I left Maheshwar for Mandu on the 14th, but before I left I walked down to the ghats beneath the fort in the morning. It was a Hindu holiday and there must have been a hundred or more beggars on the ghats getting handouts. Most of them sat on mats and people would give them handfulls of rice or corn, or bananas or some other stuff. There was one old guy with a sittar, and an old woman walking around who must have been all of four and a half feet tall. There were many more bathers and washerwomen down at the ghats than previous days. Friendly tribal women, with very round, dark faces, were selling jewelry. One of them told me they were Bajjars, if I understood correctly. I've read that something like 8% of Indians are tribal people, pre-dating both the Aryans and the Dravidians. They are India's poorest people, and 8% works out to about 100 million people.
After a final potato parantha breakfast, I left about 11 and it took me about three hours and three buses to travel the 30 or so miles to Mandu. We climbed from the Narmada River at about 500 feet up to a dry plateau of over 2000 feet, passing crop land here and there and as we got close to Mandu passing sheep and camels and pastoral Bhil people, another tribal group. Getting close to Mandu on the dry plains we began passing the ruins of lots of mosques and domed tombs, and then entered though one of the 15th century city gates. Mandu is situated on a plateau almost ten square miles in size surrounded by ravines. It was a Hindu stronghold until about 1300 when the Sultan of Delhi conquered it. About a century later his Afghan governor broke away and established his own kingdom. Akbar conquered it about 1575 and incorporated it into the Moghul Empire. It was soon abandoned though. But it had a golden era in the 15th and 16th centuries when many fine buildings were built.
I got a hotel room in the little town a mile or so from the gate we had passed through and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the Saturday market next to the 15th century mosque and the tomb of the 15th century king Hoshang Shah. Most of the people there were Bhils from the surrounding countryside. There were vegetables of almost every description, including huge cauliflower of maybe a foot in diameter and big piles of red chilies. Also on sale was a type of dried flower that people told me is used for making alcohol. People were very friendly, wanting to have their photos taken and amused to see the results. I wandered back and forth all over. Near the end of the day I watched a goat being expertly butchered. It was amazing how quickly one guy cut it up and another cut the big sections into little pieces for sale. I thought the latter guy might be in danger of losing a finger as he wielded his cleaver so quickly. The first guy cut out the stomach, emptied it of grass, washed it, and then dropped it into a plastic bag held by a woman buying it. He then drew out the intestines and, surprising to me, didn't wash them out before dropping them into another plastic bag for the woman. She bought other internal organs and I'm glad I wasn't having dinner with her that night. I watched the market close down as it was getting dark.
The next morning I went into the grounds containing the Jama Masjid (the mosque) and the marble tomb of Hoshang Shah. There is an entry fee and the mosque is no longer in use. It was cool and quiet there in the morning and I spent a couple of hours walking around. The mosque is large and elegant, but simply decorated, with a wide courtyard and a forest of pillars in the main hall. The tomb is quite elegant, supposedly an influence for the later Moghul architecture. It has fine jali screens (stone latticed windows that let in light), a dome and cupolas. Across from the mosque are more ruins, a madrassa and a tomb. All these are on the main plaza of the little town, of about 5000 people, I think, and right outside my hotel.
I had a parantha and curd breakfast at a little cafe and then rented a bike for a dollar a day. First I biked north, the way we had entered by bus, passing several camels laden with possessions, including sheep and goats in baskets, and led by two tribal women in bright red saris and a tribal man in a while dhoti (like what Gandhi wore) and a red turban. I biked to the Delhi Gate and explored it and several ruins along the way. From the gate there were great views down and across the country, with lower gates and abandoned tombs in the distance. There are baobab trees all around. These are strange looking trees, with very wide trunks and with mostly leafless branches that make the trees look something like upturned root vegetables. I first saw them in Africa and I was told they were imported from Africa during the Khilji Dynasty in the 15th century. A guy was harvesting their fruit and another guy opened one for me and had me taste the white, dry pulp around the seeds, said to taste like tamarind.
