Pushkar

Legend says Brahma, the creator, was searching for the right patch of earth on which to perform a fire sacrifice. He let a lotus fall from his hand, and where the flower touched down a lake welled up — pushp for flower, kar for hand, giving the town its name Pushkar, or so the story goes. When his consort Savitri failed to arrive in time, Brahma completed the ritual beside Gayatri, a local cowherd girl he married on the spot. Savitri arrived furious and cursed him: nowhere on earth but here would Brahma be worshipped. Which is why, it is said, his one great temple stands in Pushkar.

The lake is Pushkar's whole reason for being, said to have formed where Brahma's lotus fell to earth. Fifty-two ghats step down to the water, each with its own customs and its own crowd; Gau Ghat and Varah Ghat are among the best known. On the morning of Kartik Purnima thousands of pilgrims wade in, in the belief that the bath washes away a lifetime of sins and opens the way to liberation. Village lore also credits the water with curing stubborn skin complaints. At dusk, with lamps lit and bells going, the whole basin is worth lingering over.

This shrine crowns Ratnagiri hill, high above the town. It honours Savitri, Brahma's consort: legend tells that, finding another woman seated in her place at his fire sacrifice, she pronounced the curse that confined his worship to Pushkar alone. The story goes that she then turned her back on the settlement below, climbed to this ridge and lost herself in penance. Many pilgrims still make the ascent on foot, up a long flight of steps. Come at sunrise or sunset: from the summit the town, the sacred lake and the dunes beyond lie spread out in a single sweeping view.

One of the shrines long counted among Pushkar's oldest, this temple belongs to Varaha, the boar form of Vishnu. The old texts tell of the demon Hiranyaksha, who carried the earth away and hid it in the depths of the ocean; Vishnu took the shape of a great boar, killed him, and lifted the earth back to the surface on his tusks. A temple is said to have stood here since the twelfth century. It was Jahangir who had the boar image broken and much of the shrine pulled down, and it was raised again afterwards on the same spot — most accounts credit Maharaja Bakht Singh of Marwar.