I left Bhavnagar at 9 on the 28th on a bus bound for Vadodara, formerly (and still often) called Baroda. We headed north through almost deserted wetlands, but an area otherwise very dry where there was no water. The water apparently comes from the high tides of the Gulf of Cambay (also known as the Gulf of Khambhat) as there were very white areas and a few salt works. There were no trees, no bushes, and very little grass. There was cracked, white, dried ground here and there, and occasional muddy beds of waterways presumably connecting with the Gulf. It was quite a strange area. After an hour or so the terrain became grassier, with trees and bushes, and eventually crops, appearing. Wheat was being reaped and there were a few towns.
We turned east, leaving the Kathiawar Peninsula and crossed the Sabarmati River, much narrower and with much less water than further upstream at Ahmedabad. I guess it all gets siphoned off for drinking and irrigation. We were now north of the Gulf of Cambay and the farmland was much richer, with banana groves, and there were many towns. We had a lunch stop about noon and reached the main Ahmedabad-Vadodara highway a little after 1. About half an hour later we arrived in Vadodara and I immediately boarded a bus bound for Champaner about 30 miles to the northeast. On the way I had good views of the bulky, buttressed Pavagadh Mountain, rising to somewhere between 2500 and 3000 feet, with forts and temples on it.
We reached Champaner at the foot of Pavagadh Mountain, and about 2000 feet below its summit, about 3. Champaner is a small village, mostly within the walls of a late 15th century city now abandoned except for the small village. The bus stand is just outside the walls of the citadel. I caught the shuttle bus that zigzags up the mountain up about a thousand feet in elevation over less than three miles to the end of the road, where steps and cable cars lead to the top of the mountain. We passed the remains of forts and palaces on the road up. The area around the end of the road was very crowded with pilgrims and shops catering to them, plus donkeys and jeeps and other vehicles, and, of course, garbage. I was hoping there was room at the nearby state run hotel (I didn't think there were any other hotels), and there was. I got a room for only 400 rupees and was surprised how nice it was, a big room with three single beds. The hotel had nice gardens and great views up the mountain to the summit and down to the plains. The people who ran the hotel were very nice and seemed pleased to have a foreigner there. I thought I might spend two nights there, but ended up spending four. I think I might have stayed more if the food had been better.
It was late afternoon and I walked up the steps, past shops and langur monkeys and avoiding the donkeys either heavily laden with supplies for further up the mountain or cargo free and charging down the steps. I went up only about 200 or 300 feet in elevation to an old ruined gate leading to a ruined building with three domes, or rather two domes and the remains of a third. I wandered around the building, locked with metal grates, and enjoyed the views. Pavagadh was a stronghold of Hindu Rajputs from about 1300 until its conquest by the Muslim Sultan of Gujarat in 1484. After a twenty month siege, with their cause hopeless, the Rajputs performed their customary rite of jauhar, the women and children self-immolating while the men charged the enemy to fight unto death.
I came down and sat in the hotel gardens for a while. Wild peacocks and peahens were there. It is quite interesting to see a peacock fly with its bulky train of tail feathers. The Gujarati thali served at the hotel was not all that good and there were not a lot of fellow guests. There was hot water only in the morning, so I had a cold water bucket bath, bearable now that it is warm.
The breakfast selection wasn't much either, so the next morning I had tea and toast and took the shuttle bus down to Champaner about 8:30, first down about ten or twelve hairpin turns, passing the remains of a massive gate and walls, plus other ruins. At the bottom are the remains of the city built by Mahmud Begada, the Sultan of Gujarat, after his conquest of Pavagadh in 1484. He moved his capital here, centered in a rectangular citadel about half a mile long and 800 feet wide. The former city walls, portions of which survive, are further out. Champaner was conquered by the second Mughal Emperor Humayun in 1535, whereupon the Sultan of Gujarat returned to and once again ruled from Ahmedabad. So Champaner's reign of glory was brief.
