Pushkar isn't a very big place. It is a festival venue and the feeling in the town was strange. People weren't quite as pushy as they were in some other places. the Camel Festival had taken place some weeks before and I dare say the place would have been teeming. But it was quiet and the shopkeepers seemed to be content with what they had made in the last few weeks.
I have no pictures. It is a shame because I only retain a feeling by way of a memory of the street scene. I seem to remember that the shops were set slightly higher up than the the actual street level. I was attracted to a shop which appeared to being manned by a small boy who was seated cross legged in the front with piles of mechandise around him.
He was a very engaging young man and many years more senior in his manner than I expected. His conversational technique belied his years. Everything in his shop was absurdly cheap. It was just fun stuff made of fabric but it was colourful. I bought some chillum pipe cases, purses and appliqué hippie-style cloth backpacks. Before I knew it I had blown a couple of pounds or so. I mentioned to the young man that I needed to change money and wondered whether he could direct me to the nearest bank.
Here the young salesman astounded me. I swear that if he was 10 years old he wouldn't have passed for it. Despite his infancy he had a remarkably firm grasp of foreign exchange rates and money dealing. It was quite clear that this young man could arrange a much better rate than I might get at the Canara Bank.
When I was in India the Rupee was not traded internationally. It was impossible to purchase Indian currency outside the country and impossible to trade it in for any other currency outside the country. There was therefore no point in having any cash left over at the end of a visit to India. There was an official exchange rate which I think was about 35 Rupees for a Pound. The young salesman told me that he could get me something over 40 Rupees for a Pound. I told him that I had heard about rates a little higher than that in Delhi. With all the polite condescension that one might have expected from a man say 10 or 15 years my senior this small boy looked at me kindly and said "This is Pushkar, Baba. This is not Delhi."
A cup of chai cost one rupee so getting five free cups of tea for every pound exchanged at the black market rate meant that even though the rate was not the best that might have been obtained it was still worth agreeing.
The Lonely Planet Guide gave readers advice about the possible dangers of exchanging money on the black market and there were plenty of stories about travelers who had ended up on the wrong end of a scam.
Since there were currency controls there were doubtless limits on the amount of "hard" foreign currency that might be held by nationals. Whatever the reason there was a big demand for foreign currency and the bigger the bill the better the rate. Even travelers' cheques fetched a better rate. I have a theory about Bollywood films that is linked to the black market for foreign currency that I will refer to later.
The stories of people being ripped off arise because it is is of course illegal to exchange money on the street. On arrival in India there are currency declaration forms that you had to complete. If I remember you had to declare any valuable belongings too and I seem to remember that the advice was to keep all foreign exchange receipts in case on leaving the country you were asked to account for what happened to the currency and belongings you came with.
The main thing to keep in mind is that you should never part with your money until you have the equivalent in exchange. In some places there is plenty of opportunity to change money. People might call out to you "Change money?" as you pass. This wasn't the case in Pushkar. In big cities the pressure and therefore the risks were greater. The horror stories usually involved a great deal of stupidity and greed. Tempted by extraordinary rates travelers would do deals for their entire budgets. The cloak and dagger element would mean that complicated arrangements for the exchange would be made.
Those who parted with their money before seeing the cash wold never see the foreign exchange agent again. He would simply disappear pretending to be back soon making all kinds of reassuring promises. Waiting in the out of the way rendez-vous it would eventually dawn on the unwary that the man was never coming back and a robbery had just, well, not just but some, say, 30 minutes earlier, taken place. Plenty of time had passed by then for the opportunist con man to have melted away never to be found.
In other cases the illegality of the deal would be stressed and the need to make sure the transaction was not observed was emphasised. The details of the transaction would be finalised. The traveler would not part with any money but would have to wait somewhere out of sight. When the con man returned the traveler would be ushered down and alleyway and a bag of notes would be handed over for the dollar bills/pound notes but then the con man would suddenly tell the traveler to run because the Police had been spotted. The traveler would run in one direction clutching the paper bag and the con man would scarper in the other direction. Only when the traveler realised that he was no longer being followed would he look into the bag to find that although the first few notes were real the rest of the bundle was made up of newspaper. Again, the con man's escape was complete before the theft was even discovered.
In both cases there is no-one to complain to. The transaction being illegal, it isn't an option to report the matter to the Police.
I am very pleased to say that my experience did not involve any particular skulduggery. I was simply left in charge of the shop while my young friend went off to get the rupees. I wasn't changing very much, maybe £100. The young man came back, the exchange took place and both of us were happy. He had doubtless made a better deal for the £100 than I got and for my part I got a better deal that I would have got at the bank. This meant the shopping I had done in his shop was "free" on the basis that what I had spent was less than the advantage I had gained on the currency deal.
I was liquid again and the deal on the money had rejigged the budget to compensate for the "dent" making puja the day before too. I was ahead, but not for long.
