A note of caution: Though
I have written and published three books of short stories I am a novelist
basically, and so, brevity is not known to me.
Probably,
a tiny spark of desire to visit Madhya Pradesh got impregnated in my mind during
2015 while writing the 5th Volume of my book: I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT … INDIA, ITS STATES, AND IMPORTANT CITIES,
which concerned about the Central India, including Madhya Pradesh. While
collecting information on Madhya Pradesh for the purpose of the book I stumped
upon some information about, among other places, Bhimbedka, in MP, where some
10000 years-old human paintings have still survived under the rock shelters.
The desire must have been lying dormant for long until quite suddenly, during
November, it grew into gigantic proportions. Fortunately, for me, whenever I am
in India, the second half of December is always a dull period, with no activity,
due to all round closure of schools and colleges.
In
my house, I represent the kinetic energy, wanting action, movement, and
commotion, and my wife stands for potential energy, wanting stability, balance,
and peace. While I wanted to make the tour to Madhya Pradesh she wasn’t that
keen. But, as it always happened, she gave in to my emotional blackmailing and
agreed for the tour. Not that she doesn’t like sightseeing, but she has
recently developed a habit of concerning more and more about health – present and
presumed. So, my gratitude goes to her for agreeing to make the trip. God bless
her.
Something
similar had happened earlier too. Sometime in late 2013, I was reading Dan
Brown’s INFERNO. As I read the extensive description about Florence and its
various theocratic structures, suddenly I felt I must visit Italy,
specifically, Florence. After some hard bargaining with my wife, we made a very
happy trip to Italy during March 2014, and I felt fulfilled.
Coming
back to our Madhya Pradesh tour, once we decided to make the tour, I started
looking at places to visit. Madhya Pradesh is a very vast state, but thinly
populated. I had visited several parts of the State during the early 1990s, as
part of my official work, and I had noticed that several parts of the State
were primitive in development and public conveniences. But I knew things have
changed a lot over there since then.
We
decided to limit ourselves to Khajuraho, Jabalpur, Ujjain, Indore, and Bhopal.
Though it might look a bit convoluted, the crisscross journey across the State
became inevitable as I insisted on visiting the Marble Rocks along the Narmadha
River, near Jabalpur. And we were both happy that I insisted on passing through
Jabalpur too. Our itinerary broadly fell like this:
Chennai
to Bhopal (by train)
Bhopal
to Khajuraho (by train)
Khajuraho
to Satna (by local public transport) and from Satna to Jabalpur (by train)
Jabalpur
to Ujjain (by train)
Ujjain
to Indore (by public transport)
Indore
to Mahabaleshwar and Mandu (by public transport)
Indore
to Bhopal (by public transport)
Bhopal
to Sanchi, Udaygiri, Bhojpur, and Bhimbedka by a hired taxi
Bhopal
to Chennai (by train)
Taxi
was a convenient option everywhere, but we decided to use public transport
wherever possible. And it was not inconvenient.
We
left from Tenkasi on 16th December evening and returned back on 29th
morning. All hotels were booked through the internet through either
MakeMyTrip.com or Bookings.com or Goibobo.com. The hotels we booked were
decent, centrally located, easily accessible, comfortable, and quite
economical. For me, the internet is almost a demi-God. Grants you anything you
want!
The
trip was quite hectic as we were constantly on the move. Yet, we enjoyed the
whole trip. We enjoyed decent north Indian food everywhere. Adharak ka chai was uniformly great
everywhere. Fortunately for us, there were no hiccups anywhere during our trip.
All meticulously planned and realized.
My
overall impressions about Madhya Pradesh can be summarized as follows:
1.
Most
places were very neat and clean. ‘Swachh Bharat’ advertisements were there on
every wall at many places. We could see public toilets everywhere. Very
commendable. Proper roads have been developed in all the places we visited. The
people were very simple and helpful.
2.
The
people in the rural areas appeared genuinely poor. One could see large groups
of people traveling with headloads of what, I don’t know, everywhere. Incidentally,
Madhya Pradesh has the largest percentage of Adhivasis (Tribal people), who
were illiterate or only semi-literate, and very innocent. We passed through
several small villages during the trip.
3.
On
casual conversation with fellow travelers while traveling and a few public, we
got the impression that the day to day State administration is as inefficient
and corrupt as any other State.
4.
The
weather was cool during the night, but the days were quite warm or hot.
Await
a couple of more reports on the details of the places we visited and our
impressions about them.