The walls of the citadel are mostly intact and I entered through the south gate and first explored what is thought to be the royal mosque just inside the gate. It is a beautiful building with two slender minarets and a columned prayer hall. A village fills about half the old citadel, with nondescript buildings alongside a few old ruins of palace buildings. Outside the eastern gate is the Jama Masjid, the largest and finest mosque, a beautiful combination of Hindu and Muslim styles, with domes, two minarets and a beautifully carved entrance pavilion leading to the courtyard before the 200 columned prayer hall. I wandered around there for a while and then through the gardens outside. I spotted three red-headed woodpeckers in a tree. There were many egrets on the grass.
From the Jama Masjid I walked northwest on a narrow path, with views of the citadel's northern walls to the south. I spotted another woodpecker along the way. After about 2000 feet I reached another mosque, the Kevda Masjid, with a columned pavilion in front of it. Green parrots with orange on their heads and yellow on their tail feathers fluttered and squawked through the pavilion. I climbed one of the mosque's two minarets for great views of the mosque, the Jama Masjid and other mosques further out, the citadel, and the forested countryside. There were also great views of towering Pavagadh Mountain and its rocky summit. You could also pick out the fortifications on the way up. I climbed the other minaret and had to step gingerly around a nesting pigeon chick on one of the narrow steps. Down at the base of the mosque, women were filling pots with water from the hose watering the grass and then taking them to their nearby houses. They seemed amused at my taking photos of them.
From the Kevda Masjid I walked further north along an even narrower path through thorny trees to the Nagina Masjid, with no minarets but very good carvings, including on a pavilion in front of the mosque. Then I walked back the way I had come to the Jama Masjid and from there walked along another narrow path to another mosque, the Lili Gumbaj ki Masjid, with no columns but with a fluted dome. I climbed the stairs up to the second story and sat for a while. There are good views of Jama Masjid and Kevda Masjid, plus Pavagadh Mountain. I was getting humgry, as all I had eaten since my toast and tea breakfast were peanuts I had brought with me. I walked back past the Jama Masjid and through the citadel to the bus stop and took the bus up to my hotel, arriving back about 3:30.
I ate some potato and pea filled samosas and drank a lassi at the hotel restaurant, and about 4:30 walked down the road (three or four hairpin turns) for about 15 minutes until I reached the ruins of a former Rajput palace with seven restored arches and great views down toward Champaner. I could easily pick up the mosques I had visited earlier in the day. The sun went behind Pavagadh about 5, but the citadel and mosques below were still in the sunshine. I sat for a long while on the walls of the palace and enjoyed the views.
Sometime after 6 I walked down the road just a bit further to the massive gate and steep walls. In the gathering dusk I explored the area. The entryway curves around a massive circular bastion on one side and high walls on the other to the narrow gate. Inside are rooms, through several of which fluttered either bats or swiftlets, or perhaps both. I couldn't see them in the dark, but there was a strong smell of ammonia, characteristic of bat guano. (I like the phrase "bat guano." It reminds me the major in Dr. Strangelove. "All right, but if you're lying, you're going to have to answer to the Coca Cola people.") From the gate, stairs led up past some other ruins to the bus stop near my hotel. Some very poor people and their donkeys were preparing dinner near their hovels alongside these stairs, just below the bus stop and the start of the stairs to the top of the mountain.
Soon after 8 the next morning I walked down the steps to the gate I had visited the evening before and looked all around. There were great views from the walls. This fort was the middle line of fortifications on Pavagadh, with another line below and another fortress up on the top. I did spot a bat hanging from the ceiling of one of the rooms near the gate, and heard (and smelled) many more. I followed the wall sloping west toward a ravine and climbed down the steep stairs to the bastion above the deep ravine. There was a trickle of water in the stream bed leading to the ravine. The drop into the ravine must create an impressive waterfall in the monsoon. I spotted more fortifications along the ridge on the other side of the ravine, and found a path through grass and thorny trees that crossed the stream bed above the ravine and went along the ridge to these fortifications. There were great views all along. I had brought some peanuts with me, but no water, as I didn't think it would take as long as it did to explore the area. Thirsty, I made my way back the way I had come to the gate and then up the stairs to my hotel, arriving after 2. I drank two liters of water and then had some samosas and lassi.
