April 24-28, 2012: More Tigers! Bandhavgarh National Park

On the 24th I traveled from Jabalpur to the little village of Tala on the edge of Bandhavgarh National Park, a hellish journey of less than 120 miles that took me more than ten hours.  I left Jabalpur before 9 on a bus with no one standing in the aisles other than the conductor.  But while still in the city and probably not five minutes from the bus station, it stopped and filled up with what seemed like dozens of additional passengers.  The three hour bus ride northeast to Katni was not a pleasant one, with standees pressed close against me in my aisle seat on a hot morning.

In Katni I drank a liter of water and got a window seat on a bus I was told was going to Umaria, to the southeast.  After an hour wait, it left about 1 and as I bought my ticket from the conductor soon after we started off, he told me that the bus was going only as far as Chandia Road, on the way to Umaria.  It took us about an hour and a half to head down the road 25 or so miles to Chandia Road through dry, flat country.  At Chandia Road the bus emptied and I was told to catch the train to Umaria, which is about 12 miles away.  I arrived at the station just as the train was pulling away.  The next train was scheduled to arrive at 3:30, in less than an hour, but was several hours late.  An Indian couple was also heading to Umaria and had also just missed the train.  I followed them as they tried to get trucks to give us a lift.  While waiting, I drank another liter of water.  Finally, we got a lift (for 20 rupees each) in an fairly nice automobile for the last 12 miles, which delivered us right to the Umaria bus station.

In Umaria we had a wait of about an hour before a bus arrived for Tala (where I was headed) and Manpur, beyond Tala (where they were headed).  There was a terrific scrum as people fought their way onto the bus while others tried to get off.  The guy I was with must have fought his way on early as he got two seats near the front.  His wife was too slight to lift up their heavy bag, so I lifted it up to the window and he tucked it under his seat.  The bus conductor had me put my bag in the back of the bus.  I was one of the last to squeeze onto the little bus.  The couple from Manpur slid over and gave me a very small portion (he was quite a large man) of their seat.  We started off, a packed bus, and made several stops picking up even more passengers.  My seat was very uncomfortable and I was happy to give it up to a woman carrying a baby when she boarded.  Then, packed to the gills or rafters or whatever is the appropriate term for buses, we stopped at a gas station for several minutes to fill up.

Wedged in with all the other standees, I could barely move.  And the trip was excruciatingly slow.  It is only 20 miles from Umaria to Tala, but it took about two hours and twenty minutes.  Probably the second most uncomfortable bus journey I've ever been on.  (The first was in 1979 through Baluchistan in Pakistan from the Iranian border to Quetta, about 26 hours in another jam packed bus, but I did have half a seat in that one.)  The bus seemed to proceed at about five miles per hour at times, if that, on a poor road through the hills with many long stops while departing passengers got their things off the roof.  Everybody seemed to be in about as good a humor as they could be, though.  The last few miles were through the national park on a particularly bad road.  One guy in a seat informed me that he was seeing deer and peacocks.  A little after 7 we arrived in Tala just as it was getting dark.  I got off and wanted to kiss the ground like the Pope.  I bought a liter of water, drank it, walked in the dark about five minutes to a hotel and thankfully checked in, exhausted but relieved to be there.  Three other westerners were at the hotel and I had dinner with them.  After dinner I took a very welcome bucket bath and went to bed about 11.  I was later told that the reason the buses were so packed is that there are fewer of them running now than is normal.  It is wedding season in this area and wedding parties rent out the buses, leaving fewer on their normal routes.  I am very much missing the old, rickety, but relatively spacious and regular state buses of Maharashtra and Gujarat.  In Madhya Pradesh the buses are all private.

The other three had booked a safari the next morning, which I couldn't join, and so I slept in until 8.  After getting up, I relaxed on the veranda of my room.  It was already quite hot.  They returned from their safari about 9 or 9:30, having seen a tiger, and went off to a special breakfast they had booked the night before.  I had my own breakfast, relaxed and went to an internet cafe (quite a surprise in this little village and in fact there appear to be three of them).  There were no afternoon safaris that day (none on Wednesday afternoons, for unknown reasons), so about 4 Neel, one of the westerners (from Britain and with parents who emigrated from Gujarat 40 years ago), and I took a walk through the dry countryside just outside of Tala.  We saw quite a few blue Indian rollers, a beautiful bird, and came upon a brick works in the open countryside.  In one area men were arranging firewood in a circle.  Nearby, we could see firewood similarly arranged under a new made kiln consisting of new made bricks stacked together and then plastered over with mud.  One man was plastering with mud the last bit of the stack of bricks.  A woman was digging up dirt and carrying it in a basket on her head to a guy on top of the kiln, who used the dirt to cover the top of the kiln.  We came back into the village about six and sat on the lawn of one of the nicer hotels and drank lime soda as in the dusk before the four of us (Neel, two Swedes and me) had dinner.  I got to bed about 10.   It is quite pleasant at night, with the sounds of the forest outside.  The elevation is about 1500 feet, though the hills in the park rise to well over 2500 feet.  There is a very old fort on one of them, though you have to pay the normal safari fees (even higher than those at Kanha) to visit it.

I was up the next morning at 4:45 and our jeep arrived about 5:30.  The central Tala Zone of the park was completely booked, so we headed into the Magdhi Zone over the terrible road I had come on two days before.  We entered the zone and drove on dirt roads through mostly flat terrain, with lots of trees, including sal.  It was very dusty, as we were often right behind other jeeps.  We saw sambar, chital, langurs, a jackal, peacocks and lots of other birds, including Indian rollers, of which there seem to be many in this area.  Early on we followed the pug marks of a very large male tiger, by far the largest pug marks I have seen.  We saw a large deposit of tiger scat and heard a chital warning cry, but saw no tiger.

We drove around some more, getting dustier and dustier and soon after 8 came across about eight jeeps parked alongside the road near a water hole.  We drove up and a big tiger was standing on a bank above the water hole, about 300 or 400 feet from us.  He lay down and roared several times, very impressive roars.  The guide said he was calling to his females and that he was the tiger whose tracks we had seen, a male about five years old.  He is the dominant tiger in the area, having killed the previous dominant male, who just happened to be his father, less than a year ago.  He lay there about ten minutes, as a few other jeeps arrived.  Then he got up and walked down the sandy incline to the water hole, full of reddish water colored by algae, where he crouched and drank for what must have been two minutes.  He then began walking past the water hole through the grass towards us.  We could see him clearly all the way.  We were perfectly positioned as he crossed the road right between us and another jeep, turning to growl once at us just before he crossed the road and disappeared into the forest.  What a great sighting!  We made our dusty way back, seeing deer and a wild boar on the way, and arrived at the hotel about 9:30, where we had breakfast.

The two Swedes left that afternoon and about 3:30 Neel and I set off on an afternoon safari (expensive with only two of us, with each of us paying about $40) into the Magdhi Zone again.  We followed a different route than in the morning, a very pretty route through rocky, hilly terrain, with higher hills than in the distance.  It was much less dusty than in the morning as fewer jeeps went this route.  We could see the hill upon which rests the fort, though we couldn't make out the fort itself.  Bandhavgarh (which means "Brother's Fort") has a long history and is supposed to have been given by Rama to his brother Lakshman.  An ancestor of the current Maharaja of Rewa (the city of Rewa is to the north) abandoned it in the early 17th century when he moved his capital to Rewa.  Bandhavgarh became his hunting preserve.

About 5 we came to a water hole with about ten jeeps waiting.  A tiger had been spotted here in the morning.  We waited a while, but no tiger showed up.  We drove around some more and saw deer and peacocks and langur monkeys.  About 6 we heard the warning cry of a chital, but couldn't remain long as we had to leave the zone by 6:30.  I got to bed about 9:30 that night, tired after the early mornings.

The next morning Neel and I set off into Magdhi Zone again, though our jeep driver was 40 minutes late and we didn't go through the gate until almost 6:30.  We had a beautiful drive, seeing deer and langurs and peacocks and even a long snake (a black cobra, the guide thought) slithering around a termite mound.  About 7:30 we arrived at a very small pond with ten or fifteen jeeps parked nearby.  A tiger and her cub had been spotted nearby earlier in the morning and all were hoping they would approach the water hole.  We waited an hour or so without success, with only a few birds to watch.  We drove back, very hot in the sun.  We spotted a red-headed king vulture in a tree and stopped right beside an unusually unconcerned chital buck right by the side of the road.  Usually, they flee or at least move off a little at the approach of a jeep.  We got back about 10 and had a very good breakfast prepared by an Indian woman living near the park whom Neel has befriended over his seven trips to the park.

