Writing from Kolkata, where I arrived on December 27... Sharing my last story about Pushkar, summarizing a month I spent in this unusual town in November-December 2025...

3$-a-Day Guesthouse

Home sweet home, a month in this old-school budget place, Monalisa Guesthouse. Just 3$ a night for a room with a shared bathroom. Since there are very few travelers in India in 2025, I often had the whole 2nd floor (in the image) myself for this 3$...

There are a series of buts, however.

For example, by saying "a shared bathroom", I mean a tragedy 😁 of this nature:

But it is fully compensated by the rooftop, where you can meet diverse fauna:

Gray langurs (in the image) visit the rooftop and can generate a lot of noise by jumping on the metal shed there. Macaques are even worse - sometimes, they entered the guesthouse and walked down to my 2nd floor, so I had to make them go - happily, macaques know that "caves" belong to ugly apes (aka humans) and leave after the first warning. But... I mean, monkeys didn't trouble at all. I loved having them near me (but not with me) - I enjoyed the experience.

As for rooms, nothing special was in them - an old double bed with an old blanket and pillows, an old large fan on the ceiling, bumpy walls covered with sort of lime, old sockets, niches in the wall as shelves (convenient!)... It was good, actually.

Touristy but Still Authentic

Pushkar is touristy but for some reason it feels significantly authentic when you take several steps from the Main Street. It might be because Western travelers visiting such places as Pushkar are the mildest form of tourists, value true things and often try to save authenticity.

Secondly, Pushkar has been a travel destination for centuries, as it is a holy town that has been visited by Hindu pilgrims since ancient times - thus, Pushkar’s authenticity was shaped by long-standing local religious tourism and is relatively immune to the destructive effects of modern international tourism.

The beauty of India and its downsides are all present in Pushkar, in typical proportions, but with cleaner streets, calmer inhabitants, and quieter traffic around the lake.

Look at this zebu - he is saying "I won't allow travelers to make Pushkar fake! I'll work hard to open garbage bags and scatter their content as wide as possible". 😁

This lady, probably, a visitor of Pushksar herself, quite spontaneously asked me to photograph her kid, and ended up posing together with the kid. Such short, gentle interactions can make the day. The kid was puzzled by the situation, but the lady was charming.

Why she asked?

She probably didn't know the answer. Why do people say hello to each other? For no reason, actually. Just to interact nicely.

Another sweet interaction:

A guy suggested to pose for me. Later, he came with his friends and was taking images with me and, then, asked if I didn't mind being videographed on their phone, and I didn't mind. It was actually fun to be part of this random, senseless 😁 interview for someone's TikTok or stuff.

Food

Pushkar was yummy. Can't help mentioning

• an amazing paneer dosa set at Madras Restaurant. I often had it together with idly set, and needed 140 rupees (1.6$) to get full. My snap:

It doesn't look as gods' food but believe me it was.

Another option, a thali at a Punjabi restaurant, my snap:

The only problem was eating beans all the time - Pushkar is a holy town without meat and eggs as food options... (you believe so until you find good omelette in Funky Monkey).

Locally fried peanuts (0.25$) and bananas (0.5$ for 1kg) were my usual snacks when I needed a quick bite.

Falafels in Shiva Falafel were another food highlight.

Yes, this place. Can't say those falafels were heavenly, just very good and nutritionally balanced.

150 rupees (1.7$) for a falafel #1, "spicy please, takeaway", several times a week.

It might look strange to find falafels in Indian town Pushkar, but there is an explanation: many travelers from Israel visit Pushkar. Jews even have a prayer space and classes in Pushkar - Chabad House Puskar.

It started not today, Hebrew was a language of Pushkar tourism industry for a while, look at this faded inscription in the lanes:

And this:

A wonderful town where I stayed for a month. I would move earlier to the South, to warmer places, but the need of visarun held me in the North. On December 22, at last, I took a bus from nearby Ajmer to Varanasi to continue a trip to Nepal on a train to Gorakhpur and then again a bus to Sonauli... But that's another story for another post.

The list of my posts about Pushkar and Ajmer (40 min by bus):

• Cats, Langurs, Mynas, and Dogs 🇮🇳 More Impressions from Wonderful Pushkar, Rajasthan
• Parrots, Camels, Monkeys, Francolins. Hiking in Pushkar, India
• Birds of the Sacred Lake 🇮🇳 Birdwatching in Pushkar
• Pushkar 🇮🇳 A Holy City by the Lake
• Exploring Ajmer City 🇮🇳 Ruins of Medieval Indo-Islamic Mosque and Old Bazar
• Golden City at Jain Temple in Ajmer 🇮🇳 What is Jainism in 100 Words

The photos were taken mostly with a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D in November/December 2025, in Pushkar, Rajasthan, India.