About 3:30 I took the cable car up the mountain. It costs only 98 rupees (about $2) and you get a great view from the swinging little compartment. It's kind of an exciting ride, made even more exciting if you think about the Indian disinclination to put a high priority on maintenance. You rise about 1000 feet to the relatively flat plateau just below the rocky summit. The views on the way up are fantastic, of Champaner below and of a plateau on a ridge with the ruins of forts and palaces to the east, about 300 feet above the hotel and bus stop area. Once off the cable car, I walked past the restaurants and shops (many selling coconuts, as offerings to the gods) all along the remaining steps. There were plenty of pilgrims still ascending and descending. I walked up the gentle rise to the foot of the rocky summit and then took the steep steps up the final 200 to 300 feet to the Kali temple at the top. The temple itself isn't much, but the views are fantastic. I spotted a seven-domed building at the edge of the plateau to the northwest. There are dirty lakes on the plateau on either side of the rocky summit, and in fact there is lots of garbage everywhere. The views down to Champaner were good, but to the west, towards Vadodara, the haze and afternoon sun obscured the view.
I decided to walk down the steps rather than take the cable car down (you get a round trip ticket for your 98 rupees). The path is fairly level at first, on the plateau past the eastern lake, shops, and the ruins of temples, one dating from about a thousand years ago. Boys were playing cricket in the dust near the old temple ruins. Here and there I stopped to peak over the remaining walls that line the edge of the plateau. The steps down the rock face of the mountain below the plateau weren't too steep and I enjoyed the walk down. It was late afternoon now and there were few pilgrims. There were shops, with plastic or canvas walls and roofs, almost all the way down, and the ruins of gates and walls here and there. I reached the ridge leading to the plateau I had spotted from above and walked out on it just a bit. Swiftlets abounded in the deep ravine between it and the much higher plateau just below the summit, from where I had come. It was near dark, so I didn't go all the way out on the plateau. I made it back to my hotel before 7, just before dark.
I took the cable car back up the next morning about 8:30. There were lots of pilgrims, some bathing in the dirty lake on the western side of the summit. At the edges of the lake floated a layer of garbage on slimy green water. I walked around a bit, but not up to the summit. One of the temples near the start of the steps down the rock face was being reconstructed. From there I walked out to the plateau beyond the temples toward the building with seven domes that I had seen from the summit the afternoon before. This extension of the plateau at the top is somewhat hidden by a slight rise between it and the steps. It was a fantastic area, a grassy, rolling and rocky area with this domed hall on the edge. I walked to it, with great views down the sheer drop below it. The building is in an L shape, or rather an inverted L shape, with five domed halls facing the plateau and another two behind the domed hall on the left (as you face the building from the plateau). I explored it and enjoyed the great views down the sheer drop.
I walked north along the plateau to a wall at the edge, with three deep stone-lined tanks with water near the wall. From the wall there were more great views to the north, including a fortification a few hundred feet below and Champaner at the foot of the mountain. I walked back toward the seven domed building. Two white donkeys were standing on the rocky slope in front of it. I sat on a little ledge on the back side and ate some peanuts while enjoying the spectacular view. I walked along the edge of the plateau east of the domed building, with a sheer drop below me, and found a path through boulders that wound up towards the lake on the western side of the summit. There were great views along the way back to the seven domed building and the sheer drop below it. Unfortunately, approaching the lake, I had to come through a human excrement spotted area that apparently serves as the mountaintop's latrine.
I wound my way around the little lake and down the steps past the pilgrims and shops to a restaurant near the top of the cable car line, where about 1 o'clock I had a good lunch, a masala dosa (a thin, crispy rice pancake filled with spicy potatoes) and a mango lassi. The restaurant had great views. It was warm, and I was getting a sunburn, so I rested a while in the shade of a derelict temple and about 3 began the walk down the mountain, again foregoing the cable car down. The steps by that time of afternoon were mostly in the shade of the mountain. There weren't a lot of pilgrims by then. I reached the ridge leading to the plateau that I had partially explored the afternoon before, and this time went out to the end of it. There were great views down the ravine as I neared the ruins of a palace. I climbed through the ruins up to a hill above them, and then to a whitewashed little temple near the end of the plateau. A few pilgrims came and went, outnumbered by the langur monkeys hoping to exploit their offerings. I sat for a while at the edge, just below the temple, enjoying the views of the plains below, before making my way back to my hotel about 6:30.