Neel left that afternoon to catch a train to Bombay, but two other tourists, Zafer and Karen (he was from Turkey and she from India, a Goanese raised in Bombay), had arrived.  The three of us headed into Magdhi Zone about 3:30.  The afternoon was hot and sunny with no clouds, much hotter than the previous cloudy afternoon.  Near a large water hole fairly close to the entrance gate a huge herd of chital and sambar had gathered to drink.  I would guess there were about 200 of them.  Usually, you see them in groups of 20 at most, usually less.  We headed back to the water hole where I had spent an hour in the morning, passing a few deer, langurs and peacocks on the way.  After another unsuccessful wait, along with about 15 other jeeps, for 40 minutes or so, we drove back slowly towards the exit.  Near the exit we heard chital warning calls, but saw no tiger.  Just past the exit, on the main road back to Tala village, several jeeps were parked in hopes of seeing a tiger.  Chital warning cries had been heard, but again we saw no tiger.  We drove back to the village and spotted three jackals running alongside the road.  First time I 've seen three together.  About a mile from the village (the village is maybe four or five miles from Magdhi Gate, a fifteen minute drive by jeep on a terrible road) a tiger had just crossed the main road.  We had just missed him and spotted only his tracks in the soft sand along the road.  We got back to Tala about 7, just at dark, and had dinner before I went to bed about 9:30.  There is a fairly good restaurant in the village and the nights are very pleasant, though it was hotter that night than the night before.

Two Danes had arrived the next morning about 2 and at 5:30 the five of us crammed into a jeep for another trip to Magdi.  With five of us and a cheaper jeep than I had with Neel, it worked out to only about $14 each.  Again we saw deer and langurs and peacocks.  We also saw a large group of wild boar, maybe ten or so together.  We startled them and they bolted across the road behind us and into the underbrush.  We spent a long time looking for a tiger in the forest near the water hole where we had spent so much time during the previous two safaris  We heard him growl several times, and our guide and Zafer briefly spotted him as he moved through the grass, but that was it.  On the drive back we spotted a mongoose, the first one I've seen, scampering along the forest ground.  As we left the exit gate we saw several jeeps parked along the main road.  We hurriedly joined them, but had just missed, by about a minute, a tiger crossing the road.  We had to content ourselves with seeing his tracks before getting back to the hotel about 10.

That afternoon we finally got the coveted entry into the central Tala Zone.  It cost us about $110, thankfully divided by five for each of us.  The entrance is less than a mile from our hotel.  Entering about 4, we were all impressed by how beautiful the area was, with lots of greenery, hills and a little stream along the road.  About five or ten minutes after entry we saw jeeps parked along the road and heard a sambar's repeated loud warning calls.  We stopped and soon a tiger cub was spotted.  There was a sort of jeep scrum as they all (maybe ten or fifteen of them) tried to get into the best position, with one scraping another.  Eventually, we could see him, only nine months old but still looking large, standing in the green grass near the stream.  He is one of three cubs, but the mother and the other two cubs were not to be seen.  He soon lay down in the ferns right next to the stream along the road, perhaps fifty or sixty feet from us.  He looked very relaxed, but he wasn't drinking, I suspect because of all the jeeps.   We had a great view of him for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes as he lay in the ferns next to the stream, a beautiful spot.  He moved his head back and forth, but that was about that.  Our guide said there is a ten minute rule for viewing tigers, so we moved on, though others didn't.  The tiger got up and stood in the grass.  We could still see him standing there as we pulled away.

We drove through beautiful hilly, wooded scenery and saw sambar and chital in the forest and in the meadows.  At a water hole, two peacocks were displaying, shaking their beautiful tails and their brown rumps.  Two peahens appeared and walked up to the winner.  We came in view of the fort atop a flat topped hill, with a temple on top and gates on the approach to the top.  Pilgrims by the thousands come to the temple once or twice a year, which must be disturbing for the tigers.  Near the fort we drove through rocky terrain and then into more forest.  We passed a parrot nest in the hollow of a tree and could see the parrot feeding her chick, with the chick just barely visible poking out from the hollow.  We hoped to see another tiger and her cubs in this area, but had no such luck.

We drove back through the dusk as the sun set and reached our hotel about 6:30.  I walked over to the nearby interpretation center, which had pretty good exhibits, and spent an hour there before dinner with Karen and Zafer.  I got to bed after 10, later than I wanted, but happy to have made it into the Tala Zone.  In all I took six safaris (seeing a tiger on two of them) at Bandhavgarh, five in Magdhi and one in Tala, for a total cost of about $160 in entrance fees and jeep rentals.  At Kanha and Bandhavgarh together, I went on fifteen safaris, seeing tigers on seven of them (eight tigers altogether), for a total cost of about $500.  I guess that works out to a little over $60 a tiger!

April 16-23, 2012: Tigers! Kanha National Park and Jabalpur

On the morning of the 16th I left Nagpur about 9 on a bus bound for the city of Seoni, to the north in Madhya Pradesh.  The bus was slow and crowded, taking a long time just to get out of Nagpur and its suburbs and satellite towns.  About 11:30 we reached the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh state border and passed the turn off for Pench National Park, just over the border.  I had thought about going to Pench, but I had read it is difficult to find others to share jeeps there and I knew I had somebody at Kanha National Park with whom I could share a jeep.

The first part of the road in Madhya Pradesh was terrible, full of potholes as we went through hilly terrain through a teak forest full of almost leafless trees.  The road eventually got better and we arrived in Seoni about 1:30.  At 2 I left Seoni on an even more crowded bus heading northeast to the little junction town of Chiraidongri.  People were packed into that bus.  I was the third person on a seat made for two people and had standing passengers constantly leaning against me.  Not a pleasant trip, and very slow, stopping, it seemed, every mile or so to pick up or drop off passengers.  The terrain was fairly flat, with lots of cropland, at about 1500 feet elevation.

Arriving in Chiraidongri about 5:30, I almost immediately jumped on a bus for the final leg southeast to Khatiya on the edge of Kanha National Park.  Fortunately, this bus wasn't crowded.  We passed through hilly, forested terrain and reached Khatiya, at about 1500 feet elevation, about 6:30.  It had taken me nine and a half hours to travel about 150 miles.  I checked into a hotel right across from the bus stop and talked with a Yale Ph.D. student staying there while she spends a year doing field work for her thesis on tiger predation on livestock in the buffer zone surrounding the park.  I then had dinner and tried, without success, to contact Nick, the guy I had planned to share jeeps with on safaris into the park.  As it turned out, he had gone to bed early and didn't answer his phone.  He is staying in the home of an English guy who spends six months of the year here, but who left in late March.  I had been put in touch with him by a couple from Utah I met in Orchha in December, and he put me in touch with Nick.

I emailed Nick that night telling him where I was and the next morning shortly after 5, just after I had gotten up, he came by my room.  I had hoped to go on a safari with him that morning, but since my name wasn't on the list I couldn't go.  I did go to see the queue of jeeps (actually they are called "gypsies") waiting to enter the park.  (The park entrance is less than a five minute walk from the hotel.)  There must have been forty to fifty of them lined up.

After they all entered at 5:45 when the gate opened, I decided to take a walk, going along a dirt road that parallels the park border.  I passed a few huts of the local tribal people and absent mindedly came across a bare assed old woman taking her morning dump just off the road.  When I noticed her, I turned around and looked elsewhere.  When I finally resumed walking, she was coming towards me and, I think, gave me a dirty look.  Soon I turned off the road and followed trails into the sal forest, the tall, straight sal trees newly adorned with bright green leaves.  I passed a few more huts and then went deeper into the forest.  The sunlight began to filter through as the sun rose.  I saw lots of langur monkeys, including a group of about fifty together.  About thirty were sitting clustered on the ground and I think there must have been twenty or so in the trees above.  I found the park's nature trail, followed that, and then headed back, stopping here and there to watch the langurs.  It was getting hot in the sun after 8, but was pleasant under the trees.  I didn't get back to the hotel until more than three hours after starting my walk.

I had breakfast, and then a second breakfast about 11 with Nick after he came out of the park.  We decided to take an afternoon safari.  You pay for these trips into the park by the jeepload and the charges are considerably higher if your jeep has foreigners in it.  The charge is also higher if you go into the center of the reserve, where there are more tigers.  The afternoon safaris are only two and a half hours compared to more than four hours, even five sometimes, for the morning ones, so we decided to go into the peripheral zone closest to the gate (the Kisli Zone) rather than the central Kanha Zone.  It cost us about $76, split two ways.   Kanha is said to be India's premier tiger reserve, with 40 to 70 tigers.  April, May and June, when it is hot and dry before the monsoon and they need to be nearby the water holes, is the easiest time to see them.  They claim this is the area Kipling was writing about in The Jungle Book, which is apparently based in part on a report in 1831 of a boy raised by wolves near Seoni.  I had been humming "The Bear Necessities" on the buses from Nagpur the day before.

Kanha is mostly sal forest, with many meadows (I've been told "kanha" means "meadow") and lots of thin bamboo stands.   We saw chital (spotted dear) and langurs and soon spotted several gaur by the side of the road.  Gaur are Indian bison and the world's largest cattle, with the huge males weighing 2000 pounds.  They are dark brown or black, with all four of their legs white on the lower half (so that they look like they are wearing white stockings), and the males are indeed huge.  We also saw one albino calf.   Like cows, they seem very placid.  We saw a couple of small owlets in a hole in a tree, wild boar, sambar deer, barking deer (muntjacs) and lots of birds, including a jungle fowl, very much like a chicken but much more colorful.

