Why Pushkar eats the way it does
A tirth: Pushkar is a sacred place of pilgrimage, and in such places Hindu custom asks for purity in food as well as in conduct.
Centuries of practice: pilgrims have always eaten simply here, in rest houses, temple kitchens and sweet shops, and the cooks have had centuries to make vegetarian food delicious.
Nothing else on the menu: restaurants do not bother with a vegetarian symbol, because there is nothing else.
- Meat and fish
- Not sold or served
- Eggs
- None, anywhere in town
- Alcohol
- Not permitted
- Menus
- No veg symbol needed
- For kebabs
- Ajmer, over the hill
- The day's pattern: breakfast is fried and sweet. Lunch is dal, vegetables and bread.
- Sweets for the gods first: made with milk, ghee and sugar, they are offered to the gods before they are sold to you.
- Fasting food: many families fast on certain days, so you will also see food made without grains or without onion and garlic.
- Respect the rules: bring no meat, eggs or alcohol into the town, even to your room in an old town guest house.
- If wine matters: some resorts outside the town limits have their own arrangements within the law, and we will check for you. Our note on dry days and alcohol explains the wider rules.
- Over the hill: Ajmer has a famous meat cuisine, so plan any kebabs for there.
Breakfast in the lanes
- When
- About nine, after the dawn rituals
- Signature
- Malpua with rabri
- Where
- Halwai Gali, near Gau Ghat, and the main bazaar
- Savoury
- Kachori, poha
- To drink
- Ginger chai
Malpua, the town's sweet signature
An old sweet: malpua is one of India's oldest, and Pushkar has made it its own.
The batter: flour and milk, sometimes thickened with khoya, reduced milk, and flavoured with fennel or cardamom.
- The frying: poured into wide iron pans of hot ghee, fried until the edges are crisp and the centre soft, then dropped into sugar syrup.
- Pushkar style: thick and rich, and best eaten within minutes of leaving the pan.
- With rabri: a spoonful of milk simmered for hours until it thickens into sweet, creamy layers.
- Halwai Gali: many sweet shops cluster in a lane near Gau Ghat that locals call the street of the sweet-makers, and others line the main bazaar.
- Choose the busiest pan: where turnover is fast and the ghee is hot.
Kachori, crisp and spiced
What it is: a round, flaky pastry, deep-fried and stuffed with a spiced filling, often of lentils.
- How it is eaten: Rajasthan's great breakfast, with tangy tamarind chutney or a ladle of potato curry.
- In Ajmer: over the hill it is drowned in yoghurt curry to make kadhi kachori.
- Portion advice: one is enough before a long morning. Two is a commitment.
Poha and jalebi
Poha: flattened rice cooked with mustard seeds, turmeric, peanuts and curry leaves, topped with crunchy sev and a squeeze of lime.
- Gentle: light, fragrant and easy on the stomach.
- Jalebi: spirals of batter fried and soaked in syrup, still hot and dripping, for the classic sweet and savoury pairing of a north Indian morning.
Chai, everywhere
- How it is made: boiled with milk, sugar and ginger, sometimes cardamom, and served in small glasses or clay cups.
- Best moment: on winter mornings, with mist still on the lake, a glass on the ghats is one of the great small pleasures of Rajasthan.
The Rajasthani table
Dal baati churma
Rajasthan's most famous meal: baati are hard wheat rolls baked in embers or a clay oven, cracked open and soaked in ghee.
- The partners: dal, a mix of lentils, and churma, baati crumbled with ghee and sugar or jaggery into a sweet, sandy crumble.
- When: heavy and wonderful, best in the cool months.
- Our recipe: the dal baati churma recipe explains how our family makes it.
Ker sangri
From the desert itself: ker, a small, sour wild berry, and sangri, the dried bean pods of the khejri tree, cooked with spices, oil and dried red chillies.
- A survival dish: it keeps for months and once fed whole villages through the dry season.
- Read more: our journal explains ker sangri and the trees it comes from.