We turned east, leaving the Kathiawar Peninsula and crossed the Sabarmati River, much narrower and with much less water than further upstream at Ahmedabad. I guess it all gets siphoned off for drinking and irrigation. We were now north of the Gulf of Cambay and the farmland was much richer, with banana groves, and there were many towns. We had a lunch stop about noon and reached the main Ahmedabad-Vadodara highway a little after 1. About half an hour later we arrived in Vadodara and I immediately boarded a bus bound for Champaner about 30 miles to the northeast. On the way I had good views of the bulky, buttressed Pavagadh Mountain, rising to somewhere between 2500 and 3000 feet, with forts and temples on it.
We reached Champaner at the foot of Pavagadh Mountain, and about 2000 feet below its summit, about 3. Champaner is a small village, mostly within the walls of a late 15th century city now abandoned except for the small village. The bus stand is just outside the walls of the citadel. I caught the shuttle bus that zigzags up the mountain up about a thousand feet in elevation over less than three miles to the end of the road, where steps and cable cars lead to the top of the mountain. We passed the remains of forts and palaces on the road up. The area around the end of the road was very crowded with pilgrims and shops catering to them, plus donkeys and jeeps and other vehicles, and, of course, garbage. I was hoping there was room at the nearby state run hotel (I didn't think there were any other hotels), and there was. I got a room for only 400 rupees and was surprised how nice it was, a big room with three single beds. The hotel had nice gardens and great views up the mountain to the summit and down to the plains. The people who ran the hotel were very nice and seemed pleased to have a foreigner there. I thought I might spend two nights there, but ended up spending four. I think I might have stayed more if the food had been better.
It was late afternoon and I walked up the steps, past shops and langur monkeys and avoiding the donkeys either heavily laden with supplies for further up the mountain or cargo free and charging down the steps. I went up only about 200 or 300 feet in elevation to an old ruined gate leading to a ruined building with three domes, or rather two domes and the remains of a third. I wandered around the building, locked with metal grates, and enjoyed the views. Pavagadh was a stronghold of Hindu Rajputs from about 1300 until its conquest by the Muslim Sultan of Gujarat in 1484. After a twenty month siege, with their cause hopeless, the Rajputs performed their customary rite of jauhar, the women and children self-immolating while the men charged the enemy to fight unto death.
I came down and sat in the hotel gardens for a while. Wild peacocks and peahens were there. It is quite interesting to see a peacock fly with its bulky train of tail feathers. The Gujarati thali served at the hotel was not all that good and there were not a lot of fellow guests. There was hot water only in the morning, so I had a cold water bucket bath, bearable now that it is warm.
The breakfast selection wasn't much either, so the next morning I had tea and toast and took the shuttle bus down to Champaner about 8:30, first down about ten or twelve hairpin turns, passing the remains of a massive gate and walls, plus other ruins. At the bottom are the remains of the city built by Mahmud Begada, the Sultan of Gujarat, after his conquest of Pavagadh in 1484. He moved his capital here, centered in a rectangular citadel about half a mile long and 800 feet wide. The former city walls, portions of which survive, are further out. Champaner was conquered by the second Mughal Emperor Humayun in 1535, whereupon the Sultan of Gujarat returned to and once again ruled from Ahmedabad. So Champaner's reign of glory was brief.
The walls of the citadel are mostly intact and I entered through the south gate and first explored what is thought to be the royal mosque just inside the gate. It is a beautiful building with two slender minarets and a columned prayer hall. A village fills about half the old citadel, with nondescript buildings alongside a few old ruins of palace buildings. Outside the eastern gate is the Jama Masjid, the largest and finest mosque, a beautiful combination of Hindu and Muslim styles, with domes, two minarets and a beautifully carved entrance pavilion leading to the courtyard before the 200 columned prayer hall. I wandered around there for a while and then through the gardens outside. I spotted three red-headed woodpeckers in a tree. There were many egrets on the grass.