I was still bothered by my cold and sinus infection, so I came back to my room, took some decongestant and rested for an hour or so before heading south across the plateau. It was warm in the sunshine and I was down to a tee shirt. I biked on rough roads past abandoned tombs and mosques to the former Nilkanth Palace, now a Hindu temple, overlooking a ravine with views back toward Hoshang Shah's tomb and the domes of the Jama Masjid. I biked a little further to the gate of the Sonagarh Fort on the southwest edge of the plateau, with more great views. On the way I passed Bhil houses and scores of Bhil children screaming "Bye bye," followed by "school pen," or "money," or "rupee." Finally, I took a very bad road past very simple homes to the Tarapur Gate to the south, with great views, before biking back to town before sundown. While eating a bag of potato chips in the town square, I was accosted by a cow who wanted to share. I tried to shoo it away and in the end had to move myself.
It was noisy from about 5 that morning as I was staying in a hotel attached to the Ram Temple, with noisy pilgrims and Indian tourists. About 8 I biked to the nearby "Royal Enclosure," an extensive set of ruins. It also was relatively quiet in the morning, plus it was Monday, with fewer day trippers from Indore. I spent almost four hours wandering around. The main building is called the Ship Palace, said to be in the shape of a ship, with tanks of water on two sides, although one was mostly dry. It is a big building, about 400 feet long and only 50 wide, with cavernous halls. It is said to have housed a king's harem of 15,000. There were other ruins to wander through, including underground passages and an early 15th century mosque with pillars from pillaged Hindu temples. It was a sunny day, but windier and colder than the day before. I biked back to town about noon for my potato parantha and curd and then rested for a couple of hours in my room. The town square was much more quiet than on the weekend.
In the afternoon I biked south to three groups of ruins. The first had a mosque, a couple of tombs, and a caravansarai (a big enclosure with a large courtyard surrounded by rooms for caravans to halt for the night with their camels and wares), with great views of the countryside from the roof of one of the tombs. You could see the surrounding fields of bright green wheat, the baobabs and even a distant tomb. Workmen were repairing the mosque and one tomb and showed me how they put together their scaffolding. I biked to another tomb and mosque, the tomb set in what seems to have been a sort of pavilion before being converted to a tomb. The third group, further south, had a very nice mosque, a huge caravansarai and two tombs. There were also some very friendly village children there at the end of day. They were much more pleasant than the ones incessantly yelling "Bye bye" the day before. The wheat nearby was fairly high, maybe three or four feet. I biked back at sunset, past water buffalo and hay wagons. I got a bucket of hot water that night for a bucket bath, very welcome as it was my first since Maheshwar. I do feel so much better when I can bathe at the end of a dusty day (and all the days in India are dusty days).
I had a parantha and curd about 8 the next morning, and then biked back to the same set of ruins I had left at sunset the evening before. They were deserted except for a few women washing in the tank. I spent a couple of hours looking around before biking back to town for a parantha lunch. After resting an hour or so, I biked to the east to a palace on the edge of the plateau called the Lal Mahal on a bumpy road and then a path. It wasn't particularly beautiful, but it did have great views. I biked back to town and then south about four miles to the Palace of Baz Bahadur near the southern end of the plateau. I looked around that and walked down to a well in the wheatfields below. Three young women were drawing water from the well by way of a rope and bucket and I watched them for a while. I took photos, much to their amusement.
From there I walked up to Rupmati's Pavilion, about 150 higher above the Palace of Baz Bahadur. The story is that he fell in love with a Hindu peasant girl named Rupmati, married her, and built her her own palace on the heights above his palace, so she could see the sacred Narmada River on the plains below. There are great views of the valley 1200 feet below, but it was too hazy to see the river. There were also great views north, back towards the Jama Masjid and Hoshang Shah's tomb. Both Baz Bahadur and Rupmati were great singers. Akbar supposedly heard of her great beauty and this is what compelled him to conquer Mandu. Baz Bahadur fled, leaving his love behind, and she killed herself rather than submit to Akbar. I biked back to town before sunset, about a 25 minute slog on that bad road, somewhat uphill, on that heavy, clunky bike.