Gatte and kadhi
Gatte: dumplings of gram flour, boiled and then simmered in a spiced yoghurt gravy.
- Kadhi: a tangy curry of yoghurt and gram flour, sometimes with fritters floating in it.
- Why they exist: both were invented to make a meal without fresh vegetables, and both are comfort food to every Rajasthani.
Bajra roti with ghee and jaggery
Winter bread: made from bajra, pearl millet, thick and nutty.
- How: eaten hot with white butter or ghee and a piece of jaggery, a warming, filling farmer's meal.
- Ask for it: from your hotel kitchen in December or January.
The thali
The platter: small bowls of dal, two or three vegetables, kadhi, raita, pickle, papad, rice, bread and a sweet.
- Why order it: the best way to taste many dishes at once, and in Pushkar completely vegetarian.
- How to eat: with your right hand, tearing the bread to scoop. Our Rajasthani thali guide explains each bowl.
Sweets, the real pilgrimage
- Signature
- Malpua with rabri
- Local speciality
- Gulkand, from Pushkar's roses
- Monsoon only
- Ghevar, around Teej
- Winter
- Moong dal halwa, hot saffron milk
- Buy in Ajmer
- Sohan halwa
Rabri and malpua
- The perfect pair: thick rabri, cooked for hours in wide pans until the milk forms soft layers, with hot malpua.
- In the evening: some shops serve rabri alone, chilled, in a clay cup.
Gulkand, the rose preserve
What it is: rose petals and sugar, left to mature in the sun.
- Grandmothers' remedy: given for cooling the body and calming the stomach in the hot months.
- How to eat it: on its own, in milk or in paan. Pushkar's rose fields make it a local speciality.
- Where to buy: a jar from a shop that makes its own.
Ghevar, only in Teej season
What it is: a disc of fried batter, lacy like a honeycomb, soaked in syrup and topped with cream or rabri.
- When: made in the monsoon around Teej, roughly July and August, and almost nowhere at other times.
- If you are here then: eat it. Our journal tells the story of ghevar and Teej.
Winter halwas and hot milk
Moong dal halwa: lentils slow-cooked in ghee and sugar until rich and golden.
- Hot milk: sold from great iron pans, flavoured with saffron and cardamom and topped with a layer of cream.
- When: the perfect end to a cold evening after the aarti.
Prasad, the sweets of the gods
What you are given: food blessed by the deity, such as small sugar crystals, puffed rice, cardamom sweets or a piece of coconut.
- How to take it: with your right hand, touch it to your forehead if you wish, and eat it.
- Never refuse: refusing prasad is considered impolite.
Sohan halwa from Ajmer
Ajmer's sweet: a dense, chewy slab of wheat, milk, ghee and sugar, studded with nuts.
- It travels: many pilgrims carry tins of it home from the dargah.
- Where to buy: in Ajmer, not Pushkar.
The rose of Pushkar
The fields: around Pushkar they have long been planted with fragrant roses, and the town is known across Rajasthan for what it makes from them.
Rose water: distilled from the petals and used in sweets and drinks, and as a cooling splash for tired eyes and skin.
- Grown
- Fields around the town
- Made into
- Rose water, syrup, gulkand
- Also goes to
- Temples and the Ajmer dargah
- To drink
- Rose sherbet, rose lassi
- Syrup and gulkand: petals are cooked with sugar into rose syrup, and layered with sugar to make gulkand.
- Petals for prayer: many roses go to the temples and to the dargah in Ajmer, where pilgrims lay baskets of petals on the saint's tomb.
- In the bazaar: look for rose sherbet, a pink syrup diluted with cold water or milk, and rose lassi.
- Buying rose water: choose shops that distil their own, and ask to smell it first. A good one smells of fresh petals, not perfume.
- Seeing it made: our guide can arrange a visit to a farming family in the flowering season. Our guide to things to do in Pushkar explains how.