We traversed a hilly, bamboo filled area into sal forest and eventually reached a little grassy meadow backed by the forest where we spotted two tigers in the bamboo.  They were well camouflaged in the grass and about 150 feet away, but we could see them fairly well.  We watched them for about half an hour as they walked through the high grass and into the bamboo.  One headed towards us before turning around.  The other was stalking some wild boar and using a clump of bamboo to hide himself or herself from them. The boar must have scampered off.  The guide thought the two tigers were close to a year old, though they looked pretty big to me.  They were fascinating to watch.  I had great views with my binoculars and got a few okay photos with my new camera.  Nick has a 500 mm telephoto lens that is about two feet long.  He got some spectacular photos.  Ours was the second jeep there.  By the time the tigers disappeared and we left, there were maybe ten jeeps there.   We drove back on a now cloudy late afternoon, passing more gaur and wild boar in a wide meadow.  We got back to the gate at 6:30, when it closes.  It gets dark about 7 and we had dinner in the open air hotel restaurant. It rained, quite a surprise, about 7:30 for ten minutes.

I was tired and overslept the next morning.  Nick knocked on my door and woke me up at 5:25 and I hurriedly dressed and got to our jeep at the gate before we entered at 5:45.  We headed towards the central Kanha Zone, which cost us about $94, split equally.  A thin windbreaker was enough to keep me warm as we drove in the early morning.  I took it off after a couple of hours when it warmed up.  At the gate a sign indicated it was 24 degrees Celsius, or about 75 Fahrenheit.  We saw a jackal, gaur, deer, wild boar and a jungle cat, the last the size of a very large domestic cat and colored brown.  We drove along a dirt road through lovely sal forest and spotted mahouts on elephants to our left.  There were three of them following a tiger and almost before we knew it a pregnant female crossed the road about 70 feet behind us.  We got a great view, though a short one (Nick's camera indicated six seconds), before she disappeared into the forest cover on the other side of the road.  The elephants and mahouts followed her.  Soon she lay down somewhere beyond our vision.  We waited for a while, but apparently she wasn't stirring.  We had had quite a good view of her, though, and that was an exciting six seconds.  She had turned her head to look at us as she crossed the road.

We drove on, spotting deer and lots of birds, many with wonderful calls.  The guide, the driver and Nick were all very good at spotting them.  We saw, among many others, hornbills, brilliant blue rollers and several peacocks displaying their fan tail of feathers.  They circle slowly as they do so, trying to attract peahens.  About 9 it was getting hot in the sun and we got back to the hotel for breakfast about 10:30.  We sat around until about noon and then I spent most of the afternoon in my room, cooled fairly well by a cooler like the one I had in Nagpur.  The electricity went out about 4 and I walked around a bit and read in the shade until dinner with Nick about 7.

The next morning I woke up soon after 4 (after going to bed before 10 the night before) and got up about 4:30.  I had tea about 5 with Nick.  He makes sure he arrives early with our jeep and driver so he can be the first in the queue at the gate.  The sky was a little cloudy as we enterred at 5:45, heading for the Kanha Zone. We passed gaur, chital, wild boar, and a rare, large deer called barasingha.  In a meadow we spotted two red-headed vultures on the ground, eating at the remains of a kill, though we couldn't see the kill in the high grass.  Vultures are apparently being killed off by a medicine given to cattle that is fatal to vultures.  We didn't see any tigers, but we did see an impressively large tiger scat, with remnants of the fur of one of his or her recent meals.  On the way out we passed a big tree with a hole in a branch with a tiny owlet in it.  Another owlet was on a nearby branch.

We came out about 10:30 and had breakfast in the hotel's open air restaurant and then I spent most of the early afternoon in my room until we left for our afternoon safari at 4.  It was cloudy as we headed into the Kisli Zone.  We saw gaur, chital, sambar, wild boar and barasingha.  We followed some tiger pugs in the dust of the road, probably from the morning, the guide said.  About 6 we saw a tiger, maybe a couple of hundred feet from us, sitting lazily on a little ridge just above a small pond.  Three other jeeps showed up as we watched him and he got up and disappeared into the high grass around the pond.  He reappeared on the side of the pond closest to us and then disappeared again.  We drove down the road a bit and he reappeared, walking straight towards us.  He was an enormous tiger and I couldn't believe he was coming right towards us, less than a hundred feet away.  We pulled forward, leaving a gap between our jeep and the next jeep and he sauntered onto the road between the two jeeps and disappeared into the forest on the other side.  A very exciting sighting.  The guide said he was a male about five or six years old.  It was really something to see him coming right towards us.  We sped off, as we had to be out by 6:30, and on the way out spotted a very large sloth bear behind some bamboo right next to the road.  I wish we could have had some more time to watch the bear, but our guide insisted we proceed and we did get out of the park before 6:30.

The next morning we headed into the park at 5:45, into the Kisli Zone again.  As usual, we saw gaur, barasingha, chital, wild boar and sambar.  There are also lots of termite mounds, with many thin ridges somewhat like flying buttresses.  I haven't seen termite mounds with those ridges elsewhere.  We followed tiger tracks in the dust of the road and heard the warning calls of deer, signifying the presence of a predator.  The tiger was in an area beyond the reach of roads, and elephants were sent in to search of him.  We drove around some and then returned to this area and saw the elephants moving towards the road.  Eventually, we could see through the brush that a big tiger was near the elephants and they were directing him towards the road.  The elephants emerged onto the road a few hundred feet in front of us, and eventually one of the mahouts motioned us to come forward where we saw a big tiger, which turned out to be the same one we had seen the previous evening, lying placidly just along the side of the road.   We got a great view of him as he rested for quite a while (maybe ten or fifteen minutes), until we were motioned to move on.  I'd guess he was maybe 50 or 60 feet away.  We drove around some more and saw sloth bear footprints, but no sloth bear.  It gets warm after 9, and butterflies appear as the birds get quieter.  We got back to the hotel for breakfast about 10:30.

For our afternoon safari, we wanted to go to Kisli again, but its quota was filled because of all the tiger sightings there, so we went to Kanha.   We saw deer, wild boar, gaur and lots of birds and monkeys on the beautiful route we were on, but no tigers that afternoon.  We did see three peacocks displaying their fan tails in a meadow, but nary a pea hen around.

The next morning we headed to the Mukki sector.  As usual, we saw deer, wild boar and gaur, and we followed the pug marks of a female tiger and her four cubs.  We heard alarm calls, but saw no tigers.  They apparently had  gone into the forest before we could reach them on the road.  They like walking on the soft dust of the road, which makes it easier to track them.  On our safaris we almost always came across long lines of tiger tracks.  We had another beautiful drive and came upon quite a few, maybe twenty, gaur together.  Two of the males fought, butting their wide horned heads together and raising quite a bit of dust.  Later we came across two langur monkeys in the hollows of a dead tree eating the wood of the tree inside the hollow, or perhaps eating something on the wood.  That was quite interesting.  They kept darting us glances between nibbles to make sure we meant them no harm.  Near the end of the morning we came upon two elephants and their mahouts, along with several jeeps.  A tiger was in the bamboo along the road, but it apparently was resting or sleeping and didn't appear.

In the afternoon we entered the Kisli Zone again, where we had had the most luck.  Two other Europeans who had arrived the day before joined us on a cloudy afternoon so the safari cost each of us only about $19.  Again, we saw lots of deer, gaur and monkeys, along with some wild boar and a jackal.  Three birds tried to drive the jackal away by diving towards it.  Nick thought they had eggs nearby in a nest on the ground.  We drove around looking for tigers and late in the afternoon saw another jeep whose guide motioned us forward.  Along the road a big tiger was sitting in a little pool of water.  The pool was lined with concrete and wasn't much larger than the length of the tiger, so it looked more like something in a zoo.  Still, it was another great close up view of a tiger in the wild and it was fun to watch him drink, yawn and rest his head in the water.  Afterwards, the four of us had dinner at the hotel restaurant.

The next morning I left on my last safari at Kanha.  Nick and I were joined by an Indian couple and we ventured into the Sarhi Zone.  We saw a couple of jackals early on, along with deer and lots of birds.  The area was beautiful, very hilly with views down into the valleys between the hills as we traversed dirt roads on steep hillsides.  Most of the trees along the way were nearly leafless.  At one point we came across a commotion of birds, which I didn't fully appreciate until the more observant Nick explained to me what had happened.  A shikra was chasing a small red headed woodpecker, caught him and took him to the ground.  Immediately, a dozen or more babblers attacked the shikra on the ground (this part I saw), freeing the woodpecker and driving the shikra off.  The apparently somewhat stunned little woodpecker then flew off.  Nick said he'd never seen birds defend a bird of a different species.

We circled through the Sarhi Zone and came back to the green sal forest nearer the park center and found a big herd of barasingha in a meadow.  We also spotted two vultures in barren tree.  They flew off and we noticed about five or six of them circling in the sky, so there must have been a fresh kill nearby.  We didn't see any tigers, though.  It was hot in the late morning and we got back to the hotel for breakfast about 10:30.

All together, I went on nine safaris at a total cost of about $340 for the entrance fees, jeeps and tips, and saw tigers on five of them, six tigers in total, a much better rate of success than I had expected.

