Traveller’s Tales – The Journal

Ranakpur, Rajasthan, India – Woke up early this a.m. in Udiapur and I grabbed a rickshaw over to the post office to get rid of my swords. On the way over to the post office I noticed most shops and businesses were closed and when I queried this fact, my driver told me that everyone was on strike due to the BJP rally to be held in Delhi in two days’ time. To give the reader a little background, on December 6th, 1992 the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) political party [hard-core Hindus] held a rally at Ayodah where there stood a Muslim mosque on a site where the Hindus believe is sacred to their god Ram (they think it is his birth place). In the frenzy of the rally the crowd of Hindus went out of control and tore down the mosque in a mass riot, with many casualties and injuries. This was the catalyst which caused the destructive riots in Bombay in early January. The Hindus have since erected a makeshift temple honouring Ram, and at present the Indian Supreme Court is to rule what is to happen with the disputed site – whether the mosque will be rebuilt or a Hindu temple erected, or both. The BJP is so popular all of a sudden because the Indian central government removed the BJP ruling governments from the following states immediately after the Ayodah incident: Utar Praedesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Rajasthstan

The national press is attempting to organise a grass-roots movement to make the site a memorial for both religions. The BJP had scheduled to hold a political rally in Delhi on February 25th, but about a week ago the central government banned the rally fearing more riots reminiscent of those in Bombay. The BJP is a legitimate political party, and they voiced some very strong opinions about the government banning their rally. To draw a parallel, that would be like the U.S. government banning the Democratic or G.O.P. from having an open rally somewhere. After the ban on the rally was announced the BJP declared that the rally would be held anyway with supporters (one million expected) traveling to Delhi from all over the country. The Central government then stated (about three days ago) that the borders with the neighbouring states, Utar Praedsh and Haryana) would be closed to prevent supporters from going to the capital city. We talked to a woman yesterday who said no trains or buses were going up there at present. This leads us to the strike in Udiapur.

I saw a lot of military men walking around the city, and based on our observations driving around the city in a rickshaw and by bus, the ratio of businesses open to businesses closed was close to 1:25. It was very eerie, and seeing that we were leaving Udiapur that morning, both of us hoped the buses weren’t on strike. We arrived at the station just in time to catch the bus to Ranakpur where there is supposed to be a large temple honouring the Jain gods.

Four hours later the bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere in the Rajasthan countryside. We passed through the gates into the temple complex and secured a room not 50 metres from the steps to the temple’s entrance.  We dropped our stuff off and removed all articles made of leather (as they’re banned inside the temple) before heading over. We climbed the two flights of steps up to the temple’s entrance, which reminded me of entering our own U.S. Capitol building. The Jain temple wasn’t just big – it was enormous, and both Rich & I drew in our breath in awe as we ascended the steps into the centre of this all marble pious structure. The steps place you at the centre of the temple directly in front of the largest deity. The hall itself must have a minimum of two hundred intricately carved columns, each the size of an ornamental column outside a building, and no two which are identical. The beauty of the carvings and the obvious effort it took for the Jains to construct such a temple made me that much more appreciative that we’d gone out of our way to see it.

Of all the things I’ve seen in India I believe this is the most beautiful place we’ve visited. As you are required to leave you shoes at the door upon entry we got to roam around this marble behemoth barefooted, which only made the visit that much more pleasurable, as it was possible to relax. The temple is huge inside with three different levels for you to walk around on – checking out the carvings. Due to its enormous size it took us about thirty minutes to wander through the entire complex (1,444 carved columns total with two smaller temples inside). I shot off almost an entire roll of film and after wandering around a bit I’d lost Rich – that’s how big it is. – so I headed back to the room to dump my camera and day pack off before returning to the temple for another wander.

The jayfay had visited and I eventually found Rich walking around the temple a short while later. We walked all over the temple when we noticed one slab of marble missing from floor, with stairs descending below. Rich sat down to write Nate a letter and I went walking around. One of the things that struck me was that there were virtually no other people in the temple. For the first time in a long time there weren’t half a dozen people everywhere you went – it was deserted. This only added to the relaxed environment in this white temple of peace.

