The last day of 2011 dawned a little warmer in Gwalior than the days before. My thermometer registered 61 degrees in my room when I got up, a bit better than the high 50's registered on previous days. However, I was heading south to warmer weather. I left Gwalior about 11 on a train headed about 235 miles south to Bhopal. This was a relatively expensive train ($11 for my ticket, maybe three times the usual price) on a "Shatabdi Express." I was told "shatabdi" means "sanctuary" and they run from Delhi to various nearby state capitals (Lucknow, Bhopal, Jaipur, Chandighar, maybe others), leaving in the morning and returning in the afternoon. The train had only two stops, Gwalior and Jhansi, on the way to Bhopal. It was, however, more than an hour late due to fog in Delhi, which according to the newspapers has been causing lots of delays to trains and planes.
We zipped to Jhansi is a little over an hour, compared to the three and a half hours it took me to get from Jhansi to Gwalior by bus. And it was quite a comfortable train, with big (though, of course, dirty) windows and comfortable seats. Nobody was sharing seats or standing in the aisle. On the first leg, to Jhansi, attendants served tea and biscuits and gave each passenger a bottle of water. After Jhansi they served a watery tomato soup with breadsticks and butter, and then a very good thali lunch. I enjoyed the trip. After Jhansi there were quite a few open seats. There were clouds from the beginning, and they darkened after Jhansi, with a little rain about 12:30. The sun was breaking through by 1, though, as we passed fields of wheat and mustard. Nearing, Bhopal, the wheat fields seemed to be larger and the mustard disappeared. As we passed the small town of Sanchi I could see the Buddhist stupas on the hill to our east. It would have been nice to be able to get off there, as Sanchi was where I was heading.
We reached Bhopal about 3:30, some 45 minutes after passing Sanchi. After taking an autorickshaw from the train station to the bus stand, I got on a bus bound for Sanchi about 4. It is less than 30 miles away, but with stops here and there on a very crowded little bus I didn't arrive until 6:20, after sunset and just as it was getting dark. Sanchi is a little town with something like 5000 people and I got a room in a little hotel next to the train station. I did notice, though, how much warmer it was in Sanchi than in Gwalior. I ate dinner outside with only my windbreaker and not my fleece on. (In Orchha one day I had checked the temperatures in Jhansi and Bhopal and noticed that the lows were about seven degrees Celsius, so about 13 Fahrenheit, higher in Bhopal than in Jhansi.)
The little town was crowded for New Year's Eve. Before dinner I had checked out one of the better hotels and it was getting prepared for a 9:30 dinner outside on its lawn, with two dance floors, multicolored and illuminated from below, and blaring music. I talked with a 66 year old Japanese man during dinner and went to bed before midnight, a little after 11. The loud, celebratory New Year's Eve music wasn't too bad. My hotel was right next to the train station, maybe 300 feet from the tracks, and there were trains all day and night as this is one of the major routes in India, between Delhi and Bombay. I kind of enjoyed the sound of trains in the night, though. At the train station a sign gave the elevation as 396 meters, about 1300 feet.
The next morning I heard thunder and then some rain a little after 7. I didn't get up until after 8 and by then the sun was breaking through the clouds. I walked around a bit and had a leisurely breakfast. Hordes of Indians were arriving for New Year's Day. I was told there is no admittance fee on New Year's Day for the stupa complex and there were thouands of Indian day trippers arriving, by train, bus and private vehicles.
I decided I would put off my visit to the stupas until the next day and tried unsuccessfully to rent a bike for a trip north. Eventually, I took a bus about five miles north to the town of Vidisha and tried to rent a bike there, before giving up and hiring an autorickshaw to take me first to the Udaigiri Caves just outside of town and then the site of the ancient city of Besnagar. The caves, carved into a rocky outcrop, were interesting, especially one with a carving of the boar incarnation of Vishnu, and there were good views of the bright green wheatfields all around. There isn't much of Besnagar left, but there is a second century BC column erected by a man named Heliodorus who was an ambassador from the Indo-Greek kingdom in what is now the Pakistani Punjab, a remnant of Alexander the Great's foray into India two centuries earlier. There is an inscription on it and apparently Heliodorus had become a Hindu.
