The Pushkar Camel Fair Is Listed for 17 to 24 November 2026 at a Lake With 52 Ghats and a Brahma Temple, in a State That Holds 84 Per Cent of India's 2.52 Lakh Camels

Incredible India, the Ministry of Tourism’s portal, lists the Pushkar Camel Fair for 17 to 24 November 2026 and ties it to Kartik Purnima, the full-moon night of the Hindu month of Kartik. Rajasthan Tourism calls it an annual five-day camel and livestock fair held in October or November, and its page carries no dates. We read both pages, and the others cited below, on 28 October 2026, and where an official page gave no figure we left it out.

Pushkar is a town in Ajmer district, Rajasthan, about 15 kilometres from the city of Ajmer. The fair gathers around a lake with 52 bathing ghats (stepped landings where pilgrims enter the water) and beside what Rajasthan Tourism describes as the only Brahma temple in the world. That last claim is disputed by another official page, as the temple section below shows.

Dates, and why the pages differ

Incredible India’s festival page gives the dates as 17 Nov 2026 to 24 Nov 2026, which is eight days. Rajasthan Tourism says five. A third official voice, All India Radio News, reported that the 2024 fair opened with a flag-hoisting ceremony on 9 November 2024 and would run until 15 November, which is seven days. The report does not say who raised the flag and gives only “hundreds” for the tourists who had arrived.

The fair follows the Hindu lunar calendar, so its Gregorian dates change from year to year. IANS photographs of herders and camels at the 2025 fair carry the date 31 October 2025, more than two weeks earlier in the calendar than the 17 November start listed for 2026. Because the two tourism pages disagree on length, check the schedule with Rajasthan Tourism before booking travel around a particular day.

The night the lake is said to be consecrated

On Kartik Purnima, Incredible India’s festival page says, 33 million gods and goddesses descended on Pushkar to consecrate the lake, according to tradition, and devotees come from across the country to bathe in it and seek the blessing of Brahma, the creator. The town holds a festival for Brahma on Kartik Poornima during the fair, and pilgrims visit the temple after bathing, says Rajasthan Tourism’s Brahma temple page. On the lake’s own page, the CPR Environmental Education Centre says Brahma is held to have performed a sacrifice here on Kartik Purnima, and that thousands of pilgrims bathe in November.

For comparison with another bathing pilgrimage, our piece on the Kumbh Mela by the numbers covers the 66 crore bathers the Uttar Pradesh government counted at Prayagraj in 2025.

A lake of 52 ghats

Pushkar Lake is semi-circular, about 8 to 10 metres deep and ringed by 52 bathing ghats and over 400 temples, Rajasthan Tourism says. Hindu scriptures call it Tirtha Raj, the king of pilgrimage sites, and no pilgrimage is considered complete without a dip in it, the page adds. The same site’s Brahma temple page puts the temple count at over 500. About 400 temples and shrines is the CPR centre’s figure. Treat any single count as approximate.

The tradition behind the name is told in two slightly different ways. One version, on Rajasthan Tourism’s Pushkar page, has Brahma dropping a lotus so that a lake appeared, and he named the place after the flower, since pushkar means lotus. In the other, from Incredible India’s Brahma temple page, the demon Vajranabha was causing havoc and Brahma killed him with a lotus, whose petals formed the lake. A third account, on the CPR centre’s page, is that the lake is artificial, created in the 12th century by a dam across the headwaters of the Luni river.

Several ghats carry names tied to tradition: Varah Ghat, where Vishnu is said to have appeared as a boar; Brahma Ghat, where Brahma is said to have bathed and performed a yajna, a fire sacrifice; and Gandhi Ghat, where the ashes of Mahatma Gandhi were immersed, according to the CPR page. Development around the lake, tourism, the cattle fair, sewers and rituals have polluted it, that page says, and falling water levels mean the town’s raw water now comes from tube wells.

The Brahma temple

The temple stands in Pushkar, 15 km from Ajmer, and was “built around the 14th century”, Incredible India says, while also saying it has been remodelled over 2,000 years. On Rajasthan Tourism’s page the same two statements come in a different order: the ancient structure is about 2,000 years old and the present one dates to the 14th century. That page credits Maharaja Jawat Raj of Ratlam with repairing and slightly modifying it. Earlier renovation is where the pages part, with Adi Shankara’s work in the 8th century on the Rajasthan page and in the 14th on the Incredible India one. The sage Vishwamitra is widely thought to have built the temple as an offering, Incredible India adds.

The building has a red spire (shikhara), a swan motif, a pillared hall and marble and stone slabs joined with molten lead, on a high platform reached by stairs, Incredible India says. Devotees have set silver coins engraved with their names into the marble floor and walls. In the sanctum stand a four-faced image of Brahma and Gayatri, whom Rajasthan Tourism calls his second wife. The Sanyasi sect of ascetic priests controls the sanctum, according to Incredible India.

