India 2006, Pushkar Camel Festival:
The travel experiences I have held so many moments of untold beauty, such that moved me to tears because of the privilege of witnessing landscapes so vast, so magical, so mystical. From the Sahara desert, to the majesty of the north of Argentina, the Amazon, the Andes, the semi-lost temples in the jungles of Cambodia, the silent wisdom of the mountains of the Dolomites, the alluring danger of the Colombian mountains and the wide flowing embracing rivers of Peru. India, Turkey, Bolivia, Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Ghana. Each deserve a story of the most memorable, because in each moment I could have hugged myself with joy just with the mere fact that I was there. This never leaves me. But if I have to choose one, and only one moment, so simple and exquisite, it would be a moment in India. I was in Pushkar, India, specifically because I had wanted to go to the Camel Festival as I had read that all the nomadic tribes from the north of India would come down for the festival. When I was a child I had developed the romantic idea that I was secretly a gypsy as I had a fascination for bangles, coloured clothing and an undeniable tendancy for wandering. I had read that gypsies originated from the north of India and moved through the middle east, eastern europe and the north west of africa, influencing and being influenced by all these cultures along the way. And I found it beautiful. And so I wanted to go to the origin and to understand where it all began. During the camel festival, which has over 100,000 international and local visitors, I found myself moving very slowly down a dusty street with some of those thousands. You couldn't move and everyone from all over the world was wandering in and amongst each other. Turbans beside Nike t-shirts, North Face backpacks beside cloth shoulder bags, Saris beside waterproof hiking shorts. I felt a warm arm slip itself under my arm, and link with me as we were walking along. I looked beside me and there was the most beautiful Rajasthani woman whose sari happened to be exactly the same colour as my long orange skirt. I felt it perfectly natural that she might do this for some reason and so I just smiled and we continued to walk. Then she called my attention to the reason why she had joined with me, around her were about 15-20 other women of various ages, all with the same colour skirt as her, and she was letting me know that I could be one of the tribe given my matching skirt. She called to the tall dark man leading the group with his all-white robes and big wooden walking stick, said something in her language and he looked back, sized me up and looked mildly amused. All the women had a good laugh. It was funny, beautiful, so simple and lasted about 10 minutes. But I will never forget it, this moment of sharing a joke and warmth with someone so far away from my Australian culture, so naturally, so easily and so spontaneously. And a little magical given I had imagined myself, since being a child, as part of a gypsy tribe in another life. The crowd eventually moved us apart, and on we went down the road. Yes, it is definitely my most memorable travel experience. Even if I have been bogged in the Sahara for two days, digging ourselves out with two shovels and aluminium cups, even if I have been racing for my life away from landslides in Peru, or taken off a bus in Colombia by men with guns. It is that one which was so special.