I got back to Sanchi about 2:30 and it seemed overrun by Indian tourists. I sat at my hotel's little outdoor restaurant and watched the crowds. Many stopped by the little restaurant for tea or coffee or snacks on the way to the train station and they were friendly. I received many "Happy New Years!" The restaurant and hotel were run by a man perhaps a little older than me with a magnificent handlebar moustache. There are photos of him above the counter in his army days, with more or less the same, but darker, moustache. I had washed one of my tee shirts the night before and it hadn't dried by sundown, so I took it to a guy ironing clothes with one of those huge, charcoal filled irons and watched him iron it very precisely. It's not that I wanted it ironed, but I figured that was the best way to dry it quickly.
It was cloudy and a bit cooler the next morning. The town seemed mercifully quiet after the crowds of the day before. I had a leisurely breakfast and visited the little museum, with some statuary and some interesting photos of Sanchi before restoration. About 11, as the sun came out, I headed up the hill to the stupas. The first stupa at Sanchi was built by the third century BC Emperor Ashoka soon after he converted to Buddhism, apparently in repentance after a particularly bloody campaign against the Kalingas, in what is now Odisha (formerly Orissa) state. Sanchi is a long way from his capital at what is now Patna, but Ashoka had apparently been governor at Besnagar and had married a woman, the daugher of a banker, from there. The hilltop is about 200 feet above the town. I rented an excellent audio guide and spent about three hours listening to it as I looked around.
Ashoka's stupa, containing relics of Buddha (it is believed), was much enlarged about a century later and is over 50 feet high and about 120 feet wide. The stupa is interesting, but what are really fantastic are the four gates at each of the cardinal directions, built about a century after the stupa was enlarged. They are covered with hundreds of interesting and beautiful carvings, and the audio tour did an excellent job of explaining many of them. At the time these four gates, or toranas, were carved, Buddha was not represented in human form, but rather as a Boddhi tree, a wheel, a stupa and even a horse. Behind the gates and next to the stupa are four statues of Buddha in human form, added in the fifth century AD. Three are headless and the fourth rather obviously has his head reattached. I spent hours looking at those gates, from both below and from the upper walkway around the stupa.
And I wandered around the site. There is another large stupa nearby, reconstructed (it was just a pile of stone) and in which were found in the 1850's two boxes containing relics, encrusted with jewels, of two of Buddha's principal disciples. These relics were returned in the 1950's and are kept in a nearby Sri Lankan temple, to be displayed once a year in November. Around the main stupa are the remains of monasteries and smaller stupas and there are good views of the wheat covered surrounding area and of the trains periodically passing through. Down the hillside is another stupa, reconstructed, in which were found relics of three generations of disciples. Sanchi, like other Buddhist sites in India, was abandoned about 1200, rediscovered by the British in the early 19th century and then reconstructed by the British in the early 20th century. The gates had all fallen down and the stupa had been bored into by treasure seekers. I spent the whole afternoon up there. It is a beautiful spot. There were a lot of tourists at times, including noisy Indian ones. I left when they closed it down at sunset. At dinner that night I talked to a local guy, maybe about my age or a little older, who told me he used onion mixed with water on his eyes and that he had regrown the hair on his once bald head by rubbing onions on it.
It was foggy in Sanchi the next morning, and colder. I walked over to the train station about 8:30 and was told a train heading to Bhopal was arriving. I packed up my stuff and bought a ticket for Bhopal. The train arrived shortly after 9 (I had noticed the previous two days that this train, the 8 o'clock train, arrived at about 9) and I and others boarded it, but then it sat in the station for over an hour as other trains passed through. I was told these were higher priority trains that had been delayed by fog further north. The fog lifted soon after we left Sanchi and it took about an hour to reach Bhopal, at 11:15. We crossed the Tropic of Cancer on the way. I checked into a hotel near the station and had a very good lunch there, a bell pepper stuffed with chese and vegetables in a tomato sauce.
