Maya lives up to her name. She's like an illusion. One minute she is dancing on the streets of Pushkar, next minute she is sitting atop a horse, leading a loud and colourful parade. In a bright yellow ghagra-choli, kajal in her eyes and richly accessorised with silver trinkets, Maya is someone Pushkar's in love with. They shower rose petals on her, cheer her on and proudly shake hands with her. In the hubbub, she manages to inform me that she is a social worker from Italy and has been teaching young girls in Pushkar for over six months. "I love this place," she screams through the din. Then disappears again in a sea of foreign faces.

We are participating in the 'Spiritual Walk', a new cultural milepost and the mainstay of the Pushkar fair this year, organised at the behest of the administration by the tourism department and the local religious, commercial and cultural organisations. The centuries-old annual festival has been all about religion, culture and commerce. The five days in the month of Kartik, from ekadashi to poornima, when Brahma is supposed to have performed yagya in Pushkar, are considered propitious for Hindus to take a dip in the sarovar and wash away their sins. It's also the time when the villagers trade briskly in the mammoth cattle market. Those traditions continue but the scope of the fair has been steadily expanding to cater to the large influx of international tourists.

"The fair has given Pushkar its identity. However, it used to be about religion, now it has become all about tourism," complains Pandit Yogendra Pathak, a member of the Shree Teerth Guru Pushkar Purohit Sangh, the apex body of local priests. No wonder, the ritual of parikrama round the holy Pushkar gets reinvented as an all-singing, all-dancing procession that can put any carnival in London, Rio or Madrid in the shade.

The foreign exchange is evident even in the dust-laden, rural cattle fair.

Priests can’t push protests beyond a point. They know the fair relies much on foreigners.

Susan Wells from England rides Ajay Vikram Singh's horses, helps with the showing, presentation and judging of stallions and informs villagers about grooming and breeding of horses. "Till now it has been a basic barter, sale and exchange event. We want to professionalise the trade," says Singh. Wells notes that the idea is to introduce the locals to western breeding practices. "The Marwari breed of horses is declining in height and quality. I intend teaching people about maintaining the purity of breeds," she adds.

In the midst of such festive transactions, the shadow of two sensational incidents looms large. In September this year, an Israeli couple was fined Rs 500 by the district court for kissing while getting married according to Hindu rites. A month later, a Finnish woman was tried in court for streaking. All these prompted the local Purohit Sangh to issue posters and pamphlets at the fair advising foreigners not to hug in public, to dress "respectfully" and maintain the sanctity of the holy town.

But not everybody takes such episodes too seriously. "The Brahmins and the media have made a mountain out of a mole-hill," says a hotel owner. Chimes in Pushkar resident Ashok Tak: "There are other issues like pollution of the lake which are far more important." Saskia Konniger, a journalist from the Netherlands, finds the attitude of the priests very fundamentalist. "You can't brand all foreigners alike. The Finnish lady was mentally unsound, they should have taken her to the hospital instead of dragging her to court," she says. The priests have been quick to rise in defence. "Foreigners are most welcome but they should not play around with our sanskriti (culture)," says Shyam Sundar Purohit, a trustee of the Purohit Sangh.

Nevertheless, the priests are not willing to ban tourists. They can't, or else Pushkar, the only Indian town to boast of a Brahma temple, will collapse. "Pushkar thrives because of foreigners," says Deepak who runs the Rama Jewellery shop near Jaipur Ghat. Westerners might abound in Benares and Haridwar as well. But Pushkar is a unique anthropological case study on how a few thousand visitors from abroad can sustain a sleepy temple town and its economy and make an impact on its lifestyle and culture.

It shows in the Ganesha T-shirts, in those single, white females riding pillion on the mobikes of the local dudes, the precocious, multi-lingual kids who can sell just about anything to anyone, and restaurants that go by names like Pink Floyd Cafe. There's a strange bazaar mix of the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the profane. Besides the mantras, the most oft-heard chants are of trance music. Internet cafes still run on dial-up rather than on broadband. Nutella and Marmite flood the local stores. Rickety camel carts move around with AIDS awareness banners.

One hotel owner proudly tells us that 99 per cent of his guests are foreigners, another pegs them at 70 per cent. "Indian tourists fetch me just Rs 50,000 a year," he claims. The rest of his Rs 20 lakh per annum worth of white money comes from international wallets. So even the most modest of hotels flaunts a swimming pool in the backyard, offers camel safaris, reiki, reflexology and massages, and organises Indian cooking classes. The local barber gamely fixes sadhu-style dreadlocks for Rs 750-800. Deepak at the Rama Jewellery shop says "10 out of 10" of his customers are international tourists. It's obviously to attract them that he displays a new "item", a metal beads bikini set available in "all sizes" for as little as Rs 1,200.

The first set of foreign tourists is reported to have come to Pushkar some time in 1968. The four tourists stayed at Birbal Baba's Anand Ashram. Last year, the number went up to 43,980. There are two distinct kinds of tourists that populate Pushkar. All the year round, it's the adda of the backpackers, mostly from Israel. At the time of the annual fair, the Israelis are pushed out because of escalating hotel tariffs to make way for the well-heeled tourists from Europe, Canada, Australia and America. But Israelis are a favourite with the locals, and have become adopted citizens. Our hotel owner claims that 85 per cent of his foreign guests are from Israel. The enterprising restaurants liberally display labane and falafel on the menu, Hebrew signage is on every other wall, and Hebrew letters are visible on the keyboards in Internet cafes. Third Eye, an Israeli cafe near Gau Ghat, claims to have sent food packets to Bikaner when Israeli soldiers came there visiting.

It's not difficult to understand why foreign tourists like Pushkar, despite the dictums of the priests. It's cheap, safe and friendly. Israelis have other reasons to come calling. Says a hotel owner: "Christians don't like Israelis, Muslim nations hate them. India is one place which welcomes them heartily." Also, they need a break after three years of compulsory army training. "They want to let go. We give them what they want," he adds, showing us telling pictures of the hash parties he clandestinely organises for them. "Hash is like mineral water here. It comes from Parvati Valley and is the best in the world. Just like we go wine-drinking in France, they ask for hash here," he claims.

Quirky characters abound. Like Om Baba, who plays the Australian didgeridoo gifted to him by a foreign friend. He refuses to speak in Hindi, behaves like a rapping ragamuffin rather than an Indian sadhu. In stark contrast is Jyoti, from Sicily, who has been living like a Gujar (shepherd) near Pushkar for the last 13 years. He refuses to talk in English, calls his Swedish wife lugai (the local word for wife) and teaches local traditions and customs to the tourists.

There are some outsiders who have made Pushkar their home. Pooja, a social worker from Tokyo, came to Pushkar because "God called". Mark Gopal is a French-Canadian who came to Pushkar 25 years ago and got married to a Telugu girl here. He runs the Shanooz ranch in Pushkar. For him, the town is sheer magic. "But things are going commercial, everyone is becoming greedy now, they are chasing big money," he says.

Meanwhile, the fair is throwing images of a split personality. On the one hand are the poor, devout villagers sleeping in the open in the cold nights, eating the Rs 10 lunch. On the other hand are the foreigners, living in frills-free tents that start from Rs 5,000 a night. As for the great Indian middle class—families like yours or mine—well, they are hardly there. The presence of a few Bengali and Gujarati pilgrims remains unadvertised. In the queer blend of the East and the West, it's people like us who are left feeling like outsiders all along the 52 ghats of the Pushkar sarovar.