What to drink in an alcohol-free town
Lassi in a clay cup
What it is: thick yoghurt churned with sugar, sometimes with saffron, cardamom, rose or a spoon of gulkand, topped with cream.
- The kulhad: served in an unglazed clay cup you throw away afterwards, which gives it a faint earthy taste.
- When: late morning, never late at night.
Chaach, the cooler
- What it is: thin, salted buttermilk with roasted cumin and sometimes mint.
- Why: in summer Rajasthanis drink it with every meal to keep cool and help digestion. The most refreshing thing you can drink in the heat.
Nimbu pani and sugarcane juice
Nimbu pani: fresh lime with water, sugar and salt.
- Sugarcane juice: sweet, and pressed in front of you.
- Ice: ask for none unless you are sure where the water came from.
A word on bhang
What it is: a paste of cannabis leaves, traditionally drunk in milk at Holi.
- In Pushkar: you may see it offered to travellers in lassi or cookies.
- Our advice: its effects are unpredictable and can last many hours, and we strongly advise against it.
Rooftop cafes and the travellers' menu
The signs: in the lanes near the ghats you will see falafel, hummus, wood-fired pizza, pasta and lemon-ginger-honey tea.
Israeli roots: many of these dishes arrived with Israeli travellers, who came in large numbers from the 1990s onwards, and the cafes still cater to them.
- All vegetarian: and many cafes do good coffee, rarer in small Rajasthani towns than you might expect.
- The real reason to go: the best cafes sit on rooftops above the ghats.
- A Pushkar afternoon: an hour with a pot of tea and something simple, watching the light change on the lake and the domes.
- Eating safely: choose busy places, prefer freshly cooked dishes and skip salads and anything raw.
- Read more: our page on rooftop dining covers eating with a view across Rajasthan.
Temple, pilgrim and community kitchens
Dharamshalas: rest houses around the lake, built by communities, merchant families and princely states for pilgrims from their own regions.
Bhojanalayas: many have simple dining halls serving plain, freshly cooked dal, vegetables, rice and roti to anyone who comes.
- Gentle food: often cooked without onion and garlic, and eaten on the floor or at long tables.
- Visiting one: your guide can take you at mealtime. Eat what you are given, finish your plate and thank the cooks.
- Bhog: temples prepare food offered to the deity, which is then shared as prasad.
- The dargah's cauldrons: in Ajmer, the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti cooks a sweet vegetarian rice and shares it with pilgrims of every faith. Our Ajmer Sharif Dargah guide tells that story.
- An old tradition: food as a gift, given without asking who you are, is one of the oldest traditions of this region.
Royal kitchens and village hearths nearby
Royal meat dishes: the great Rajput kitchens are known for game and meat, such as the fiery laal maas, mutton in red chilli.
Not here: you will not find them in Pushkar and should not look. Save them for Jaipur, Jodhpur or a palace hotel. Our journal explains the laal maas tradition.
- Royal vegetarian: rich gravies, nuts and saffron are often available at the resorts outside Pushkar if you ask in advance.
- A village meal: eating with a herding or farming family near Pushkar is a rare privilege.
- What you eat: bajra roti cooked on a clay stove, buttermilk from the family's own cow, a simple dal and a pickle from last year's mangoes, the true food of this land.
- How we arrange it: only with families we know, and always as guests. Our page on rural homestays explains our approach.
Eating at the camel fair
Herders' fires: they cook for themselves over small fires of wood and dung: thick bajra rotis, a pot of dal or a spiced vegetable, and endless glasses of sweet milky tea.
The stalls: around the fairground, vast pans of pakoras, jalebis and kachoris.
- For the pilgrims: sweet-sellers pile their trays high with laddoos and sugar sweets for those arriving for the full moon.
- The feel of it: noisy, smoky and wonderful to walk through.
- Tasting with a guide: we let guests taste their way around with a guide who knows which pans are freshest.
- Proper meals: we keep them for the camp or the hotel, because the crowds and dust make hygiene difficult.