After lunch I walked through Bhopal's old city, including its colorful bazaars. Bhopal, with 1.5 million people, is the capital of Madhya Pradesh, with 90 million, and is 40% Muslim. In fact, it was governed until independence by a Muslim dynasty of several women, called Begums. I don't understand why they were women and not men. There are some great photos I have seen elsewhere of the viceroy with the leaders of India's princely states, with the completely burqa covered Begum of Bhopal in the front row. I walked to the Taj-ul-Masjid, the largest mosque in India and the third largest in the world, started by a Begum in the 1870's and still unfinished at her death in 1901. It wasn't finished until the 1970's. It is an impressive building and a hundred or so skull capped boys were reciting the Koran at the madrassa inside the main building. They were rocking back and forth as they read aloud. I asked one kid why and he said to keep from falling asleep.
I walked from there to Imam Square, with a derelict former palace, now government offices, and a mosque, the Moti Masjid, built by a previous Begum about 1860. Finally I made my way through the colorful and crowded bazaar, with lots of women in chadors (or whatever they called -- long black robes from head to toe, though with faces uncovered) and men in white skullcaps and beards, to the Jama Masjid, built by a still earlier Begum in 1837. People were friendly and when I stopped for a glass of tea the tea guys insisted I sit on a nearby motorcycle to drink it as there were no chairs available. I walked back to my hotel in the late afternoon past a dusty field with cricket players and water buffalo, the latter a little surprising in the middle of such a large town, but then even more of them came down a busy street.
The next morning I was served breakfast in my hotel room, part of the price of the room. About 9 I boarded a bus for a day trip about 30 miles south, to the caves at Bimbetka. We made stops all over town and didn't reach the turn off for Bimbetka until almost 11, the last five miles on a terribly dusty and bumpy road. From the turn off I walked about two miles, first through fields of wheat and other crops and then through dry, rocky hills, rising between 300 and 400 feet, before I reached the caves. These caves, full of prehistoric cave paintings, were discovered in 1957 and I spent about two hours visiting fifteen of them along a stone path. The site is very well marked and explained, quite a surprise, and was very interesting. The rocks and caves tower above you, and the paintings, in red and white and some even in yellow and green, are from various eras. The oldest date back to about 12,000 BC. They show large animals, and hunting scenes, and even men fighting. There is one small hand outlined, perhaps that of a child. It was a very interesting and enjoyable place, except for the watchmen listening to screechy music. One cave, called the Zoo Cave, had over 500 figures of animals and men. Another cave, which you could walk through from one end to another, was maybe 50 feet long.
I walked back, warm in the sun, and caught a bus heading toward Bhopal, though I got off about half way back and took another bus, then a tempo to the Bhojeshwar Temple at Bhojpur. This temple on a hill, squarish and about 70 feet high, was apparently never completed as the city was conquered by Muslims. There is even an earthen ramp behind it that was used to move big stones to the top of the temple. There were quite a few pilgrims there, making offerings supervised by Brahmin priests in front of the temple. Inside are four beautifully carved colummns, plus in the center India's largest lingam, over six feet high on a pedestal about 15 feet high. The smooth stone lingam had symbols carved onto it. An older Brahmin priest climbed up a precarious looking ladder to the top of the pedestal and proceeded to clean the flowers atop the lingam. He used a pole with a rag attached to it and that was interesting to watch. Near the temple is a rocky outcrop with lines carved on it, perhaps some sort of plans for the temple complex. Langurs lounged nearby, ever alert for something to eat from the pilgrims. I left about 5 and it took about two hours to get back to my hotel, despite Bhojpur being only about 12 miles from Bhopal. We got stuck in rush hour traffic and then I was let out in the wrong part of the city.
I left Bhopal the next morning about 9 on a bus bound for Indore, but I got off at Dewas, shortly before Indore. It is only about 95 miles to Dewas, but the bus didn't arrive until 1:30, with many stops and waits in Bhopal itself and towns along the way. The highway, though, was very good, a four lane divided highway passing mostly wheatfields, with the wheat about a foot high, plus some barren land. There were quite a few trees and some hills in the distance. The towns were congested, as usual. This part of India is about 1500 feet in elevation, the central India plateau. In Dewas we passed Devi Hill, with a temple on it. E. M. Forrestor, the author of A Passage to India, spent some time here in the 20's.