The next morning I biked north, stopping at three overgrown ruins and the huge ruined shop of a merchant, all within sight of the Ship Palace. I stopped at a ravine side hotel and had an omelet breakfast on the lawn, which I very much enjoyed after so many meals at "Pure Veg" (which means no eggs) restaurants in Maheshwar and Mandu. I was really enjoying biking all around Mandu, but not enjoying the very hard bed in my noisy hotel, and so asked about staying there for a couple of nights, but they were full. The rooms were four times as much as I was paying (about $20 vs. about $5), but I had just figured out I had spent less than $1200 in my first two months in India (about $19 a day) and was ready to splurge.
After breakfast, I biked out to a palace, Chisti Khan's Palace, on the northeast edge of the plateau that I had been able to see from the lawn of the hotel. That was a great place, with wonderful views down the ravine and out to the plains below. I must have spent an hour or more there. One basement room, with a locked grill door, was filled with bats and reeked with ammonia. I could hear them and pick some of them out with my flashlight. From the rooftop I could see for miles, and look down at the goats munching on the steep plateau slopes below. I spotted a bird, a falcon I think, far below and watched it make gyre after gyre until it reached my eye level and then soared above me, finally alighting on a tree to the west of the palace.
I biked back the way I had come, stopping again at the Delhi Gate and spending a while there. It was wide steps leading down to the ravine below and I sat there for a while and watched school boys and old men and even cows come up the wide steps. A lot of the cattle here have painted horns, sometimes with colorful stripes. From the Delhi Gate I walked along the city walls a way. The city walls ran all along the edge of the plateau, about 28 miles in all, and extensive sections still exist. There were great views. I biked to an inner gate with two elephants whose top halves had been sliced off, quite a strange sight.
By then it was about 2 in the afternoon and I returned to the town for my daily potato parantha and curd. After resting an hour or so, I biked west a short distance from town to some caves on the edge of the plateau, and then back through town and then east on a bad road and then path to the ruins of a mosque and a gate in a wheat field. I walked along the edge of the plateau along the ruins of the city wall, with great views down a steep ravine and across the plains to the east. I could see Chisti Khan's Palace. I biked back into town near sunset and watched some friendly pilgrims preparing their dinner outside the Ram Temple. They were cutting vegetables, rolling dough and starting a fire. A big wedge of cow dung stood ready for fuel. Finally, I biked out to a cliff above the caves I had visited earlier in the afternoon to watch the sunset.
Back at the hotel I was told I had to check out the next morning as a wedding party had reserved it the next day. I protested, but to no avail. Reluctantly, I decided to leave Mandu the next day. The only other budget hotel was pretty bleak and the hotel I had visited in the morning was full. I would have like to stay another couple of days, maybe more.
After a final potato parantha breakfast, I left about 11 and it took me about three hours and three buses to travel the 30 or so miles to Mandu. We climbed from the Narmada River at about 500 feet up to a dry plateau of over 2000 feet, passing crop land here and there and as we got close to Mandu passing sheep and camels and pastoral Bhil people, another tribal group. Getting close to Mandu on the dry plains we began passing the ruins of lots of mosques and domed tombs, and then entered though one of the 15th century city gates. Mandu is situated on a plateau almost ten square miles in size surrounded by ravines. It was a Hindu stronghold until about 1300 when the Sultan of Delhi conquered it. About a century later his Afghan governor broke away and established his own kingdom. Akbar conquered it about 1575 and incorporated it into the Moghul Empire. It was soon abandoned though. But it had a golden era in the 15th and 16th centuries when many fine buildings were built.
I got a hotel room in the little town a mile or so from the gate we had passed through and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the Saturday market next to the 15th century mosque and the tomb of the 15th century king Hoshang Shah. Most of the people there were Bhils from the surrounding countryside. There were vegetables of almost every description, including huge cauliflower of maybe a foot in diameter and big piles of red chilies. Also on sale was a type of dried flower that people told me is used for making alcohol. People were very friendly, wanting to have their photos taken and amused to see the results. I wandered back and forth all over. Near the end of the day I watched a goat being expertly butchered. It was amazing how quickly one guy cut it up and another cut the big sections into little pieces for sale. I thought the latter guy might be in danger of losing a finger as he wielded his cleaver so quickly. The first guy cut out the stomach, emptied it of grass, washed it, and then dropped it into a plastic bag held by a woman buying it. He then drew out the intestines and, surprising to me, didn't wash them out before dropping them into another plastic bag for the woman. She bought other internal organs and I'm glad I wasn't having dinner with her that night. I watched the market close down as it was getting dark.