That afternoon Nick had hired a car to take him to Jabalpur (he had a flight to Delhi the next morning) and graciously invited me to go along with him.  We left about 2:30 on the hundred mile trip northeast, passing small towns and villages and the large town on Mandla on the holy Narmada River.  We came through some wooded hills south of Jabalpur, rising to over 2000 feet in elevation and passing maybe fifty carts pulled by oxen and full of colorful tribal people and their possessions.  I wonder where they were going.  It was quite a sight to see all those heavily laden carts strung out along the paved two lane highway.  We arrived in Jabalpur, at about 1500 feet elevation, about 6, checked into a hotel and went to dinner.  I was very tired and went to bed about 9:30.

I slept well, all the way until 6 (after so many mornings getting up before 5), and saw Nick off at 7 when he took a taxi to the airport.  Extremely knowledgeable about wildlife, and much else, he was a great traveling companion.  He's headed back to London, where he teaches at a university.  Tired, I spent most of the morning in the hotel, with breakfast in my room, before venturing out to an internet cafe about 11.

About 3 I took a tempo (a large shared autorickshaw) about 12 miles west to Bhedaghat on the Narmada River.  Arriving about 4, I boarded one of the tourist boats that take you up the river through the Marble Rocks, mostly white, rocky cliffs that line the river below a waterfall.  About twenty of us were on a boat rowed up the river into the narrow gorge between the rocks and back, a trip of about 30 to 40 minutes.  It was fairly scenic, with rocky white pinnacles rising about 100 feet above the water.  The two guys rowing had to strain in the narrowest part of the river where the current was strong. 

Afterward I walked to a nearby 10th century Durga temple on a hilltop reached by 108 stairs with statues of the Chausath (64) Yogini in an arcade circling the temple.  They were quite interesting, though almost all had been damaged by Muslims.  Heads, breasts, arms and legs were often missing, but the parts that survived were very well done.  Two or three of them were almost complete.  From the hilltop temple there was a good view of the gorge of the Marble Rocks below.  From there I walked about a mile upstream to the Dhaundhar Falls, a mini-Niagara perhaps 40 or 50 feet high.  A lot of water was crashing over the very scenic falls, which I thought more impressive than the Marble Rocks.  The narrow chasm of the gorge starts just below the falls.  Lots of Indian tourists were there for the sunset.  I got there after six and stayed there until almost dark, with sunset about 6:30, before taking a tempo back to Jabalpur about 7.

April 9-15, 2012: Ajanta, Lonar, Wardha and Nagpur

I left Aurangabad about 3 in the afternoon on the 9th on a bus heading to Fardapur, about 65 miles northeast.  Before that, I had spent the day in Aurangabad trying to avoid the hot sun.  At the hotel I had a leisurely breakfast and read a couple of newspapers before spending time at an internet cafe before lunch.  It was a hot, but not too long, walk back to the hotel from the internet cafe about noon.  I had lunch on their roof top cafe, which has an awning, but was still very hot in the middle of the day.  I relaxed and read in the relativley cool lobby before leaving for the bus station.

The bus trip took about two hours, passing mostly through flat areas, but with hills just north of Aurangabad and just south of Fardapur.  Just before Fardapur we came down a ravine, passing the turn off for the Ajanta Caves, and reached Fardapur on the plains, only about five miles from the caves.  Fardapur is a small town, but with several hotels.  I checked into a nice room and walked along the highway through town just at sunset, with dinner at the hotel afterward.  I think I was the only guest at the hotel.

The next morning I watched the sun rise over a small hill from my one of my windows and made it to the Ajanta Caves about 9, when they opened to the public.  These Buddhist caves, dating from the 2nd century BC to the 6th century AD, are located in the 250 foot high cliffs of a ravine formed by a horseshoe bend of the Waghora River.  It is a very scenic site, though very dry this time of year without a drop of water in the riverbed.  The pictures of it in the wet season, with everything green and waterfalls falling off the cliffs, are spectacular.  The caves were cut into the cliffs to provide wet season accommodation for wandering Buddhist monks, about 200 of them, but were abandoned about the time the caves at Ellora were started.  They were forgotten for over a thousand years before being rediscovered by a group of British officers hunting tigers in 1819.  Thus, they managed to avoid damage by Muslims.

There are thirty caves (though about a third of them are closed) strung along the horseshoe bend, with the earliest (from the 2nd century BC) in the center.  These have stupas representing Buddha.  The later caves, from the 5th and 6th centuries AD, are on both ends.  The most extraordinary thing about these caves is that they are filled with paintings, temperas painted on plaster applied to the rock cut walls.  There is, of course, considerable concern about the deterioration of the paintings with so many people entering the caves to see them (though there were considerably fewer people at Ajanta than at Ellora).  Many of the caves have low intensity lights, dehumidifiers and barriers before the paintings.  Unfortunately, the barriers inside the caves, especially at the best paintings, keep you as much as thirty feet away from the paintings, which means you really can't make out the intricate details, and often can't see much at all.  That was a real disappointment.

Cave 1 has a spectacular large painting of the bodhisattva Padmapani, and you can see that very well, but, as I said, the smaller details are almost impossible to pick out.  The walls of that cave and the next one are covered with paintings, but the thirty foot barriers made viewing them very frustrating.  As I went from cave to cave, there were some without barriers where you could get close to fragments of paintings and those were very interesting.  There is also excellent sculpture, similar to that at Ellora.  I spent more than six hours walking from cave to cave.  In Cave 16 is the famous painting of the "Dying Princess," actually the wife of Buddha's brother, who is not dying but fainting on being told that her husband is leaving her to become a monk.  It is very hard to see in the dark.  Another cave is unfinished, but it is very interesting to see how they were cutting into the rock.  It was very hot in the sun outside the caves, but, as at Ellora, cool inside.  Fortunately, the caves are closer together than at Ellora.  The last cave you can visit, Cave 26, has a large sculpted reclining Buddha, actually Buddha on his deathbed, and several other beautiful sculptures.

About 3:30 I climbed up steps from the riverbed to a look out point opposite the caves about 200 feet above the riverbead, and from there made a further climb, rising about 300 feet in elevation, to the point where the caves were first seen by the tiger hunters in 1819.  (Their leader was named John Smith and you can see his name carved onto a painted pillar in the Cave 10, the one he first spotted and the oldest cave at Ajanta.)  That was a hot climb (my thermometer read 106), but the view was worth it.  When I reached the top I drank the very warm last remaining gulps from my bottle of water.  Hot water never tasted so good.  I walked down  to the dry riverbed, and then along it, reaching the entrance about 5:30, when the caves close.  I drank two liters of cold water upon arrival there.

Back at the hotel that evening, I watched cricket on television.  India's professional cricket league season has just started.  The league games have different rules and take only something like four hours to play, rather than the five days needed for "test" cricket, the original game.  I watched the Bangalore Royal Challengers versus the Kolkata Knight Riders.  There were cheer leaders, all of them western women.

I left Fardapur shortly after 9 the next morning, taking a bus heading back towards Aurangabad, passing the turn off to the caves and heading up the ravine into the hills.  I took it only as far as the town of Ajanta, about seven miles from Fardapur and on the higher flatlands reached by the ravine.  From there I caught a bus headed east to Buldana through an area with very rich looking black soil.  Much of it was ploughed, waiting for planting with the coming of the monsoon, I guess.  There were remnants of crops of wheat and cotton.  From Buldana I caught another bus headed southeast to Mehkar, and from Mekhar a final bus south to Lonar, arriving about 2.  I took an autorickshaw to a hotel on the outskirts of town on the edge of the Lonar Crater, formed 50,000 years ago when a meteorite hit.  The crater is more than a mile in diameter and about 450 feet deep.  It is said to be the world's third largest, after one in Arizona and one in Ghana.

I checked into the hotel, had lunch there, and about 3 started down the trail right across the road from the hotel into the crater.  A green, alkaline lake fills much of the crater, bordered by a green forest.  The sloping walls of the crater are mostly grassy and yellow at this time of year, with some trees.  It didn't take long to walk down, less than twenty minutes, and I descended only a little more than 300 feet by my altimeter.  I passed an old, deserted temple just before reaching the floor.  It was relatively cool in the shade of the trees on the crater floor, and I began a walk around the lake, going clockwise.

There was a good trail at first, passing several old, deserted temples, one filled with bats and another with langur monkeys.  There were lots of birds, too, in the trees and on the lake.  Further on, I came across a huge band of langurs, maybe thirty or forty of them.  They are incredible leapers and fun to watch.  A little further on, I came to an active temple on the edge of the lake, with a few pilgrims and even more monkeys.  The trail got rougher after that and I reached a nice spot, a deserted temple just across the lake from where I had come down the crater wall.  The trail continued, but with quite a few briers, scratching my legs.  I saw some peafowl, mostly peahens, I think.  They flew off before I could get too close.  They are very ungainly fliers.

Coming almost full circle around the lake, I lost the trail in an agricultural area, mostly bananas, but finally made my way to just below the path I had come down, about three hours after starting.  It had clouded up a bit.  I have seen so very few clouds during this very dry five months of traveling in India.  The sun set and I watched a group of peafowl gathered in a clearing.  One beautiful male was with several hens.  The hens, once they realized I was nearby, fluttered off into the trees, but the peacock lingered a little longer.  A little stream is nearby, and langurs were gathered there to drink.  I climbed up out of the crater and got back to the hotel just as it got dark, about 7.  I had dinner out on the terrace of the almost empty hotel restaurant, overlooking the crater and facing a very nice evening breeze.  