The two official sites split on whether this is the only temple of its kind. On Rajasthan Tourism’s page it is the only temple in the world dedicated to Brahma. Incredible India’s temple page says there are only a few Brahma temples in the world and this is the oldest, adding that it was believed for a long time to be the only one. Its festival page, though, uses the “only temple” wording.

Both sites tell the story of Savitri, Brahma’s first wife. She cursed Brahma after he married Gayatri while beginning his yajna at Pushkar, Rajasthan Tourism says, and that explains why Pushkar has the one Brahma temple. Her temple sits on a hillock behind his, and the Savitri Mata ropeway, inaugurated in 2016 according to Rajasthan Tourism, runs up to it.

Darshan (viewing of the deity) hours, per Incredible India, are in summer 5.00 am to 1.30 pm and 3.00 pm to 9.00 pm, and in winter 6.00 am to 1.30 pm and 3.00 pm to 8.30 pm. The Free Press Journal gave the same hours in November 2019. Neither source says when the seasonal change falls, so confirm at the gate.

What the camel count says

The fair rests on an animal whose numbers the government counts. The 20th Livestock Census, conducted in 2019 by the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying with all states and Union Territories, covers camels among 16 species, the Press Information Bureau says. In a Lok Sabha reply on 20 December 2022, Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Parshottam Rupala gave India’s camel count as 4.00 lakh (400,000) in 2012 and 2.52 lakh (252,000) in 2019, a fall of 37.05 per cent, as published by Pashudhan Praharee. The reply says about 84 per cent of the country’s camels are in Rajasthan and about 11 per cent in Gujarat.

Down To Earth reports 213,000 camels in Rajasthan at the latest census, against 746,000 in 1992, and a national count of 517,000 in 2007. Its date for the latest count is 2018, while the ministry’s reply says 2019, so we use the ministry’s year.

The reply lists reasons put forward by Rajasthan’s Animal Husbandry Department: mechanised farming, paved roads that favour vehicles, less grazing land in western districts after the Indira Gandhi Nahar Project (the canal), forest limits on fodder, and younger herders leaving the work. Measures are listed too. Rajasthan has a camel milk market, a scheme paying Rs 10,000 per calf in two instalments, free health care, the camel’s designation as state animal and the 2015 law. Gujarat runs a breeding centre at Dhori in Kutch. The National Research Centre on Camel is in Bikaner, and ICAR-NBAGR, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s animal genetic resources bureau, has registered nine native camel breeds. For the dairy side of India’s livestock story, see Verghese Kurien and Operation Flood.

The law that governs camels at a fair

The Rajasthan Camel (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act, 2015, Act No. 2 of 2016, received the President’s assent on 25 February 2016, and the Rajasthan Gazette published an authorised English translation on 16 March 2016. Section 3 bans slaughter of a camel, with imprisonment of one to five years and a fine up to Rs 20,000. Section 5 bans taking camels out of the state for slaughter, or knowing they may be slaughtered. It allows temporary migration for grazing from areas the state has declared affected by famine or scarcity, under a permit, and the permit cannot run past the following August.

Section 5(7) lets the district Collector issue a special permit for export of a camel from Rajasthan for farming or dairy use or “for participation in an animal fair”, provided the export does not push numbers below local need. Down To Earth summarises the Act as banning the sale or transport of camels outside the state, which is broader than the text. The same article says Rajasthan declared the camel its state animal in 2014 and that the Act left owners with no outside market. The Lok Sabha reply likewise lists the Act among the causes of reduced inter-state trading. We opened no official page that counts the camels brought to the Pushkar fair, so the census figures above describe the whole country and not the fairground.

What the fair offers, and how to reach it

The state tourism page calls the fair one of the world’s largest cattle fairs. Buying and selling livestock goes alongside the matka phod (pot-breaking), longest moustache and bridal competitions, it says, and recent years have added an exhibition football match between the local Pushkar Club and a team of foreign tourists. The national portal adds puppet shows, camel parades and camel sports, snake charmers and magicians, camel safaris, hot air balloon rides and luxury tents. No official page we opened gives a ticket price, a daily programme or the number of visitors.

For the road in, Rajasthan Tourism puts Pushkar 15 km from Ajmer, 145 km from Jaipur and 186 km from Jodhpur. The nearest airport is Sanganer in Jaipur, 146 km away. Regular buses run between Pushkar and Jaipur, Jodhpur and Ajmer from the Ajmer bus stand, the page says, and its Brahma temple page says buses leave Ajmer station every hour. Pushkar Terminus railway station, operating since 2012, connects to Ajmer station, which the Pushkar page puts 14 km away. As a temple town, Pushkar offers only vegetarian food, according to Rajasthan Tourism.

Pushkar sits among Rajasthan’s other travel stops, from the forts in our hill forts of Rajasthan guide to the state’s economy and government in Rajasthan at a glance. The Pushkar fair page of Rajasthan Tourism was last updated on 30 July 2026, and the Incredible India listing ends on 24 November 2026.