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Sunday, January 19th – Bhaisala to Parbatsar, 16,592 km
It is a day like yesterday, mild, mostly sunny, but it is windier than it was yesterday morning. The wind is coming from the west so for most of the day it will be against us. Frank spends the first half hour after our breakfast fixing the broken spoke in his rear wheel, the fifth broken spoke since entering India. I haven't had even one broken spoke in more that 16,500 km, so there is definitely something wrong with his wheel. We just haven't figured out what it is.
The wind is annoying once we are on the road, but I have dealt with worse many times over. We are following State Hwy 2 northwest through an increasingly drier landscapes. There aren't many farms here. There aren't any rivers or sources of water either. The wind and the dust dry us out faster so we are careful to fill up our water bottles at every opportunity. The villages are sometimes half an hour apart.
In spite of the persistent broken spokes, Frank is in an excellent mood. He is enjoying the desert and seeing the camels and other attractions. He stops to take pictures from time to time. I appreciate riding with him as his mood is infectious. A few kilometres past our first town, Lohrana, I have a flat tire. Deserts come with thorns and they can lead to flat tires. It is my sixth flat since Portugal. A woman gathering sticks for fuel stops out of curiosity while I am changing my tire. Frank takes her picture. This delights her.
After an hour of cycling, not counting the time to fix my flat, the road bends to the west and passes close to the north end of Sambhar Lake, a large salt lake. We have been riding about five kilometres east of it since Bhatipura, but because the terrain has been so flat we have caught only the briefest glimpses of it. Now we come within half a kilometre of it. The road climbs some low hills so we have a better view of it. Other than being large, it is not interesting.
Eventually we move out of view of the lake, continuing west. We stop for lunch when reach Kansera, sitting on the side of the road to eat the food we bought at a restaurant stall in the town. It is getting warm now in the afternoon, warmer enough to make us sweat while we are sitting here taking in the sun. The wind at least keeps us dry while we are moving. 
We pass through the village of Mithari on our way west. When we reach the junction with Hwy 2B we turn south, following a valley with ridges of rocky hills on either side. We are headed directly towards tomorrow night's destination, Pushkar, a sacred pilgrimage site of the Hindus, known as a "dham". Our guide book highly recommends Pushkar as one of the most important sites in all of Rajasthan, but we won't reach it today.
After another 30 km, the highway splits into two directions, south-west and south-east, at the village of Parbatsar. We can't see a hotel in the village, so we stop a teenage boy and ask him is there is a place to stay nearby. He leads to a Jain temple half a kilometre outside the town. On the way, several of his friends notice he is assisting us and come to join us and introduces us to the priest. The priest is wearing orange robes and has a shaved head. He's a bit shorter and probably in his early 40s. He welcomes us warmly, although he speaks no English. The boy translates for us.
The priest lives in the temple and he invites us in. Ignorantly, Frank and I try to enter with our shoes on and that causes gasps and exclamations from the boys. We quickly correct our mistake and apologize and everyone laughs it off. The priest tells them that we can set up our tent in the yard of the temple, which will be under his protection. The yard is surrounded by a shoulder-high, metre-thick hedge of a thorny bramble, more ominous that a coil of barbed wire. The boys want us to take a picture of them with the priest in his praying gazebo, so we do this first before the light in the sky dims too much. Several of the villagers have arrived by this point to be part of the photo shoot.
A couple of the families bring cooked potatoes and other vegetables for our dinner while we are setting up the tent. We are really impressed by their kindness. It is dark and the boys and their families need to get home, which leaves us alone with the priest. There is a communication barrier between us so he bids us good night and we retire to the tent to read and rest up for tomorrow.
PHOTO 1: woman, bull & lake, typical scene
PHOTO 2: Indian woman carrying supplies
PHOTO 3: me taking a rest
PHOTO 4: Rajasthani with saffron turban
PHOTO 5: rural Jain temple
PHOTO 6: photo op at temple
PHOTO 7: Rajasthani sunset
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