I got up about 6:30 the next morning and sat on the terrace just outside my room, where it was much cooler than in my room.  There were birds and squirrels in the nearby trees and it was very pleasant out there. I decided to spend another day in Lonar rather than face more hot bus travel across the Deccan.  After breakfast overlooking the crater, I walked down into the crater about 9 and walked along the path under the trees to the active temple on the lake's southern shore, passing lots of langurs and birds.  (The hotel is just east of the crater.)   I turned around and came back and was back at the hotel about noon.  It was a little cloudy by then, but still a hot climb up.  I had lunch and spent the hot part of the afternoon at the hotel.  I tried to take a nap but it was too hot in my room.  It was nicer on the restaurant terrace facing the breeze.

I walked down again about 5, again heading to the active temple on the southern side of the lake and seeing lots of langurs.  I came back to the lake's eastern shore and watched the sun, reflected in the lake, set over the crater walls.  I spotted two peacocks (India's national bird) in the clearing before I climbed up the crater walls just before dark and again enjoyed the cool breeze from the west during dinner.

The electricity failed the next morning at 6 and I was awakened as my fan stopped revolving.  I got up soon after and sat out in the cool air of my terrace.  Thirty people from Bombay were scheduled to arrive at the hotel that day (I had been about the only guest), but  I left before they arrived.  After breakfast at the hotel, I caught a bus north back to Mehkar about 9, and at 10 another bus from Mehkar heading east all the way to Wardha, in fact all the way to Nagpur.

The trip to Wardha, though only about 170 miles, was a long one, seven hours on two lane country roads, passing lots of agricultural land and through several towns.  There wasn't much traffic and fortunately the bus never was too full.  The terrain was mostly flat, with some hills and rolling countryside.  All was very dry.  There was a lot of black, rich looking soil at the beginning, though the soil became browner the further east we came.  There were lots of plowed fields, ready for planting, and lots of browns and yellows, but with plenty of green leafed trees.  We did come through one forest of almost leafless trees, teak perhaps.  Soon after noon the cool wind of the morning coming in the bus windows had turned into an unpleasant blast of hot air coming in the windows.  It was hot in that bus in the afternoon.  Through the day we descended from about 2000 feet elevation to about 1000 in Wardha, which we reached about 5.  I got a room in a hotel right next to the bus station and the room was delightfully cool, though I'm not sure why.  I sat in my room, drank lots of water, and recovered from the bus trip before dinner.

When I got up the next morning my thermometer registered 82 in my room, wonderfully cool.  I had come to Wardha to visit the Sevagram Ashram, where Gandhi lived from 1936 to 1942.  It's only about five miles outside of the city, but it took me over an hour to find the right bus.  By the time I got there, after the short bus trip and about a half mile walk from the bus stop, it was about 11 and hot.  I looked around the simple mud walled, stick roofed huts of the ashram.  Gandhi's hut had a bathroom with a porcelain toilet bowl set above a septic tank.  Another hut, the first used by Gandhi and the ashramites, when they were all living in the same hut, had a bathroom with a porcelain bathtub.  The Indian man behind me said, "Gandhi had a bathtub?"  Judging from the sign in book at the entrance, I think I may have been the only westerner to visit in a while.  There were only a few tourists there.  Gandhi move there because he wanted to be in a small village, and Wardha is a railroad junction almost right in the middle of India.

A photo gallery was across the road and next to that a simple restaurant where I had a thali lunch, with what Indians call "buttermilk" to drink.  I think it is whey, as in "curds and whey."  One guy told me it is what is left over when curd (what Indians call yogurt) is produced from milk.

I took a shared autorickshaw back to my hotel.  It was the birthday of the untouchable (untouchables are now called dalits) leader B. R. Ambedkar, who was born in 1891 and died in 1956.  There were posters of him all over town.  Near the end of his life, fed up with Hinduism's treatment of untouchables, he converted to Buddhism, and I have read there are something like 500,000 Ambedkar Buddhists, mostly around Nagpur.  Many of the posters had Ambedkar in suit and tie with horn-rimmed glasses on one side and Buddha on the other.

I got back to my hotel room about 2 and rested in that nice cool room until about 3:30, when I caught an express bus heading northeast to Nagpur, 45 miles and two hours away.  We reached a four lane divided highway about 15 miles south of the city.  Nagpur has over two million people and was the capital of the Central Provinces during British rule.  It is now in the northeast corner of Maharashtra.  I got a room in a hotel with a cooler, a device that has a fan blowing over straw saturated with water and produces a cool wind.  I remember a friend of mine used to have something similar in his house as a kid in the '60's.  It worked very well and kept the room cool.  In the lobby is a photo of the hotel when it opened in 1980, with only two or three cars parked in the street in front of it.  There is hardly any traffic on the street, one scooter and several bicycles, quite different from the congested, noisy street in front of the hotel today.   At dinner I read a newspaper, reporting that the temperature had reached 105 the day before, down from 108 two days before that.

My thermometer registered 77 the next morning and in fact I had used my blanket during the night for the first time since I was in Mahabaleshwar in the Western Ghats.  That cooler worked very well.  About 9 I caught a bus heading northeast to Ramtek, only about 25 miles away, but a very hot and crowded hour and a half bus trip.  In Ramtek I took an autorickshaw up to the top of the hill rising about 400 or 500 feet above town with a fort and temples on top.  Rama, his wife Sita, and his brother Lakshman are supposed to have stopped here on their way back to Ayodhya from Lanka.  On the way up we passed a lake between hills are bordered with small temples.

The 18th century fort looks much restored and the temples, originally 5th century, look restored, too.  Not many pilgrims were there.  I think they were outnumbered by the langur monkeys, the tamest ones I've come across.  They were a lot of fun to watch.  The temples weren't much, but the views of the town and countryside were great.  I stayed up on one high spot for quite a while, being visited occasionally by pilgrims and monkeys.  Langurs are incredible leapers and I watch them jump from one part of the temple to another.

I walked down the 700 steps from the hilltop to the town, in the midday heat through a grove of leafless trees, but with good views up of the fort and temples.  Some of the trees were in flower, with tiny, white flowers with lots of bees prowling around them.  My thermometer registered 108.  I caught a 1 o'clock bus back to Nagpur and was glad to reach my cool hotel room after another crowded bus trip.

April 3-8,2012: Aurangabad, Ellora and Daulatabad

I left Pune by bus about 10:30 on the morning of the 3rd, heading northeast into the Deccan towards the city of Aurangabad, renamed after the Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb after his death in 1707.  (Aurangzeb had moved his capital there from Delhi about 25 years before his death, halfway through his 49 year reign, to focus on threats to his empire from the Marathas and others, the Sultans of Bijapur and Golcanda, to the south.)  It took about five and a half hours to cover the almost 150 miles between the two cities on an express bus that made few stops.  The countryside was dry and mostly uncultivated, with few crops until we crossed the Godavari River just near Aurangabad, and then appeared some cotton, corn, sugar cane and wheat, among other crops.  However, lots of green trees and bushes added some more color to the yellows and browns of the dry countryside.  Hills were visible most of the way and generally we traveled about 2000 to 2500 feet above sea level.  (Aurangabad is something like 1700 feet in elevation.)  We passed through hills just before and just after the city of Ahmadnagar (where Aurangzeb died in 1707), the halfway point between Pune and Aurangabad.  Aurangabad was hot and I found a hotel and relaxed in my room under a swiftly moving ceiling fan before dinner.

The next morning I had to change hotels and then spent the morning having a leisurely breakfast and reading newspapers.  About noon I hired a rickshaw driver to show me around the city.  We headed first to Panchakki, a not particularly interesting complex near a Sufi saint's grave with a pool of water and a mill stone operated by the force of water coming from a spring three or four miles away.

We drove next to the Aurangabad Caves in a hilly, dry area north of the city, with good views back towards the city through the heat haze.  These are Buddhist rock cut caves, about ten of them in two different areas about a mile apart.  They are the product of two different dynasties, one in the 4th and 5th centuries AD and the other in the 6th to 8th centuries AD, although one cave is obviously much earlier, probably from the first century AD or earlier.  In it, Buddha is represented as a stupa, similar to the halls in Karla and Bhaja.  In the other caves Buddha is represented in human form and there are many other fine figures cut out of the rock.  Particularly good is a woman dancing, with other women playing instruments around her, although all this is in the dark and I could see it only with my flashlight and the flash from my camera.  Another good group, again in the dark, are kneeling devotees on either side of a Buddha in a sanctuary.  The Buddha is illuminated from the light outside.  It was hot in the sun outside the caves, but not unbearably so.  Inside the caves it was much cooler.