The next morning I went into the grounds containing the Jama Masjid (the mosque) and the marble tomb of Hoshang Shah. There is an entry fee and the mosque is no longer in use. It was cool and quiet there in the morning and I spent a couple of hours walking around. The mosque is large and elegant, but simply decorated, with a wide courtyard and a forest of pillars in the main hall. The tomb is quite elegant, supposedly an influence for the later Moghul architecture. It has fine jali screens (stone latticed windows that let in light), a dome and cupolas. Across from the mosque are more ruins, a madrassa and a tomb. All these are on the main plaza of the little town, of about 5000 people, I think, and right outside my hotel.
I had a parantha and curd breakfast at a little cafe and then rented a bike for a dollar a day. First I biked north, the way we had entered by bus, passing several camels laden with possessions, including sheep and goats in baskets, and led by two tribal women in bright red saris and a tribal man in a while dhoti (like what Gandhi wore) and a red turban. I biked to the Delhi Gate and explored it and several ruins along the way. From the gate there were great views down and across the country, with lower gates and abandoned tombs in the distance. There are baobab trees all around. These are strange looking trees, with very wide trunks and with mostly leafless branches that make the trees look something like upturned root vegetables. I first saw them in Africa and I was told they were imported from Africa during the Khilji Dynasty in the 15th century. A guy was harvesting their fruit and another guy opened one for me and had me taste the white, dry pulp around the seeds, said to taste like tamarind.
I was still bothered by my cold and sinus infection, so I came back to my room, took some decongestant and rested for an hour or so before heading south across the plateau. It was warm in the sunshine and I was down to a tee shirt. I biked on rough roads past abandoned tombs and mosques to the former Nilkanth Palace, now a Hindu temple, overlooking a ravine with views back toward Hoshang Shah's tomb and the domes of the Jama Masjid. I biked a little further to the gate of the Sonagarh Fort on the southwest edge of the plateau, with more great views. On the way I passed Bhil houses and scores of Bhil children screaming "Bye bye," followed by "school pen," or "money," or "rupee." Finally, I took a very bad road past very simple homes to the Tarapur Gate to the south, with great views, before biking back to town before sundown. While eating a bag of potato chips in the town square, I was accosted by a cow who wanted to share. I tried to shoo it away and in the end had to move myself.
It was noisy from about 5 that morning as I was staying in a hotel attached to the Ram Temple, with noisy pilgrims and Indian tourists. About 8 I biked to the nearby "Royal Enclosure," an extensive set of ruins. It also was relatively quiet in the morning, plus it was Monday, with fewer day trippers from Indore. I spent almost four hours wandering around. The main building is called the Ship Palace, said to be in the shape of a ship, with tanks of water on two sides, although one was mostly dry. It is a big building, about 400 feet long and only 50 wide, with cavernous halls. It is said to have housed a king's harem of 15,000. There were other ruins to wander through, including underground passages and an early 15th century mosque with pillars from pillaged Hindu temples. It was a sunny day, but windier and colder than the day before. I biked back to town about noon for my potato parantha and curd and then rested for a couple of hours in my room. The town square was much more quiet than on the weekend.
In the afternoon I biked south to three groups of ruins. The first had a mosque, a couple of tombs, and a caravansarai (a big enclosure with a large courtyard surrounded by rooms for caravans to halt for the night with their camels and wares), with great views of the countryside from the roof of one of the tombs. You could see the surrounding fields of bright green wheat, the baobabs and even a distant tomb. Workmen were repairing the mosque and one tomb and showed me how they put together their scaffolding. I biked to another tomb and mosque, the tomb set in what seems to have been a sort of pavilion before being converted to a tomb. The third group, further south, had a very nice mosque, a huge caravansarai and two tombs. There were also some very friendly village children there at the end of day. They were much more pleasant than the ones incessantly yelling "Bye bye" the day before. The wheat nearby was fairly high, maybe three or four feet. I biked back at sunset, past water buffalo and hay wagons. I got a bucket of hot water that night for a bucket bath, very welcome as it was my first since Maheshwar. I do feel so much better when I can bathe at the end of a dusty day (and all the days in India are dusty days).