As I walked around I passed the stairs in the floor again, only this time I leaned over and swung my torso down into the hole to have a look: three steps down, ninety degree turn to the left then only darkness. The opening to the stairs was only about two and a half feet wide so I thought it might just be a tiny storage area and moved on. Went back and got Rich, then the two of us returned to the room to retrieve our cameras for yet more photos of this architectural masterpiece. Upon returning we were sitting in the same hall as the hole with the mystery stairs when Rich saw a couple of men walk behind the pillar nearest the mystery stairs, squat down, then disappear. They could only have gone down into the bowels of the temple via the stairs we’d been eyeing for the past hour. Five to ten minutes later the men reappeared, led by one of the temple assistants. We asked the assistant to take us down and he referred us to the priest of the temple. I asked the priest if he could take us to the underground temple (I’d found that much out) and he replied he’d do it for twenty rupees. Not knowing if it was blasphemy in the Jain religion for haggling with a priest I naively made the counter offer of ten rupees. He consented and led us back over to the staircase in the floor. He went and procured a candle, then nimbly made his way down into the hole.

The entrance was really narrow, to the point where you have to twist your body around the marble floor piece to get down there, and once we were past the three initial steps the staircase turned and made a rapid descent to the lower level of the temple fifteen feet down. The air had all of a sudden became ten degrees warmer and so humid. The stone steps had that clammy feeling of condensation and the air felt heavy in your lungs as we breathed. The priest led us down the steps with his candle into a room lined with pillars – yet another, smaller underground temple. We walked down a hallway where the priest pointed out where stone incarnations of Jain deities had once stood, since destroyed, then he crouched down and made his way through a small opening to the left, taking our only source of illumination, the candle, with him. Wee followed the priest’s candle light through the hole and when se stood up we found ourselves in the centre of another circular chamber. The sounds of our voices were echoing off the walls when the priest demonstrated the acoustics of the room. He held one note with his voice and the sound resonated so perfectly around the room, actually vibrating my organs in my chest. The room was used for meditating with perfect acoustical reverberation for the chants; those clever Jains! The priest held another note for us for the longest time then he led us out through the hole in the wall. through another dark passage to the second underground temple, surrounded again by columns all around.

Just as we were about to ascend the steps out we were stopped by a group of Jains climbing down in. One of the men was so surprised to see a sahib down in the bellows of one of their most religious mecca points he made more than a few exclamations in Hindi. Judging from his reaction he was saying things like “I can’t believe it! They (we tourists) even got down here!” We climbed out, thanked the priest, gave him his ten rupees then headed over to one of the other buildings in the complex for some dinner.

Figuring the cuisine we were about to have was going to be as Jain as could be (this was a mecca point) we had no idea what to expect. The meal began – it was a thali consisting of puri, rice and some sort of sauce, along with this potato dish and another cheese dish of some sort. The puri, rice, papadams, and endless portions of all the items on my plate kept coming as though there were some never ending supply. I had this feeling this must be what Henry VIII felt like – the instant one of the main courses on your plate was empty one of the servers would appear to replenish your helping. We gorged and just shoveled the food down; I think it was the best meal I’d had in the past month, if not the entire time we’d been in India – all for Rs9 (US$0.27) We went for a walk around the temple complex after dinner, thinking we should look at the smaller temples, not just the most beautiful, most amazing, massive one. It was dusk and we made it just in time to the three smaller temples to see the insides lit by candle light and to make a Rs1 offering. We walked by the big temple again on the way back to the room, but got sidetracked and sucked back into the big temple. I couldn’t walk by without seeing it lit by candlelight.

When I entered there was some sort of ceremony going on with some worshippers in the main hall who seemed to be praying for a person or group of people The worshipper would say a name to the temple assistant who would scream it very loudly to another assistant on the second balcony. The second assistant would then, in turn, scream the name across the whole of the complex. We left during the name screaming to return to our room and view the temple from our porch. Just as the stars began to appear over the silhouette of the temple, all of a sudden all these bells began to ring inside the temple. The bells were loud from where I was sitting, so they must have been deafening inside, accompanied by a bass drum being beaten in time. It was a surreal effect – having all of these sounds emanate from this temple at dusk. These were the sounds you would expect to hear come out of a temple in 1600, not 1993. but the temple is still functioning and is still a pilgrimage point for the Jains. Both of us were really relaxed after our day of exploring the temple; I’ll probably go out in the morning and take some more photos before our bus to Jodhpur arrives.