From the caves you can see on the edge of town the Taj Mahal-like Bibi ki Maqbara, the tomb of Aurangzeb's wife, finished in 1678 after about 25 years of work.  It was built by their son, but the parsimonious Aurangzeb wouldn't spend the money to complete it out of marble.  Only the first few feet from the base are marble.  The rest is some other stone covered in white plaster.  It looks quite nice from a distance, although the proportions are not as pleasant as the Taj Mahal.  The four minarets seem a little pudgy in comparison.  Up close the surface of the Bibi ki Maqbara is much inferior to the Taj Mahal, the interface between the marble and the plaster noticeable.  I walked around the garden surrounding it, also much inferior to that of the Taj Mahal, and went up onto the platform and into the chamber, with the tomb of the queen below surrounded by a beautiful marble screen.  Her tomb apparently is not covered by a marble slab, but only with dirt.  It is covered with a colorful sheet, with lots of coins on it thrown by Indians from above.  Apparently, the lack of a marble slab and the dirt is a sign of humility, which seems pretty ludicrous inside a tomb of this sort.  Despite its inferiority to the Taj Mahal, built 40 years earlier, it still is a very impressive building and I liked it.

I would have liked to have spent the rest of the afternoon there, but decided to continue with my autorickshaw tour, visiting a museum with some interesting stuff on Shivaji and other stuff, and a factory, with looms, for the making of saris and shawls.  Aurangabad is famous for its weaving and the silks and cottons with gold and silver thread that I saw in the showroom were indeed beautiful.   We passed a few of the restored city gates and saw a remnant of the old city wall built by Aurangzeb.  The city was founded only earlier in the 17th century and declined markedly after Aurangzeb's death.  I got back to my hotel about 6.  My room was very hot that night.  I didn't realize until the next morning that my windows weren't fully open.  It was over 90 in that room -- my thermometer registered 93 the next morning when I checked soon after I got up.

The next morning about 9 I took a bus 18 miles northwest to the Ellora Caves.  This set of 34 caves, hacked out of a hillside with a gentle slope from the 6th to the 11th centuries, makes all the other caves temples I've seen pale in comparison.  The caves run for over a mile along the hillside and are in three groups.  Buddhist caves (1-12), Hindu caves (13-29), and Jain Caves (30-34).  The Buddhist caves to the south are the oldest, 6th to mid-8th centuries; the Hindu caves in the middle come next, 7th to 9th centuries; and the Jain ones to the north date from 9th to 11th centuries.  The document the decline of Buddhism and the resurgence of Hinduism during this period, although the ruling dynasty at the end of this period adopted the Jain religion.

Arriving about 10, I went first to the grandest of the caves, #16, the Kailash Temple.  It is not a cave at all, but a huge temple hacked out of the hillside.  Unlike the others it is not cut into the hillside (although some of its side galleries are), but was constructed by cutting out rock from the top down.  It is estimated that something like 200,000 to 250,000 tons, or 80,000 cubic meters, of rock were cut out and carted away, with outcrops left to be carved into temples, towers and sculpture.  It is an incredible site and a big one, about 110 feet wide and 165 feet deep into the hillside.  The highest point, the shikhara or tower of the main temple, rises almost 100 feet.  It is thought it may have taken a century, or maybe two, to complete.  It is an amazing place to see, and still in good shape for the most part, despite considerable weathering due to its being open to the elements, and subject to the destructiveness of Muslims.

It is dedicated to Shiva, the Lord of Kailash (a mountain in Tibet, which I visited in 1994, considered to be the center of the universe).  The stone was once covered in white plaster and painted, though very little of that remains. The monumental sculpture, mostly focused on the Shiva and his consort Parvati, is fantastic and the way galleries are cut into the cliff, with massive overhangs of bare rock, is awe inspiring.  Such a huge amount of work went into this temple.  I wandered around enjoying it all.  Hordes of tourists started coming in after 11.  Almost all were Indian.  April is hot and past the usual season for foreign tourists, though there were some.  There was one big group of uniformed school girls, several hundred of them in their brown uniforms, from the Ryan School in Bombay.  After granting a few, I started declining photo requests right and left.

About noon I left the Kailash Temple and walked down to Cave #1 and spent the next four hours slowly making my way, cave by cave, back to the Kailash Temple.  I really enjoyed seeing the different caves, most of which I would have spent much more time in had they been at a site all by themselves.  It was interesting to see the Buddhist temples becoming more elaborate, as they had to compete with the more exciting sculptural themes of the Hindu temples being built at the same time.  Only one of the Buddhist temples had a hall with a stupa as in Karla, Bhaja and Aurangabad, and it had a huge Buddha in human form right in front of the stupa.  Besides serene Buddhas, the Buddhist temples did have massive door guardians and other sculpture, and the arrangement of the temples was almost always a little, or sometimes a lot, different from the previous ones.  Many were quite large, one something like 60 feet wide and twice that deep into the hillside.

The three Hindu temples (13-15) just before Kailash were a marked contrast from the Buddhist ones before them.  At least two of these are thought to be converted Buddhist temples.  They contain huge and intriguing action-filled sculpture centered on Shiva.  About 4 I took a break at a snack bar near the Kailash Temple.  Unfortunately, they had only warm bottled water.  It was a very hot day, probably a 100 or more.  Fortunately, the caves are cool and you needn't walk far in the hot sun between caves.

I went back into the Kailash Temple after my break.  By then the crowds were smaller.  I had hoped to see all the caves in one day, and had gone faster than I would have preferred in Caves 1-15, but I eventually realized I couldn't see them all in one day.  I spent another hour and a half looking all around the Kailash Temple and then climbed the path that allows you to climb up one side and look down into it.  In fact, I circled around the back and down the other side, with great views of the temple below.  I left as they shooed us all out about 6:30, just before sunset.  A full moon was rising just over the hillside, which faces the west.  I caught a bus back to Aurangabad, arriving about 7:30, after dark.  Despite my windows being fully open that night, my room temperature was still in the 90's.  Very hot.  Still, I was so tired I slept well.  The weather here in the day time is hot, but, having grown up in California's Central Valley, I am used to hot, dry weather.  The very hot nights are harder to take.  It does cool down outside, but hotel rooms do not cool down much.

I was tired and got a later start the next day, catching a bus after 10 on the way back to Ellora, but I stopped off just about two miles before Ellora at the little town of Khuldabad to see Aurangzeb's grave.  He wanted a very simple grave, open to the sky, and near the grave of a Sufi saint, and that is what he got.  His grave is "open to the sky," that is, topped with dirt rather than, say, a marble slab.  There were flower petals on the dirt and a sheet around the grave, with a cut out for the grave itself.  There is now a marble screen around the grave, built about a century ago by the Nizam of Hyderabad upon the suggestion of Lord Curzon, the Viceroy.  I also visited the grave of the Sufi saint, another Chisthi (they all seem to be from the Chisthi family).  His was much more elaborate, housed in a small shrine with an interesting string of ostrich eggs hanging above it.

From Khuldabad I caught a shared autorickshaw to Ellora, arriving just before noon and eating a quick, and pretty terrible, sandwich, before spending the afternoon seeing Caves 17-34.  I went through them slowly and very much enjoyed them.  17 through 29 are Hindu, with great sculpture, particularly in 21, 25 and 29, though there were gems in the other caves, too.  29 was particularly fine, with a cruciform shape and three entrances, to the north, west and south, with the sanctuary to the east.  It has great panels depicting the stories of Shiva.  It also has scores, or maybe hundreds, of squeaky bats hanging in the dark corridor just behind the sanctuary.  I enjoyed all the sculpture, though I was sorry to see the serene Buddhas in the sanctuaries in the Buddhist temples replaced by Shiva's stone penis in the Hindu ones.   It was a very hot day.  At one point I checked my thermometer in my daypack and it registered 104.  I was hoping there wouldn't be many tourists on this stretch, but there were lots of noisy Indians.  You can drive to some of the temples on this stretch, and there were cars and autorickshaws parked.

I hadn't brought water with me, as the day before it had become very warm, almost unbearable to drink, in the heat.  I had hoped to get cold, or at least cooler, water on the way.  But to my great disappointment the canteen near the Jain caves was closed.  I was very thirsty as I looked through those very interesting temples, with their distinctive rigid statues of Jain tirthankars.  They did, however, contain some great sculpture and even some paintings on the ceilings.

Very thirsty, I walked back along the hillside after 5 and got to the gate after only twenty minutes or so.  I drank a liter of water in about two minutes and then bought another liter which I drank on the bus back to town.  Once back at the hotel, I downed another liter.  I probably had another liter before bedtime, another warm one in that hot room.  But I slept well.

The next morning  I caught a 9 o'clock bus to Daulatabad, about halfway between Aurangabad and Ellora.  I had passed this impressive fort going to and from Ellora and looked forward to exploring it.  At its center is a 700 foot high volcanic pinnacle that has had a fort on it since at least the 11th century and possibly earlier.  The Yadava Dynasty shaped the lower end of the pinnacle so that is has sheer 200 foot high sides and below those sheer vertical cliffs a 50 foot deep moat.  It was first captured by Muslims in 1296 and in 1328 Tughluq, the Muslim Sultan of Delhi moved his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad because it was better positioned to facilitate his attempts to conquer the south.  In fact, he not only moved the capital, he forced all of Delhi's residents to move, an epic journey of almost 700 miles that cost thousands of lives.  However, because of drought and famine, after 17 years he moved the capital and its people back to Dellhi, costing more thousands of lives.  A local dynasty took over the fort in the next century and in 1633 the Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan captured it.  The Nizam of Hyderabad took it over in the next century.