From Dewas I caught a crowded bus north to Ujjain, arriving about 3 after a trip of only a little over 20 miles. I had planned to stay at a hotel in front of the train station, but the whole row of buildings was being knocked down, quite a demolition site. Instead I took a cycle rickshaw to the temple district and got a room in what is perhaps the nicest hotel I've stayed in in India, though it had only a squat toilet. It was clean and comfortable. It cost me 1000 rupees, almost $20, more than twice what I usually pay.
Ujjain is one of India's seven holy cities. It, along with Allahabad, Haridwar and Nasik, is the site of the huge gatherings called Kumbh Melas, held every twelve years in each city, though with smaller melas in other years. "Mela" means something like "festival" or "fair" and "kumbh" means "pot." Apparently, the gods were fighting over a pot of some sacred nectar and in the tussle four drops fell, one landing in each of the four cities.
A block or so from my hotel was the Mahakaleshwar Temple, destroyed by Muslims but rebuilt in the 1800's. There were masses of pilgrims around it, with many flower sellers, some with long, thick garlands of colorful flowers, with attendant bees. There were long lines of people waiting to enter the temple and standing along metal rails, with police guards at the entrance. I walked to the nearby Harsiddhi Temple, much less crowded. In front are black stone towers with scores of little pots for oil, to be lit up for cermonies. Two men were climbing one of the towers and pouring something, perhaps oil, into the pots, though I never saw them lit and I passed this temple several times during my stay, both at night and during the day. Inside the temple was an orange colored stone, with a face drawn on it. My guidebooks were in conflict about the nature of the temple and I couldn't get an explanation from anyone. One guidebook said it honored the goddess Annapurna; another that Sati's elbow had fallen here during Shiva's dance of destruction.
From there I walked a short distance to Ram Ghat on the Shipra River flowing through town. Nightfall was near and there were few bathers. The people there were friendly and there were no other western tourists. After sunset three Brahmin priests performed an aarti on the ghat, with those flaming candelabra. One guy on the other side of the river was doing the same. I walked back to the Mahakaleshwar Temple and went in, after depositing my shoes and my bag. I had noticed there were no lines. However, I hit a line aeventually and stood in it for about 20 minutes. It didn't move and I gave up, jumped the metal barriers and walked back to the entrance. While in line, we could watch some sort of fire ceremony in the sanctuary below us on video screens. I suspect that was the reason we were kept waiting.
I had dinner and then about 8:30 again went into the temple. This time there was no waiting. I walked through a labyrinth of sorts and finally reached the subterraneun sanctuary, with a lingam that is one of India's twelve jyotilingams. These are considered to be naturally occurring lingams, deriving their force from themselves and not from any ceremonites by priests. It was covered with flowers, and pilgrims gathered around it in the little room to make offerrings of flowers and other stuff to it. No photos were allowed, but people were friendly and didn't seem to mind my being there. I walked out to the courtyard around the temple and there were all sorts of lingams in subsidiary little temples and shelters. Many were quite fancy, with faces drawn on them. A lot were orange. (Lingams are symbols of the creative power of Shiva and as I understand it are basically penises.) The temple spire was lit up in the night and an almost full moon loomed overhead.
I got up about 8 the next morning and walked to Ram Ghat. There were only a few bathers and so I walked to another temple, Gopal Mandir, with silver doors supposely originally in the temple at Somnath in Gujarat, then pillaged and taken to Afghanistan and later Lahore, before being purchased by a 19th century Holkar raja and brought to Ujjain.
