10.01.18 Our Tour to Madhya Pradesh – 3rd Part – Ujjain, Indore, Omkareshwar and Mandu

At Ujjain railway station we engaged an autorickshaw for visiting various temples. We agreed to pay him three hundred and fifty rupees. We rented a small room in a small hotel just for the purpose of taking bath. The autorickshaw took us to several temples, importantly:

Sandipani (Shandhipani) Ashram: This is where Lord Krishna, in the company of Balram, studied under the tutelage of Rishi Sandipani. The Ashram has since been converted into a temple. There is a stepped well inside the Ashram. The atmosphere inside the Ashram was quite calm and serene.

Shri Mangalnath Temple: Located on the banks of Shipra river, the temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva. The earliest Meridian (of earth) is claimed to have passed through this place, and hence the place is believed to be very significant for astrological studies.

Harsiddhi Temple, believed to have been built by King Vikramaditya. Legendary beliefs say that the elbow of Kali fell at the spot where the temple is built.

Shri Kalbhairav Temple, believed to have been built by the King Bhadrasen, several centuries ago. Here, the main offering to the Lord is brandy, besides the customary flowers. It was really funny to watch the Lord consuming litres and litres of brandy as the pundit pours down the mouth of the statue of the deity the brandy brought by devotees, and nobody knows where the brandy drains.

Bartrihari Caves: It is believed that King Vikramaditya’s step brother renounced his worldly life and chose to spend his remaining life in meditation in these caves. The caves were so narrow, deep, and small that it could hurt claustrophobic people.

Ghadhkali Temple: It is here Kalidas got his boon from Devi Maa. Some scholars believe that during 7th century this ancient temple was reconstructed by King Harshwardhan of Thaneshwar when he visited Ujjain. It is indeed the most ancient temple of Ujjain. The former Gwalior rulers rebuilt this holy shrine to its former glory.

On our way back to the main Mahakaleshwar Temple, we stopped briefly at Vikramaditya Temple and Bada Ganesh Temple – both on the roadsides and quite small. We also stopped over at Ram Ghat on the banks of Kshipra river, where the Kumbh Mela takes places once in 4 years.

There was a very long queue of devotees in front of Mahakaleshwar Temple, where one of the 12 Jyothirlingas is located. We learned that it could take several hours for free darshan. Fortunately, there was a special darshan, paying an entry ticket of Rs.250/- per head and we chose the short cut. We had very good darshan of Lord Mahakaleshwar. As they have built a kind of stepped platforms in front of the deity for managing the queue we could stand in front of the deity for longer time.

We took a Volvo AC bus and reached Indore by the evening. We checked into our hotel for the night’s stay.

The hotel was located in a busy area, surrounded by shops, restaurants, multiplex cinema theatre, etc., and we had a stroll to the nearby places in the evening.

Next morning, we decided to take a public bus to Omkareshwar, the other Jyothirlinga. It was a pity that there was no direct bus to Omkareshwar from Indore, despite the place being an important holy place. After nearly four hours, after changing a bus on the way, we were at Omkareshwar bus stand, which is another about a kilometer from the temple. An autorickshaw dropped us near the bridge to cross Narmada River to reach the temple.

Narmadha is an amazing river, the lifeline of Madhya Pradesh, 1312 kilometers long, originating in the Amarkantak plateau, and draining through the Gulf of Khambat into the Arabian Sea. It flows from East to West, rather the longest West flowing river. It also forms a kind of border between the northern and southern India.

At the Omkareshwar Temple, there was a chaotic crowd to have darshan of the Lord. Besides, the darshan was to have a break for an hour or so at 12.20 pm, and so, everyone pushed and crushed everyone else to enter the sanctum before the gates were closed. We were fortunate that we were also pushed inside the gate to have a very brief darshan of Omkareshwar. Virtually, everyone was pushed out from the sanctum.

We took a boat to cross the river to reach the Mamalleshwar, which taken together with Omkareshwar, his twin, is considered one of the 12 Jyothirlingas. Hardly, any crowd was here in this temple. We had good darshan, then finished our lunch, took a bus and returned back to Indore by the evening.

Next morning, we packed our things, left our luggage in the hotel itself, and departed for Mandu, an historical place. Again, we decided to use the public transport, and there was no direct bus. After changing over at Dhar, we reached Mandu after nearly three hours or so. Only taxis plied inside Mandu for sightseeing. We visited a number of historical mahals, masjids, and temples. Overall, I wasn’t so much impressed about the place, having seen several Islamic structures at various places in India. However, they all look beautiful in pictures.

The same evening, we took a late-evening bus and reached Bhopal by around 11 at night and checked into our hotel.

The next report will be our final on our Madhya Pradesh Tour.

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.