involved lots of unorthodox manoeuvring and overtaking along the busy and dusty roads as we went. It was incredibly hot in the bus, but all the windows were open which helped a little. There were several other tourists on board and it amused me that they made a fuss about sitting in their allotted seat numbers even though there were only about 10 other passengers on what was a 50 seater.

I meant to note down before, but forgot, that I've seen several snake charmers over the last week or so. In fact, I got quite a shock at the City Palace in Jaipur when a guy whipped open a basket in front of me and a cobra jumped up and out of it. I'd be interested to know if these snakes have been de-venomised - if not surely snake charming is extremely dangerous? I also meant to note that I've been reading Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene. It's a brilliant book, a bit of a farce and a good page turner. At one point the main character, Mr Wormold, is asked by the British Secret Service for details of a suspected atomic generator hidden in the forests of Cuba, and having no such information sends them a hand written blue print of his vacuum cleaner instead, which is duly accepted and categorised as being of grave concern. Our Man is book number one of the trip (I've got five in my bag altogether).

India has eighteen official languages: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Learning the language is therefore a rather daunting prospect, but nevertheless I am trying to get at least a few words under my belt. My Hindi makes slow progress. So far I've got: 'namaste' (hello), 'shukriyaa' (thank you), 'aap kaise' (how are you?), 'chai' (tea), and 'dhobi' (washerman/washerwoman). I am now fully equipped to courteously meet and greet a washerwoman, and offer her a cup of tea.