Our Gujarat Tour Report ....continued - Day 2 in the Great Rann of Kutch

Our Gujarat Tour Report ....continued

On the second day of our stay in Great Rann of Kutch, we visited Lakhpat Fort in the northwest corner of Kutch. (On the way, we stopped at Mata No Madh temple, a ‘puranic’ temple for Devi. The temple has a story similar to what people talk about Kamakhya temple in Guwahati, Chandi Mandir near Chandigarh, and Jwalamukhi in Himachal)

I understand Lakhpat was once a famous port city, but now virtually abandoned for more than 2 centuries. It appears that during the earthquake in 1819 the course of Indus River altered to the West, drying up the Great Rann including Lakhpat. In 1801, Jamadar Fateh Muhammad had constructed a 7 kilometers long high walls which still remains intact. We had a long drive to the Fort, but once we were there, climbing the wall of the Fort and looking beyond the dried up sea we realized that the trip was worth the trouble. 

Lakhpat is also important for Sikhs, as Gurunanak, the founder of Sikhism had camped at this place on his way to Mecca. There is a quiet Gurudwara, and here, we enjoyed their traditional free ‘langar’ – chapathi and tasty ‘dal’. Sikhs are known for their hospitality and feeding all in their Gurudwaras. 

Besides, Phir Gaus Muhammad, a Sufi mystic, had practiced spiritualism from his age twelve, half as a Hindu and half as a Muslim in Lakhpat. There is a stone tomb with very complex carvings for him. A water tank adjacent to the tomb is reported to be having miraculous healing powers. However, the tank looked very dirty and not maintained properly.

            Narayan Sarovar and Koteshwar     

From there, we had another long drive to Narayan Sarovar and Koteshwar. 

Narayan Sarovar appears to be one of the important holy lakes of northern India like Pushkar in Ajmere. This lake too was full of algae, not maintained properly, and dirty. The Narayan temple was closed during the time of our visit and so, we drove to Koteshewar which was nearby.

The temple of Shri Koteshwar Mahadev sits on the seashore, and the scene looked very similar to Kanyakumari. 

All you see is the vast expanse of deep blue seawater of the Arabic Sea. The Koteshwar temple looked majestic with its tall, beautifully carved temple towers. There is a long pier jetting into the sea for small naval boats and ships.

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.

Our tour to Ladakh - An Introduction

18^th August 2016

Sometime in May/June, this year, I was scrounging the internet for a Europe trip on our way back from the USA during June. However, my better-half threw cold water on my plans, citing her troubled knees and our long absence away from our home in India. However, I deftly managed to strike a deal with her that she wouldn’t object to a trip within India sometime during August. So, I was seriously searching the internet for a trip to Gujarat/Gangtok/Nepal, the places we had yet to explore and suddenly, an ad for a package tour to Ladakh (promoted by Thomas Cook India) popped up from nowhere. Immediately on glancing through the ad, I knew that Ladakh was the place we would be visiting, on our return to India. I seriously researched on a trip to Ladakh and collected some basic details.

Ladakh is a high altitude desert on the Himalayas and a part of the State of Jammu and Kashmere. The place, being a rain shadow area, is generally bereft of rains and green vegetation. The altitudes range from 9000 feet to 22000 feet resulting in low oxygen availability that visitors could be highly susceptible to the High Altitude Sickness, including breathing trouble. June to September is generally summer time there. The Ladakh region shares its international borders with both the Tibetan China and Pakistan. Leh and Kargil are the two main centers in Ladakh, and the population is divided between Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists, generally. Tourism happens to be the main business, lasting mostly through the summer months only. Winters could be extremely cold with snow fall. The Border Road Organization is doing a tremendous job, maintaining the roads in the most difficult conditions and terrain. The entire region seems more or less under the control of army, as one could see the army camps, units, and their movements almost everywhere. Indus is a major river in the upper Leh area and Zanskar is another important river.

Armed with the preliminary information, I searched for other tour packages too. I concluded Thomas Cook India and MakeMyTrip.com, both, offered decent tours. The costs were similar. I settled for the Thomas Cook package as it included the trip to the most attractive, high altitude, blue-water-lake at Pangong. I paid the initial advance for the tour from New Delhi. The package included flight from New Delhi to Leh and return, hotel accommodation, morning breakfast, dinner at nights, lunch for three days, pick-up and drop from and to the airport at Leh and transportation for the sightseeing places – lasting 7 Nights/8 Days. The tour included Leh, Nubra valley and Pangong Blue Water Lake.

The high altitude of Ladakh scared my wife, and she was quite apprehensive. Yet, she okayed the trip, for I knew she also loved traveling and seeing places. After all, we may have only one life, and we must see as many places as possible when we are still healthy and when our mobility is not seriously hampered by all sorts of ailments. This is my belief. Traveling and sightseeing is one of my favorite hobbies. We also read about a few scary details about the Ladakh region – landslides, rough road conditions, border troubles, lack of telecommunication facilities, inaccessibility etc., -  and we started making preparations.

Torch light, umbrella, medicine for every known common illnesses like throat infection, back-pain, diarrhea, acidity, cold and flu etc., Diomax for high altitude sickness, winter clothing, snacks, etc., etc. Importantly, converting my BSNL prepaid mobile phone connection to Postpaid. BSNL was the only reliable service provider in Ladakh, it seemed.

Thomas Cook India didn’t send me the tickets, vouchers and other details well in advance and contended that it was their policy to send them only three days before the commencement of the tour. After a series of complaints and telephone calls to their Toll Free numbers, pointing out that I lived in a remote corner of Tamil Nadu and I didn’t intend to travel by flight to Delhi and that I didn’t wish to undertake a travel to Delhi without knowing anything about the tour, finally, they sent me the details a day before I left Tenkasi, where I live.

I travelled by the train to Chennai and then to New Delhi. After all, I have plenty of time with me and I don’t have to rush to reach Delhi by air. It saved money for me too. After a day’s stay in an OYO hotel in Karolbagh, New Delhi on the 6^th, finally we were there at the New Delhi airport on the 7^th early morning to catch our flight to Leh. There began one of the memorable and enjoyable ever trips we had undertaken in the last several years.

                       

                                    To be continued……..