From the Jama Masjid I walked northwest on a narrow path, with views of the citadel's northern walls to the south. I spotted another woodpecker along the way. After about 2000 feet I reached another mosque, the Kevda Masjid, with a columned pavilion in front of it. Green parrots with orange on their heads and yellow on their tail feathers fluttered and squawked through the pavilion. I climbed one of the mosque's two minarets for great views of the mosque, the Jama Masjid and other mosques further out, the citadel, and the forested countryside. There were also great views of towering Pavagadh Mountain and its rocky summit. You could also pick out the fortifications on the way up. I climbed the other minaret and had to step gingerly around a nesting pigeon chick on one of the narrow steps. Down at the base of the mosque, women were filling pots with water from the hose watering the grass and then taking them to their nearby houses. They seemed amused at my taking photos of them.
From the Kevda Masjid I walked further north along an even narrower path through thorny trees to the Nagina Masjid, with no minarets but very good carvings, including on a pavilion in front of the mosque. Then I walked back the way I had come to the Jama Masjid and from there walked along another narrow path to another mosque, the Lili Gumbaj ki Masjid, with no columns but with a fluted dome. I climbed the stairs up to the second story and sat for a while. There are good views of Jama Masjid and Kevda Masjid, plus Pavagadh Mountain. I was getting humgry, as all I had eaten since my toast and tea breakfast were peanuts I had brought with me. I walked back past the Jama Masjid and through the citadel to the bus stop and took the bus up to my hotel, arriving back about 3:30.
I ate some potato and pea filled samosas and drank a lassi at the hotel restaurant, and about 4:30 walked down the road (three or four hairpin turns) for about 15 minutes until I reached the ruins of a former Rajput palace with seven restored arches and great views down toward Champaner. I could easily pick up the mosques I had visited earlier in the day. The sun went behind Pavagadh about 5, but the citadel and mosques below were still in the sunshine. I sat for a long while on the walls of the palace and enjoyed the views.
Sometime after 6 I walked down the road just a bit further to the massive gate and steep walls. In the gathering dusk I explored the area. The entryway curves around a massive circular bastion on one side and high walls on the other to the narrow gate. Inside are rooms, through several of which fluttered either bats or swiftlets, or perhaps both. I couldn't see them in the dark, but there was a strong smell of ammonia, characteristic of bat guano. (I like the phrase "bat guano." It reminds me the major in Dr. Strangelove. "All right, but if you're lying, you're going to have to answer to the Coca Cola people.") From the gate, stairs led up past some other ruins to the bus stop near my hotel. Some very poor people and their donkeys were preparing dinner near their hovels alongside these stairs, just below the bus stop and the start of the stairs to the top of the mountain.
Soon after 8 the next morning I walked down the steps to the gate I had visited the evening before and looked all around. There were great views from the walls. This fort was the middle line of fortifications on Pavagadh, with another line below and another fortress up on the top. I did spot a bat hanging from the ceiling of one of the rooms near the gate, and heard (and smelled) many more. I followed the wall sloping west toward a ravine and climbed down the steep stairs to the bastion above the deep ravine. There was a trickle of water in the stream bed leading to the ravine. The drop into the ravine must create an impressive waterfall in the monsoon. I spotted more fortifications along the ridge on the other side of the ravine, and found a path through grass and thorny trees that crossed the stream bed above the ravine and went along the ridge to these fortifications. There were great views all along. I had brought some peanuts with me, but no water, as I didn't think it would take as long as it did to explore the area. Thirsty, I made my way back the way I had come to the gate and then up the stairs to my hotel, arriving after 2. I drank two liters of water and then had some samosas and lassi.
