Pushkar, 20 juli
Here I am, chilling and relaxing in a wonderful restaurant called 'a blue star', owned by an Israeli girl who ran into her husband on her first india trip and never got away again. Reeeeally. It was obvious there was something different about this place, there's loungy fusion music playing and the setup looks lush rather than scruffy as most average inexpensive Indian places do.
I'm gonna do this one in reverse because i have no idea where I left off: I did some attempts in cyber cafés to continue the story but I never actually got to post anything. Now I am unable to go online so I can't check what I wrote last... anyway.

Today I had the most wonderful experience at the lake of Pushkar. Around the lake are steps (ghat) where people sit and pray or go into the water to bathe and get the 'pooja'. The pooja is the blessing from the god that is worshipped in the particular temple or 'ghat' (stairs), in this case Brahma. Outside of the temple I received a string of dark pink roses and some roses for the offering (check the pics once i got to post them, you can see the woman who gave me the flowers) and once I went in a Brahman took me under his wings and took me through the pooja ritual. There were hundreds of pigeons flying over the water and the ghat, the breeze was wonderfully soothing and this general atmosphere of prayer altogether completely overwhelmed me. At some point repeating the impossibly long and strange sounding mantra's the brahman was saying, I just started crying. Yes my dear Prashant, India gets me even more emotional than I usually am. There was no stopping to it, I was reminded of the people back home, especially of the one person I so dearly love but left behind with the clear intention of moving on with my life, and the tears just poured out. Pawan, the brahman, asked if anyone died. Well, not exactly, but it probably hurts as much. Sitting near the holy water, I could almost feel the arms of Brahma holding me, reassuring me everything was gonna be ok. Once again, come and experience it, there is nothing like it. I threw the flowers into the water, held the sacred coconut, threw some stuff that Pawan put onto the coconut behind me and I felt a lot better:)

I'll spare you guys the rest: it's pretty much all bazaars and sweet people, beautiful colours and characters, the pics pretty much speak for themselves. Maybe worth mentioning anyway is my travel companion Eduardo, the Spanish guy I got hooked up with by Shaffi, the tour operator in Delhi who sold me this Rajastan tour. Eduardo is a twenty two year old economy student from Jerez de la Fronteira, who is experiencing India for the first time too. He's very unlike me, gets angry when people are 'dishonest' (basically trying to get the most money out of a transaction) and has no clue whatsoever what I am talking about half of the time. But none the less we have some good laughs and get along pretty well. Shaffi's romantic idea of this young puppy (who might even still be a virgin, he claims he never had a girlfriend) and me getting together is pretty absurd. Everything might be possible in India but there's limits to miracles :)
So speaking of romance; you guys are probably wondering whatever happened with that attractive young director I met in Delhi, Rudradeep. Well, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed ;). He picked me up at New Delhi station when I got back from Jaipur. It was around eleven and since he is staying at a family's house and doesn't have his own key, he couldn't stay. So we basically said hi, I got in a riksha and we said bye again. Bummer. I had to get a hold of Shaffi to find out in which hotel I was staying (hooray for Shaffi's clear organising), but the office was already closed (ofcourse, at eleven in the evening, na-uh) and guess what, I didn't find his card. Finally after emptying by bag i found back the voucher and the envelope had his nrs on it. But my Belgian phone wouldn't connect! I got desperate, even tried calling Rudra to ask if i could stay over but my phone wouldn't connect either, so that didn't help. In the end i just asked a random stranger if i could use his phone and finally got Shaffi, who told me where i was staying. After getting to the wrong hotel, more phonecalls, angry hotel managers and electricity beakdowns I finally got a room and I slept well for the first time. After leaving Rudra a message telling him to meet me the next day at the bar where we met. To make a long story short: he didn't show up, i left the bar, went back to the hotel for a nap and got a wake up call ten mins before I was leaving to Pushkar. And guess who was sitting there in the lobby waiting for me: Rudra. Just in time to say goodbye. That's pretty much all we do, saying goodbye. So far for Rudra: he has my number and doesn't really seem eager to stay in touch anyway so whatever. Another shady cat with very unclear intentions, I might aswell be glad it just didn't work out. There! Rudra, if you are reading this: you seem like the kind of guy I could totally hang out with, but how on earth do you want me to trust a flake like yourself? I'm a sweet and patient girl but hey, seriously. Not liking how it went down.