Palanpur to Udaipur, India – We woke up the next morning stiff from the cold. We weren’t prepared for a cold night so all we slept under were our sleeping sheets and when we woke up we could see our breath inside the compartment. It was definitely the coldest weather we’d experienced since leaving Europe. Arrived at Palanpur and 9:30 a.m. and walked over to the bus station with Nicky and Neil another British dude we’d met on the train, also headed to Udiapur. Apparently not many Westerners make it to Palanpur because the minute we entered the bus station and had put down our stuff there was a crowd of people surrounding us – easily three people deep. People were standing on the neighbouring benches to get a better view of the white people and see what they were doing. The people just sat there and stared at us like zoo animals, so we began acting like animals. Rich juggled a bit (more for his entertainment than theirs I gather) and when Neil reached into his bag to get out his water bottle the crowd leaned closer, all trying to get a view of what magical Western item the sahib was pulling out. When Neil pulled out the bottle he held it up over his head like an orb and screamed, “Water! The elixir of life!” He then lowered the canteen piously, opened it, and took a sip as though its contents had been blessed by the Pope himself. The locals just watched in amazement not knowing what to think.

We had an hour to kill so the four of us just sat around talking to each other while a crowd of 50 looked on . Our bus arrived and after securing a seat with my swords we said good-bye to Nicky (who was headed to Jaisalmer) by giving her a kiss on each cheek. As our bus pulled away I was just hoping the locals wouldn’t try to get a kiss from her as well – as she’d just kissed us in public. Our bus driver floored the gas pedal and we arrived in beautiful downtown Himetnagar around lunch time.

At the Himetnagar bus station we were once again the center of attention with a small crowd following us everywhere we went. Absolutely no one in this bus station spoke any English (interesting because the Indians all know a little English since they use the language to communicate with each other from different states) so I got to play charades with the station attendant (using my map of India as a prop) to try to find out which platform the bus to Udiapur was leaving from. After a nice long game of charades it was sorted and time for us to eat some lunch.

This was your basic bus station restaurant – big and absolutely packed to the brim with locals eating their own lunches. We ordered a bunch of vegetable dishes then waited around for our food. Once it arrived I noticed they’d forgotten to bring us yogurt (to kill the heat) but it shouldn’t matter too much. Rich and I have been traveling around India for quite some time now and are pretty used to all levels of spicy food. I took a bite of this Alu Gobi and the spices emanating from those potatoes were nothing like I’d ever eaten. I can honestly say that no where on the planet have I ever tasted such hot food. I’d learned that the initial heat eventually wears off (or numbs your mouth enough) so you can eat, but this dish just didn’t stop. I even took a sip of the Indian tap water on the table in an attempt to kill the pain. It got to the point where I got up and went over to the kitchen door to get some curd. Now after nine weeks you would have though I’d remember the Hindi word for curd since we asked for it all the time – not this time. I couldn’t remember it for the life of me so I made motions like my face was burning off and the waiter finally got the hint and brought some out for me which I devoured and rubbed on my burning lips. I took the curd back to the table and Rich and Neil each had their share of the salvation as well. We were pretty hungry, so we managed to take alternating bites of our meals and the yogurt to slowly make our way through lunch.

After lunch we meandered out on the platform, the bus arrived, we strapped our bags onto the roof and we were off towards Udiapur. The only problem was there were roadworks for more than three quarters of the way to Udiapur, so instead of nice tar sealed roads we got gravel and dirt causing everyone inside the bus to be tossed around. The shaking got so bad that this became a Class 5 typical African bus ride – and those conditions are really hard to duplicate. Neil put a rip in his pants from being tossed around so much and Rich & I felt like our internal organs had been rearranged by the time we arrived in Udiapur at 7:00 p.m. that evening. We said good-bye to Neil and headed over to the Lake Star hotel just outside the main downtown section of town. We got a brilliant room facing the lake; one side faced the Lake Palace Hotel, lit up sitting on its island in the middle of the lake, and the other direction looking out over the water to the City Palace in the middle of the old fortress.

As we were heading out to dinner we met this woman, Karen of the UK who had the room next to ours. She seemed like a nice person at first glance and before we could react she had invited herself to come to dinner with us. Little did we know she was one of the charter members of the space cadet club. We were walking along when she asked if we did opium during our longer train journeys. The conversation went something like this:

“Do you take opium on a train Journey?” asked Karen. “No,” said Rich to which Karen responded “Oh! I never go anywhere without it.” Great, a junkie for dinner – wonderful. All she did was talk all through dinner, blather pouring all over the table. I don’t really remember saying much, not that there was much opportunity to speak anyway. Dinner finally ended and we walked back to the hotel where Karen finally left us. We vowed to try to avoid her as much as possible from now on.