The fort has three circles of walls before you get to the pinnacle and they present a formidable appearance.  Inside the walls in the flat area beneath the pinnacle are a 200 foot high tower built in 1435 that once was covered with blue tiles, a huge water tank, wells, ruins of palaces, and a mosque built with the columns of former Hindu and Jain  temples that now has been turned into a Hindu temple, with a colorfully painted god at the end of the columned prayer hall.  I passed through several impressive gates and by a couple of ruined palaces, including the Chini Mahal, once covered with Chinese tiles, and reached the moat, once infested with crocodiles.  A wooden bridge now crosses it.  The old stone bridge has steps down and then up and could be flooded with water to prevent passage.

Once past the moat, the way up is through a dark, difficult passage of uneven steps that spirals up through the rock.  A modern stairway now bypasses this route, but I used my flashlight and made my way through the pitch black, bat filled, difficult passage, with spots where intruders could be ambushed or attacked with hot oil or other unpleasantries.  There were hundreds of bats clinging to the rock ceilings, and occasionally squeaking and fluttering around.  Once past this amazing passage, more steps take you up to the Baradari, a large pavilion about a hundred feet below the summit that may have been built by Shah Jahan.  I looked through it, with great views over the hilly countryside, and then made my way to the very top, with more spectacular views.  I could follow the outline of the old city walls and the fort walls directly below the pinnacle.  There is a small citadel with a couple of old cannons on the top.

I came back down to the Baradari about 12:30 and sat in the balcony overlooking the fort below, with the modern town just outside its walls.  You can see past the town to the dry hills all around.  A cool breeze blew and it was fairly comfortable up there.  I spent about four hours, the hot part of the afternoon there.  The number of others diminished in the afternoon and at times I had it to myself.  I ate the food I had brought, sharing some of the peanuts with the squirrels, and read when not enjoying the views.  Once it had cooled down a bit in the late afternoon, I walked down, enjoying again the dark, bat-filled passage and exploring around the lower fort.  I caught a bus back to Aurangabad about 6.

The next morning I had a leisurely breakfast and read two Sunday newspapers until about 11.  My plan had been to go from Aurangabad to a town near the rock cut Buddhist caves at Ajanta to the north, but the Ajanta Caves are closed on Mondays, so I decided to postpone that journey and head to Ellora again for the rest of the day.  I got there just before noon and went into the Kailash Temple.  It was not as crowded as when I was there the first day, though it still was crowded.  I walked around leisurely and enjoyed seeing what I had seen before along with some details I had missed in earlier visits.  It really is a remarkable place.  I next revisited Caves 10-15 to the south.  It was very hot in the sun going the short distances between caves, but the caves themselves were cool, even pleasant, sanctuaries from the sun.

April and May are India's hottest months, with temperatures often above, and sometimes well above, 100 degrees.  Originally, I had hoped I would have made it back to Calcutta in about late March and then planned to spend April and early May (my time in India under my visa ends no later than May 14) in Darjeeling and Sikkim in the cool Himalayas.  As usual, I traveled more slowly than expected and at one time considered putting off the Bombay to Pune part of my route until next year, and going directly to Aurangabad from Nasik, which I think would have gotten me to Calcutta in early April.  Eventually, I decided not to do that, in part because the chances of seeing tigers in the game parks I am heading to in eastern Madhya Pradesh on the way to Calcutta are better in the hot dry months of April and May.

I saw a group of maybe twenty Tibetans, the women in traditional dress, visiting these caves, both Buddhist and Hindu ones, just south of the Kailash Temple.  I had plenty of water this time.  In the late afternoon I came back to the Kailash Temple for one last look and then took the route that ascends the rocky hillside around and behind the Kailash Temple, with fantastic views down into it.  I caught a bus back to Aurangabad about 6:30.  

March 30 - April 2, 2012: Pune and Karla and Bhaja Caves

I left Mahabaleshwar at 9:30 on the morning of the 30th on a bus bound for Pune (formerly spelled Poona).  A few miles east we stopped in another hill station, Panchgani, at about the same altitude.  Its downtown seemed much nicer than Mahabaleshwar's.  A man, bound for his home in Bombay (as he called it, not Mumbai) boarded the bus and sat next to me.  He told me he had first come to Panchgani in 1943 when he was three years old.  He said he and his brother, three years older, were orphans and had gone to school in Panchgani, paid for by an Islamic trust.  He went on to university in Pune and graduate school in economics in Bombay before going to work for the Bank of India in 1960, traveling all over the world for the bank before retiring after fifty years.  He had some great stories about Panchgani and Pune in the 1940's and '50's.  He said the school had one car, a 1924 Ford that only one guy knew how to drive.  However, he had only one eye and so had to get a special dispensation from the government to allow him to drive it.  He has a daughter in San Francisco, at Van Ness and Union he told me, working for an IT company.

From Panchgani we continued east, making a steep descent, with good views of the plains below, to the city of Wai on the plains, dropping from 4000 feet to 2500.  We crossed the Krishna River, whose source is nearby.  It flows across the subcontinent to the Bay of Bengal.  We soon reached the divided highway and followed it north, with the Western Ghats to the west and the plains of the Deccan Plateau to the east.  The area was still quite hilly, though, and we were 2000 to 2500 feet above sea level.  We crossed a 3000 foot high pass just south of Pune and soon entered that metropolis of almost four million people.  It took us a long time to get through the heavy city traffic and reach the bus station next to the train station in the city center.  By then it was almost 1:30, after an almost four hour bus trip from Mahabaleshwar.  I got a room in an old, rundown, colonial era hotel (over a hundred years old, I was told) right across from the train station.  However, it is in a little garden, so somewhat quiet. The big rooms have very high ceilings and there are wide verandas all around both stories.   I had a very good thali lunch at a nearby restaurant and then sat in my relatively cool room until about 4.  Pune is at about 2000 feet altitude and is said to be cooler than places at lower altitudes.

About 4 I  took an autorickshaw to the Shaniwar Wada Palace, built about 1730 for the Peshwa, the hereditary ruler of the city.  As I understand it, he was a sort of Prime Minister to the Maratha Confederacy, composed of several Maratha leaders, including the Scindias, Holkars and Gaekwads.  The Marathas became quite strong after Aurangzeb's death in 1707 and the quick disintegration of the Moghul Empire.  They conquered much of the Deccan and even Delhi in the mid 1700's before being conquered in turn by the British in 1817.  The palace burned down in 1828, leaving only the perimeter walls and foundations inside the walls. I looked around inside and walked along the walls.  Inside is now a grassy park.  Boys and young men were playing whiffle cricket just outside the huge gate to the north, using wood bats but a whiffle type ball, but without holes.  About 6 I walked south, reaching a colorful flower market on the streets and then the 1886 covered market.  I walked a bit further until it got dark before taking an autorickshaw back to my hotel about 7:30.

The next morning I took an autorickshaw north across the river to the Aga Khan Palace, built in the 1890's as a "famine relief project," the sign said.  I've read elsewhere that the Aga Khan, the head of the world's Ismaili Muslims, built a palace in Pune because he liked the horse racing in the area.  He donated it to the government in 1969 and it is now one of India's Gandhi memorials.  Gandhi was imprisoned here from August 1942 to May 1944 after he started his Quit India movement.  It is quite a nice place to be imprisoned.  You can visit the rather elegant, high-ceilinged rooms in which he, his wife, his secretary, and four other associates stayed.  The extensive grounds are beautiful, too.  There are a few photographs and personal items on display, but not much.  Both Gandhi's longtime secretary and his wife died here, his secretary soon after arrival and his wife just before he was released.  They were cremated in a corner of the grounds and their samadhis (memorials with their ashes) are there.  Some of Gandhi's ashes were also brought here and are kept in a memorial nearby.

I  took an autorickshaw back across the river to the Osho Meditation Center, run by the followers of Bhagwan Rajneesh, who preferred to be called "Osho" and began his career in Pune in 1974.  He moved to eastern Oregon in 1981, setting up an ashram that soon became notorious for its materialism (lots of Rolls-Royces), sexual license, and charges of drug use, tax evasion and even poisoning of local people during a county referendum.  He was deported from the United States in 1985 because of immigration irregularities.  Twenty-one countries refused him entry, so he came back to Pune, dying in 1990 at age 59, allegedly addicted to Valium.

The ashram, set behind attractive bamboo walls, appears to be thriving.  You can stay inside the ashram in a very fancy and expensive hotel and it costs something like $30 a day to use the ashram facilities.  In addition, you have to buy two robes, one burgundy and one white and get an on the spot AIDS test.  The burgundy robed guy at the entry, with heavy security nearby, told me they no longer allow tours of the facility.  A 2010 bombing  by Muslims at a nearby bakery frequented by Osho followers and other westerners killed scores of people.

