06.01.18 Our Madhya Pradesh Tour – Part II

Our train from Satna – an express train from Varanasi to LTT terminal, Mumbai - reached Jabalpur quite late - nearly 2 hours – at 08.30 in the night. The hotel had offered a free pick up from the station. But the taxi wasn’t in sight, despite a personal conversation with the travel manager of the hotel. Probably there was a goof up. We were, in fact, frustrated, waiting outside the chilly railway station and that too, after a boring rail travel. I had to give the hotel reception staff a bit of my mind in the strongest terms. To appease us, the manager offered a free breakfast to us for the next morning. Other than this goof up, the hotel, the stay there, and the food were excellent.

Next morning, we had arranged a taxi to take us to Bheda Ghat Marble rocks – some 25 kilometers away from Jabalpur town - and other sightseeing places around Jabalpur. 

Balancing rock

Balancing rock

Rani Durgawati Fort

Rani Durgawati Fort

Rani Durgawati Fort

On our way, we stopped over at the ‘Balancing Rock’ and Rani Durgawati Fort. From the picture of the balancing rock you might wonder how these rocks had been balancing themselves delicately over thousands of years, as I had wondered too. Rani Durgawati Fort is situated on a small hill, and one can view this dilapidated fort, climbing some 200 steps. In northern India, this is possibly the story in many places; several kings and queens building small forts in places not easily accessible to enemies, to protect or hide themselves from (mostly) the barbaric Islamic invaders. Or, some of them hideouts built by Islamic chieftains to protect their Hindu concubine queens from the view of others.

We also went to a famous 1000-year-old Tiruparasundari temple. 

Bheda Ghat offers a fabulous view of Narmada River flowing between tall marble rocks, just similar to a canyon.

After loitering around the viewpoints and after doing window shopping at several makeshift shops selling exquisitely carved marble statues and articles of varied sizes along the way we went for the boat ride on the river. Another remarkable experience. A small boat which can accommodate about 15 persons. 

The boat rower told a number of stories about the river, the rocks, the film shootings, the film stars, and what not as he rowed the boat. Some funny, some hilarious, and some not-so-serious stories. At many places, the river was quite narrow between tall rocks and was a bit scary too. The pictures on the sides will tell the beauty of the river and the marble rocks. No need to explain in word. 

At one place, three young lads, not even 10-12 aged, jumped from sharp rocks, some 100 meters tall, into the river to entertain the boat riders and collect money. Dare devils! The river was very deep in many places – some 80 to 100 feet deep.

After visiting Bheda Ghat, we went to Bargi dam – another 40 kilometers drive. I have read about Bargi dam that it was one of the first of the chain of 38 dams built across Narmada River for irrigation and power generation. However, it turned out that other than a cruise on the waters there was nothing else to see there. When we went, only a motorized speed boat was run, and we had a 5 minutes ride in a speed boat for the first time in our life. Visitors, better avoid Bargi dam, if you want to save time.

We returned back quite disappointed from Bargi dam, went straight to the 76 feet tall Lord Shiva Statue temple in Kachnar, on the outskirts of Jabalpur.

A mammoth statue, indeed. We could see a lot of people visiting the temple – some devotees and many tourists. From there, we rushed to Gwarighat to watch the holy Aarti to Narmada River, which takes place at 7 at night every day. In the chilly darkness of the night, with the silhouette of the river in the background, five pundits performed the Pooja and Aarti to Narmada Devi to the meticulous chanting of Vedic mantras. Yes, in India, all rivers are considered very holy and as a form of female gods, reverently called Devis. The Aarti song always lifts up my mood, anywhere, everywhere, and anytime. So, for about thirty minutes I spent my time in some different world, forgetting all my worldly connections.  Really, a fantastic spiritual experience. A must see when one visits Jabalpur. There was quite a good crowd to watch the Aarti. In fact, they allowed a number of visitors too to perform the Aarti, holding the huge Aarti plates. We were one among the fortunate to perform  this Aarti. 

 

After the Aarti got over, we were dropped off at the Jabalpur railway station to catch our 21.30 train to Ujjain. We reached Ujjain the next morning at around 08.30 am.

30.12.2017 Introduction to my Madhya Pradesh Tour Report

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 5^th 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 16^th December evening and returned back on 29^th 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.