About 3:30 I took the cable car up the mountain. It costs only 98 rupees (about $2) and you get a great view from the swinging little compartment. It's kind of an exciting ride, made even more exciting if you think about the Indian disinclination to put a high priority on maintenance. You rise about 1000 feet to the relatively flat plateau just below the rocky summit. The views on the way up are fantastic, of Champaner below and of a plateau on a ridge with the ruins of forts and palaces to the east, about 300 feet above the hotel and bus stop area. Once off the cable car, I walked past the restaurants and shops (many selling coconuts, as offerings to the gods) all along the remaining steps. There were plenty of pilgrims still ascending and descending. I walked up the gentle rise to the foot of the rocky summit and then took the steep steps up the final 200 to 300 feet to the Kali temple at the top. The temple itself isn't much, but the views are fantastic. I spotted a seven-domed building at the edge of the plateau to the northwest. There are dirty lakes on the plateau on either side of the rocky summit, and in fact there is lots of garbage everywhere. The views down to Champaner were good, but to the west, towards Vadodara, the haze and afternoon sun obscured the view.
I decided to walk down the steps rather than take the cable car down (you get a round trip ticket for your 98 rupees). The path is fairly level at first, on the plateau past the eastern lake, shops, and the ruins of temples, one dating from about a thousand years ago. Boys were playing cricket in the dust near the old temple ruins. Here and there I stopped to peak over the remaining walls that line the edge of the plateau. The steps down the rock face of the mountain below the plateau weren't too steep and I enjoyed the walk down. It was late afternoon now and there were few pilgrims. There were shops, with plastic or canvas walls and roofs, almost all the way down, and the ruins of gates and walls here and there. I reached the ridge leading to the plateau I had spotted from above and walked out on it just a bit. Swiftlets abounded in the deep ravine between it and the much higher plateau just below the summit, from where I had come. It was near dark, so I didn't go all the way out on the plateau. I made it back to my hotel before 7, just before dark.
I took the cable car back up the next morning about 8:30. There were lots of pilgrims, some bathing in the dirty lake on the western side of the summit. At the edges of the lake floated a layer of garbage on slimy green water. I walked around a bit, but not up to the summit. One of the temples near the start of the steps down the rock face was being reconstructed. From there I walked out to the plateau beyond the temples toward the building with seven domes that I had seen from the summit the afternoon before. This extension of the plateau at the top is somewhat hidden by a slight rise between it and the steps. It was a fantastic area, a grassy, rolling and rocky area with this domed hall on the edge. I walked to it, with great views down the sheer drop below it. The building is in an L shape, or rather an inverted L shape, with five domed halls facing the plateau and another two behind the domed hall on the left (as you face the building from the plateau). I explored it and enjoyed the great views down the sheer drop.
I walked north along the plateau to a wall at the edge, with three deep stone-lined tanks with water near the wall. From the wall there were more great views to the north, including a fortification a few hundred feet below and Champaner at the foot of the mountain. I walked back toward the seven domed building. Two white donkeys were standing on the rocky slope in front of it. I sat on a little ledge on the back side and ate some peanuts while enjoying the spectacular view. I walked along the edge of the plateau east of the domed building, with a sheer drop below me, and found a path through boulders that wound up towards the lake on the western side of the summit. There were great views along the way back to the seven domed building and the sheer drop below it. Unfortunately, approaching the lake, I had to come through a human excrement spotted area that apparently serves as the mountaintop's latrine.
I wound my way around the little lake and down the steps past the pilgrims and shops to a restaurant near the top of the cable car line, where about 1 o'clock I had a good lunch, a masala dosa (a thin, crispy rice pancake filled with spicy potatoes) and a mango lassi. The restaurant had great views. It was warm, and I was getting a sunburn, so I rested a while in the shade of a derelict temple and about 3 began the walk down the mountain, again foregoing the cable car down. The steps by that time of afternoon were mostly in the shade of the mountain. There weren't a lot of pilgrims by then. I reached the ridge leading to the plateau that I had partially explored the afternoon before, and this time went out to the end of it. There were great views down the ravine as I neared the ruins of a palace. I climbed through the ruins up to a hill above them, and then to a whitewashed little temple near the end of the plateau. A few pilgrims came and went, outnumbered by the langur monkeys hoping to exploit their offerings. I sat for a while at the edge, just below the temple, enjoying the views of the plains below, before making my way back to my hotel about 6:30.
Nice post. A quiet scenic place surrounded with craggy peaks, lakes, waterfalls and lush greenery, Pavagadh brightens up considerably during the monsoons. Also, get to know about various other famous places to visit in India in July.
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