I had a delicious breakfast of potato filled paranthas and curd about 10 and then walked back to Ram Ghat. Quite a bit was going on and the people were very friendly. A ghat side barber and his customer insisted I take their photo. The barber had finished shaving the customer's head and had lathered up his thick beard. I took a photo and another once he had begun shaving the beard, which came off easily. Must have been a sharp razor. A few men were celebrating pujas along the river and I watched those. Other onlookers encouraged me to take photos. I needed little encouragement but it was nice to know they didn't mind. The ceremonies were quite interesting to watch. Freshly head shaved men in dhotis and bare chests were guided by Brahmin priests and rolled dough into little balls and then poured milk and other stuff on them. Others poured water into little brass basins surrounded by piles of rice, wheat, and other grains, then put pieces of flowers into the basins, then arranged coconuts on top of the basins, each positioned in a certain direction, guided by the priest. They next put a few rice grains on the coconuts and then flowers on top of the rice. There were now quite a few bathers. Women unrolled their colorful saris in the sun. I'm not sure why, whether it was to dry them out or to try to put some sort of barrier to prying eyes, though most of them didn't seem to care who watched. I watched a man putting on his turban, wrapping it in a certain way, and that was interesting to watch. As I walked back I found a big stack of cow dung, in disk shaped patties about a foot in diameter and maybe two or three inches thick. A kid told me they sell for 8 rupees, about 16 cents, each and will burn for about a half hour.
Back at the Mahakaleshwar Temple a man was riding an elephant with white and purple markings on it, including Shiva's trident on his forehead. Many people were giving it fruit and chappatis. I saw him eat a whole bunch of bananas, peels and all. Others offerred him money, with he skillfully handed up to his mahout. Bills he held in the end of this trunk while coins were balanced on his trunk. At one point the mahout stopped him near a water pump. While a boy pumped away, the elephant enclosed the end of the water pipe with his trunk until it filled, then put the trunk into his mouth to transfer the water. On sale nearby, along with flowers and other offerrings, were photos of the various lingams, many quite garish and with faces on them.
I had lunch about 1:30 and took one last stroll around the temple. It was warm at midday and, being the only westerner in town, I was a real beggar magnet. I left Ujjain a little after 2 on a bus bound for Indore to the south, arriving a little before 4. I checked into a hotel near the bus station and then walked to the nearby train station, crossed over it to the other side, and walked to Gandhi Hall, former King Edward VII Hall, built in 1904 and renamed in 1948. It is the former town hall, quite a beautiful building, with a huge open hall inside. It seems to be falling apart, though. Thousands of parrots gathered in the nearby trees at nightfall. A crafts fair was nearby and I bought some delicious sugared dried mango. I seemed to be the only westerner around and people were friendly. I asked one guy how many people there were in Indore and he told me 25 lakh, so 2.5 million. Indians don't use "million" and "billion." They use "lakh" (100,000) and "crore" (10,000,000). I had dinner at another one of India's Indian Coffee Houses and then walked back to my hotel and read two newspapers I had just bought, the Times of India and the Hindustan Times. These English language newspapers are 3 rupees a copy, just 6 cents. I also bought a weekly India Today newsmagazine for 30 rupees, only 60 cents. I quite enjoy reading them.
I walked to the India Coffee House the next morning and had a long breakfast until almost 10. The waiter brought the morning's edition of the Hindustan Times with my coffee, omelette and buttered toast. They also serve very good Indian food but I have become quite fond of their cheese omelettes and buttered toast. The newspaper said the high would be 25 and the low 12, about 77 and 54 Fahrenheit. From the Indian Coffee House I walked along the not yet too busy Saturday morning streets to a riverside Hindu Temple, with women selling lemons and other fruit outside and a green mosque nearby. Further along was the Raj Wada, the former palace, with an impressive seven story facade. From there I walked through the bazaar to the Kanch Mandir, a 19th century Jain temple filled with mirrors and colored glass, quite an extraordinary and pleasing effect.
I had something to eat nearby and then took an autorickshaw to Lal Bagh, the palace built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the Holkar Dynasty. I found it run down and disappointing, opulent but not nearly as nice as the Scindia's palace in Gwalior. Inside were rooms with baroque European furniture and ceiling paintings of Roman goddesses. In front of the palace is a statue of Queen Victoria, looking not amused. I spent a little time in the overgrown and garbage strewn gardens, had a look at the very dirty and garbage strewn river running alongside, and then took an autorickshaw to my hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon at an internet cafe.