- More on the fair: our page on the Pushkar Camel Fair explains how the days unfold.
Vegetarian, Jain and satvik food
No cross-contamination: everything is vegetarian, so there is no risk with meat or eggs.
Vegans: many dishes contain dairy, ghee and honey, so ask carefully and expect fewer choices, though dal, many vegetables and roti without ghee are easy to find.
- Vegetarian
- Everything in town
- Vegan
- Ask; dairy, ghee and honey are common
- Jain
- No onion, garlic or root vegetables
- Satvik
- No onion or garlic
- Phrase to use
- Bina pyaaz lehsun
- Jain food: it avoids onion, garlic and root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots, and many Jains do not eat after sunset.
- Satvik food: the pure food of Hindu tradition also avoids onion and garlic.
- Well used to both: Pushkar's kitchens cook this way every day, because so many pilgrims follow these rules.
- Tell us in advance: your hotel will cook for you.
- In the bazaar: ask for food bina pyaaz lehsun, without onion and garlic. Our food guide to Rajasthan has more.
Eating street food and staying well
The busiest stall: high turnover means fresh food and hot oil.
Cooked in front of you: malpua straight from the pan is safer than a sweet that has been sitting out.
- Pick
- The busiest stall
- Eat
- Hot, cooked in front of you
- Avoid
- Raw salads, cut fruit, standing chutneys
- Water
- Bottled or filtered only
- Skip the raw: salads, cut fruit and chutneys that have stood in the sun, especially in the hot months.
- Water: bottled or filtered only, and drinks without ice unless you are sure of the source.
- Lassi and rabri: safe from busy shops with fast turnover, but take them earlier in the day.
- Hands: carry sanitiser, and eat with your right hand.
- Go gently: with the ghee and sugar on your first day. Pushkar's food is rich.
- If your stomach rebels: rest, drink plenty of fluids and tell us. Our health and safety guide explains what we do.
Cooking with a local family
Cooks we know: several families and hotels in and around Pushkar offer cooking sessions, and we arrange them with cooks we trust.
It starts in the bazaar: buying spices and vegetables.
- At the stove: a family kitchen or a hotel's outdoor stove, making a dal, a vegetable, hand-rolled rotis and perhaps a malpua from start to finish.
- The best part: you eat what you have cooked.
- Tell us your interests: some guests want the desert dishes, ker sangri and gatte. Others want to master malpua or a simple masala chai.
- Read more: our page on cooking classes explains how we choose the cooks, and our food trail journey builds a whole trip around Rajasthan's kitchens.
A day of eating in Pushkar
Before dawn: a glass of ginger chai on the ghats, or at the top of Savitri hill as the sun rises.
Nine o'clock: hot malpua with rabri in Halwai Gali or the main bazaar, then a kachori if you are brave.
- Late morning: a clay cup of lassi, perhaps with gulkand, while you walk the bazaar.
- Lunch: a light thali at your hotel, with chaach to keep cool.
- Afternoon: rose sherbet or nimbu pani after your rest.
- Late afternoon: tea and something simple on a rooftop above the ghats as the light turns gold.
- Dinner: dal baati churma or ker sangri with bajra roti from your hotel kitchen, and in winter a cup of hot saffron milk before bed.
Table manners, the Rajasthani way
Right hand: eat with it. The left is used for other things.
Wash: before and after eating. Hotels and homes will bring water to you.
- Accepting: take prasad and food offered in a home with your right hand. Refusing outright can give offence, so take a little.
- Bas: your host will keep filling your plate. To stop, leave a little food and say, politely and firmly, bas, enough.
- Jootha: do not offer food from your own plate. Once touched, it is considered used.
- Never bring: meat, eggs or alcohol into a temple or home, and in Pushkar not into town at all.
- Sitting: in a dharamshala or village home, sit on the floor if others do, and never point your feet at the food or anyone eating.
- Thank the cook: a simple bahut swadisht, very tasty, earns a smile and probably another roti. Our page on Rajasthani etiquette has more.