Bhuj, Gujurat, India – Up the next morning, when Nikki returned to our room to deliver the following news. Today was Shiva’s Birthday and all the locals would be drinking bhang lassis. We got up and left our hotel at 10:30 a.m. not really knowing what to expect on India’s national bhang lassi day. We exited our hotel, which sits on a quite side street adjacent to the main drag and walked down the street already crowded with the people.

The procession honoring Shiva happened to be passing at the exact moment we hit the street. There were camels and oxen pulling carts and floats with the life banned on one and the man pretending to be Shiva on the other. There were crowds of people dancing in the street between the carts and each person held a set of sticks they would bang together while they were dancing. Yet at third cart had a man with an orange turban standing on it and holding a mic, dancing and singing in time with the band. As his cart passed, he spotted the three lone white faces in the mist of the sea of brown, me, Rich, and Nikki. Somehow, we ended up being the only white people at this festival.

Once again, the second the man with the mic spotted us, he pointed at us to bring us to the attention of the people dancing in the street. They started yelling at us, inviting us to dance in the street with them. The man with the orange turban then pointed at Rich and gestured for him to get up on to the cart with him. The crowd helped move Rich away as Nikki and I duct into an alcove to see what was going to happen. They put Rich up there and thrust the mic into his hand telling him to sing. He was trying to hand the mic back to the orange turbaned man telling him he wasn’t going to sing. Nikki and I started following Rich’s cart down the street when they decided that I needed to be up on the cart with Rich. They had me get on the cart and handed me two sets of sticks for us to bang together as we danced atop this cart above the crowd.

I looked back and could see Nikki perched in a doorway laughing at the two of us. After a while, we climbed down off the cart but I guess holding asset of banging sticks does not exempt you from joining in the celebration. They made us dance down the street with them banging away. I was moved in front of the cart and put in one of rows of people dancing. The object was to dance down the street banging your sticks together twice, then stopping and banging the stick of the person in the row opposite. I danced down the street until I noticed the procession turning with another alley just going straight. We danced along and as the procession turned, we continued straight on dancing our way down the quite alley, effectively removing ourselves from the festivities. Rich had lost his banging stick sometime earlier, but I was still holding mine as we made our way through the narrow streets away from the procession. Some Indian boys were running down the street towards the festival and stopped me jabbering away in Gujarati pointing at the sticks and then to the procession. I said, “You want the sticks, here you are”, handing them over, the boy running off banging the sticks together.

We went to a restaurant and sat there having breakfast reflecting on our festival experience. Yes, it was that overwhelming feeling of fame again and as it takes a lot out of you, all of us decided a nice scotch would go down well, as Nikki put it. We took refuge in an chai house just stunned from our experience. After breakfast, we walked through a section of the city we had not seen yet. When we came across the Swami Viarayan Temple, hard to miss, as it is easily the most colorfully painted building I had seen in Bhuj, let alone all of India. The building was painted white but all the windows, doors, and facets all over the structure were painted with the most brilliant colors I had ever seen. The building was so pleasing to the eyes with using colors that I think even Disney could not come up with. The entire structure was covered in color, so we had to stop and take tons of photographs of everything.

After sitting and staring at the building for a while, we made our way back to the festival area to look for some more things to buy when I spotted a stall run by those men who make knives. I walked over there and spotted two swords with a matching sheath glittering in the sun just screaming to be purchased. Of all the things I had seen so far, these items were the first ones that I decided I really could not live without plus there is this feeling of power you get when you pull a sword out of a sheath. I did not know what I was going to do with them at home. They are hanging them from the wall but I needed them.

I had originally spotted them the night before, so I had come prepared with the lot of cash, ready to haggle away. I asked how much the set was but being that the craftsmen did not speak any English, one of the local military men came over and acted as my translator. Their opening price was 700 for the set, and after much discussion, the price was reduced to 600, final offer and not negotiable. Okay 600, 250 for each sword and 100 for the shield. I consented and walked away armed and ready to impale any uppity rickshaw drivers with my new purchase.

It was getting really hot and most shops were closed in honor of Shiva’s birthday, so we retired to our room for a quick nap. We got up later and headed over to the festival grounds that evening for we had heard there was to be some dancing that evening. There was a crowd already forming, so we took a seat on the ground and watched. The program was to be bands and dancing from the state of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. It was great entertainment and we knew it was real Indian culture not just put on for tours because we were three of about five sahibs in the entire crowd, everyone else was native and enjoying it just as much as we were. The best dancing was from Uttar Pradesh. The costumes and masks were so ornate and very well made and with their dancing entourage of 25, they acted out a story about the hunting and caging of a lion. The imagery was stupendous. The way the men surrounded the lion, symbolizing bars and things like that. After the dancing, Nikki and I got sufficiently lost again in the dark streets of Bhuj while returning to our hotel.

