The Mythical Camel Fair of Pushkar (Rajasthan, India)

Thirteen nights through Rajasthan, guided, on a Royal Enfield, built around the Pushkar Camel Fair.

The fair is one of the largest livestock gatherings in the world and the reason the dates are set: thousands of camels and cattle brought in for trading, with parades, auctions, camel beauty judging, a longest moustache competition and the maha aarti on the lake in the evening.

Mandawa opens it among the painted havelis, with Ramgarh and the hamlet of Mahensar nearby, where lunch is taken at the fort. Bikaner follows, with Junagarh, founded in 1488, and a night at the Gajner Palace beside an artificial lake. Villages working in miniature painting and stone polishing come next, then Deogarh Mahal, a seventeenth-century fort hotel looking into the Aravallis, and Nimaj Palace, three hundred years old with migratory birds on the lake below it and home cooking. Pushkar closes the route, a pilgrim town around a sacred lake, with a full day at the fair.

The bike hire is included; the full inclusions were not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth confirming at booking. The fair falls in November, on the lunar calendar, which also puts the trip in the best of the Rajasthani riding weather. Fourteen days is the shortest and cheapest of the operator’s Rajasthani tours, and the fair day is worth the whole trip for anyone who likes a spectacle. The riding is flat and sealed throughout, and the heritage hotels at Gajner, Deogarh and Nimaj are a large part of what the price buys: three palaces and a fort in a fortnight.