I had a parantha and curd about 8 the next morning, and then biked back to the same set of ruins I had left at sunset the evening before. They were deserted except for a few women washing in the tank. I spent a couple of hours looking around before biking back to town for a parantha lunch. After resting an hour or so, I biked to the east to a palace on the edge of the plateau called the Lal Mahal on a bumpy road and then a path. It wasn't particularly beautiful, but it did have great views. I biked back to town and then south about four miles to the Palace of Baz Bahadur near the southern end of the plateau. I looked around that and walked down to a well in the wheatfields below. Three young women were drawing water from the well by way of a rope and bucket and I watched them for a while. I took photos, much to their amusement.
From there I walked up to Rupmati's Pavilion, about 150 higher above the Palace of Baz Bahadur. The story is that he fell in love with a Hindu peasant girl named Rupmati, married her, and built her her own palace on the heights above his palace, so she could see the sacred Narmada River on the plains below. There are great views of the valley 1200 feet below, but it was too hazy to see the river. There were also great views north, back towards the Jama Masjid and Hoshang Shah's tomb. Both Baz Bahadur and Rupmati were great singers. Akbar supposedly heard of her great beauty and this is what compelled him to conquer Mandu. Baz Bahadur fled, leaving his love behind, and she killed herself rather than submit to Akbar. I biked back to town before sunset, about a 25 minute slog on that bad road, somewhat uphill, on that heavy, clunky bike.
The next morning I biked north, stopping at three overgrown ruins and the huge ruined shop of a merchant, all within sight of the Ship Palace. I stopped at a ravine side hotel and had an omelet breakfast on the lawn, which I very much enjoyed after so many meals at "Pure Veg" (which means no eggs) restaurants in Maheshwar and Mandu. I was really enjoying biking all around Mandu, but not enjoying the very hard bed in my noisy hotel, and so asked about staying there for a couple of nights, but they were full. The rooms were four times as much as I was paying (about $20 vs. about $5), but I had just figured out I had spent less than $1200 in my first two months in India (about $19 a day) and was ready to splurge.
After breakfast, I biked out to a palace, Chisti Khan's Palace, on the northeast edge of the plateau that I had been able to see from the lawn of the hotel. That was a great place, with wonderful views down the ravine and out to the plains below. I must have spent an hour or more there. One basement room, with a locked grill door, was filled with bats and reeked with ammonia. I could hear them and pick some of them out with my flashlight. From the rooftop I could see for miles, and look down at the goats munching on the steep plateau slopes below. I spotted a bird, a falcon I think, far below and watched it make gyre after gyre until it reached my eye level and then soared above me, finally alighting on a tree to the west of the palace.
I biked back the way I had come, stopping again at the Delhi Gate and spending a while there. It was wide steps leading down to the ravine below and I sat there for a while and watched school boys and old men and even cows come up the wide steps. A lot of the cattle here have painted horns, sometimes with colorful stripes. From the Delhi Gate I walked along the city walls a way. The city walls ran all along the edge of the plateau, about 28 miles in all, and extensive sections still exist. There were great views. I biked to an inner gate with two elephants whose top halves had been sliced off, quite a strange sight.
By then it was about 2 in the afternoon and I returned to the town for my daily potato parantha and curd. After resting an hour or so, I biked west a short distance from town to some caves on the edge of the plateau, and then back through town and then east on a bad road and then path to the ruins of a mosque and a gate in a wheat field. I walked along the edge of the plateau along the ruins of the city wall, with great views down a steep ravine and across the plains to the east. I could see Chisti Khan's Palace. I biked back into town near sunset and watched some friendly pilgrims preparing their dinner outside the Ram Temple. They were cutting vegetables, rolling dough and starting a fire. A big wedge of cow dung stood ready for fuel. Finally, I biked out to a cliff above the caves I had visited earlier in the afternoon to watch the sunset.
Back at the hotel I was told I had to check out the next morning as a wedding party had reserved it the next day. I protested, but to no avail. Reluctantly, I decided to leave Mandu the next day. The only other budget hotel was pretty bleak and the hotel I had visited in the morning was full. I would have like to stay another couple of days, maybe more.
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