Ahmedabad to Bhuj, Gujurat, India – We had our usual prayers at 4:30 and 6:30 a.m. Then after we got up, we headed over to the GPO so I could post yet another parcel. Stitching, wrapping, riding, pasting the Indian Postal Service does love their arts and crafts. The easiest way to deal with the bugger is to just ask them how they want package label. Sometimes, the return address goes on the bottom on the side etc. so to make the entire process that much less painful, its easier just to wait and ask so the mail dude does not get flustered. Of course, every square inch of the parcel had to have something written, sown, or glued on to it. It is the Indian way.

The Indian culture and logic section of my brain was still stunned from the common sense used to designing the Kerala buses without windows but when Rich came over to me with some stamps he purchased, my brain was put at ease. International post cards cost seven rupees and letters, eleven.
I even written it on piece of paper so that the postmaster couldn’t mess it up, but he could of course instead of having stamps printed in denominations used frequently or set rates. They just have stamps in all denominations, plus have not figured out their thinking quite yet. But when Rich asked for two sets of seven rupee stamps, we wondered around after a post office ordeal trying to kill time for we were headed to Bhuj on that evening’s night train.

There was some festival going on out in Bhuj, which is in Western Gujarat near the Pakistani border. We arrived in the station that evening and found a carriage with no problem. Well there was one problem, our bunks were above a set of two, four person benches facing each other and there were no less than 15 people crammed into the entire area. I mean there were people everywhere and were completely undaunted when a tall, blonde, Western man carrying a 15 kilo rucksack entered the carriage to deposit his luggage.

No one moved an inch or gave any ground. So I ended up setting my pack on above kneecaps until the pain was too much too endure. The kneecaps moving and my sliding the pack under the seat, it was that easy. Neither of us could believe that we would have to endure this ride for the next 18 hours out to Bhuj. The carriage read second class, but this certainly seems like a third class carriage. The train started off. Rich and I in our bunks above the sea of people, but we did not know was that the train was also an Ahmedabad commuter train, so four stops later, the entire carriage was empty except for us.

We sat down on the benches and had a good look around. Crappy wooden slat benches with the paint worn off, then dim light bulbs with wire protective mesh twisted and hanging from the ceiling like deformed Christmas ornament. The paint peeling of the wall over the window and absolutely no lights to be seen at the window. Another perfect setting for one of my twilight zone scripts, “Two men on the train in the deepest darkest India neither knowing their train would take them on a ride of terror”. Monsoon flood sweeping carriage away.

Bhuj sits in the center of the Kutch district of the state and we learned that during the high rains of the monsoon this third of the state is physically separated from the main land by water, pretty trippy. The one good thing that did come out of our train ride was we got to meet Nikki, a blonde hair, blue-eyed British girl just winding up her travels in India. We always seem to find those. Once our carriage had emptied out, Rich went and found her in another empty carriage. We all finally got to sleep only to be woken up briefly at 2 a.m. by a group of red-turbaned sadhus.

En Route to Ahmedabad, Gujurat – Both Rich and I were awakened at 5:00 a.m. again by the crashing and banging of the Indians in the adjoining compartments. God only knows what they do from 4:30-6:00 a.m. then then be completely silent for the rest of the day

We stolled at a station about two hours later which gave me enough time to jump off and get some potato something or other server in, get this, a bown made out of a dried leaf. What will they think of next? During the course of our train ride today the only item of interest was the largest nuclear power plant I have ever seen. There were three cooling towers, all about the same size as those in the States, but then there was the grand daddy tower which was a minimum of twice the size of the smaller towers. I was mighty impressed with this feat of engineering, but why are there still so many problems with sanitation and poverty in the cities if they can manage to build something like that?

Fifty two and one half hours and 2,470 km (1,535 miles) later we finally arrived in Ahmedabad, Gujuray at 9:15 that evening. We jumped in a rickshaw to our hotel, and as we were going along noticed that most, if not all the shops were closed, and there weren’t that many people out on the street (this is a country of 900m – there are people everywhere).

We checked into the hotel to find out there was a 10:00 p.m. curfew in effect due to the riots in Bombay. We ran around the corner and grabbed a bite to eat, returning to the hotel just as the clocks struck ten.