I was allowed into the bookstore next to the entrance, filled with books by Osho and dvds of his teaching.  It was air conditioned and staffed by two women and one man, all in red robes.  The man looked quite a bit like Tiny Tim (the late 1960's singer and ukulele player, not the Dickens character).  Through the wide windows you could see into the ashram, very tastefully done in a sort of Zen style.  Off to the side was a courtyard where about thirty people (almost all westerners with some East Asians and maybe one Indian) in red robes were dancing, each on his or her own without a partner, and apparently without music.  At least I couldn't hear any.  It was quite odd to watch all that silent, individual dancing by red-robed people ranging in age from 30's to 70's.  Included were the obligatory gray haired guy with a pony tail and a younger woman dancing somewhat like Snoopy in Peanuts.  I watched for quite a while and also enjoyed checking out the titles on Osho's books.  Upon leaving, I asked the Tiny Tim lookalike if they were dancing to music or not, and he said they were.  I guess I just couldn't hear it through the glass windows.

From there I walked to a nearby small museum on the tribal people of Maharashtra, but they had recently hiked the entry fee for foreigners by a factor of 20, so I passed it up and took an autorickshaw across town to another museum, the Kelkar Museum, full of everyday items used by Indians over the past 200 years or so.  It was quite interesting, with cooking materials, lamps, household idols, and lots of other stuff.  It also had several very well-done wooden house doors, along with two lovely ivory doors.  I spent a couple of hours there and then took an autorickshaw back to my hotel and read for an hour or so.  About 4:30 I took an autorickshaw back to the area near the Osho ashram and walked around the Osho Teerth, a park open to the public in the early morning and late afternoon.  It  contains a statue of Osho next to a beautiful stand of bamboo.  With his long beard and cap, he looks a little like a large version of a garden gnome.  I walked along the streets of the neighborhood and saw a few ashramites in their red robes before taking an autorickshaw back to the hotel.

I slept until almost 8 the next morning.  I didn't do much but eat breakfast and lunch and spend time at an internet cafe until about 1:30, when I spent an hour or so trying to find the right bus to another fort, this one called Sinhagad, about twenty miles from Pune.  I eventually gave up and came back to the hotel and the internet cafe.

That evening after dinner I got a haircut.  The barber told me it would cost 30 rupees and as usual in India proceeded to cut my hair very short on the sides but leave it relatively long on top.  Then, before I could stop him, he began applying what he told me was sandalwood paste on my face.  I told him I didn't want that, but he waived off my objections.  After he dried the paste with an electric fan, he sprayed water on my face and wiped off the paste.  He then applied various other substances, one of which smelled like Vicks Vaporub, each of which he wiped off after spraying my face with water.  Next, he used some sort of mechanical device to give me a face massage, which I did not particularly enjoy, especially when pressed against my eyes.  Finally, he wiped my face clean and massaged my head rather roughly.  You wouldn't want him to do that if you had a headache.  He charged me 300 rupees, ten times what he had told me.  I told him I hadn't wanted more than a haircut and offered him 100 rupees, which he refused.  I again offered him the 100 rupees, which he again refused, coming down to 280.  I walked out and that was that.

The next morning I boarded a bus about 10 to visit some caves about 30 miles northwest of Pune, just off the road to Mumbai.  It took the bus about an hour just to get out of Pune and its suburbs and satellite cities and then another 45 minutes or so making a gradual ascent through a wide valley between hills before I got off and took an autorickshaw to the base of the hill with the Karla Caves.  I reached them after a short but steep ascent of about 350 feet.  There were Hindu pilgrims ascending along with me as there is a Hindu temple right in front of the main cave, which is Buddhist, dating from the first century AD.

This cave, not really a cave but a rock cut temple, is very impressive.  Just outside, next to the Hindu temple, is a pillar maybe 30 or 40 feet high with three sculpted lions atop it.  The cave facade is even higher, with a large horseshoe shaped window above the three doors to let in light.  The first vestibule you enter has some wonderful sculpture, elephants with Buddhas on them (these dating, they think, from the fifth century AD, as Buddha wasn't represented in human form in the first century) and several pairs of men and very sensuous looking women.  The speculation is that these represent the donors of the caves.  

Beyond is the main hall, about 130 feet long and 45 feet wide, divided by columns into a large central section and two smaller side sections.  It is surprisingly large, with a barrel vaulted ceiling that must be 40 feet high or more.  The ceiling is ribbed with thick teak planks cut into a horseshoe shape, following the shape of the barrel vault.  It is thought that some might be original, 2000 years old.  There are fifteen large columns on each side and seven more behind a large stupa at the end of the hall.  The stupa has a teak umbrella atop it.  The thirty columns on the sides each have two kneeling elephants on top, each elephant with two riders.  It is a very impressive place.  There are other rock cut caves at the site, but the rest seem to be cells for the monks attending the site.

I spent more than an hour there and then walked down and took an autorickshaw for about five miles across the valley to the hills on the other (south) side and made another steep but short climb up to the Bhaja Caves, another set of Buddhist rock cut caves.  These are even older, from the second or first century BC.  There is a hall similar to the great hall at Karla, but smaller and without sculpture.  A stupa is at the rear and there are teak planks along the barrel vault ceiling as at Karla.  It appears that the facade was of wood, as the opening is large with some holes where wood might have been anchored.  As at Karla, the other caves are mostly monastic cells, with rock cut benches for sleeping.  One cave, however, has five stupas within it and nine more just outside.  Another cave has sculptures.  It was locked, so I could see only the ones on the outside.

I walked down, and then walked a mile or so to the train station in the little town of Malavli.  I had to wait there for over an hour before catching a train about 5:30 back to Pune, arriving before 7. 

March 23-29, 2012: Konkan Coast and Western Ghats

I left Mumbai by ferry shortly before 11 on the morning of the 23rd.  The wooden ferry boat, perhaps 50 or 60 feet long, departed from right in front of the Gateway of India and was full of passengers.  It was the first day of the Maratha New Year and Mumbaikers were headed south for the Konkan Coast, the area between Mumbai and Goa.  The ferry made its way through Mumbai Harbor, weaving past huge cargo ships, and reached the port of Mandva, to the south, after about an hour.  At Mandva we boarded shuttle buses that took us about 40 minutes further south, to the city of Alibag, past coconut groves and lots of little hotels catering to tourists from Mumbai.  In Alibag I caught a bus headed further south, to Murud.  The thirty mile trip took about an hour and a half, at first on a slow narrow road through densely packed coconut trees, with more small hotels and other buildings among the palms, and eventually through much drier, browner countryside.  I had glimpses of the Arabian Sea on the way and passed a long, wide, beach of gray sand.  Just before Murud we passed the late 19th century Gothic palace of the Nawab of Murud.

Arriving in Murud about 3, I got a hotel and had a prawn lunch at a restaurant near the seafront.  I walked around town a bit afterwards.  Murud is just a small town, with a population of about 12000 and with very friendly people.  It was relatively quiet and filled with coconut palms and other trees.  I passed some old colonial era buildings and found a big tree with fruit bats roosting in the upper branches, the bats somewhat active towards the end of the afternoon.  Tourists from Mumbai began arriving in fairly large numbers on that Friday afternoon.

About 5 I walked out on the wide, long (maybe a couple of miles long and perhaps 500 feet wide) beach.  The sand is gray and densely packed and the slope of the beach is very gentle here, with long tides.  The tide was out and the waves far off shore.  More than a mile offshore are the remains of a fort built on a small island by Shivaji's son.  The beach was crowded, and there were horses and horsecarts for the tourists from Mumbai.  I walked up and down the beach, reaching the northern end just below the cliffs with the Nawab's palace, until after 7, when it became dark.  Fruitbats circled a grove of trees along the beach where they had spent the day hanging from the branches.  I kept waiting for them to fly off, but I left heading back to the town center before they left for their night's search for fruit.  I ate dinner outside on a cool night.  There was almost always a pleasant breeze from the sea.

About 9 the next morning I took an autorickshaw about three miles south to a little port, with great views on the way of the island fortress of Janjira, just offshore.  This imposing fort, with something like twelve bastions and forty foot high walls rising right up from the sea, was built by the Siddis, apparently a dynasty of Abyssinian background, in the 16th century and was never conquered.  You reach it by boats which leave whenever twenty passengers accumulate, and are poled through the shallow waters and then sailed through the deeper waters until reaching the one gate into the fort.  The sea was a little rough and it was a bit of a challenge to get from the rocking boat to the stairs leading to the gate.

Waiting for the boat I had met an English guy, older than me (in his 60's, I guess; he had seen the Beatles perform in 1963, along with a band that later became the Who), who had bicycled from Chennai (formerly Madras) in the south over eight weeks and was headed to Mumbai.  We explored the fort together during the 45 minutes we were given before our boat headed back.  I would have preferred more time, but 45 minutes were adequate.  The fort, including a five story palace, is in ruins.  There are two greenish tanks, or ponds, of water.  Janjira has a fresh water spring, which is one of the reasons it was such an ideal island fortress.  We climbed to the highest point and along part of the walls, with a few old cannon still on them, before making our way onto the rocking boat and heading back to port.  The fort was filling up with Indian  tourists and there were perhaps six or seven boats hovering around the landing point at the gate.  There was a little restaurant next to the port with a great view of Janjira, where Dave, the English guy, and I sat for an hour or so before he left for Murud on his bike.  I decided to have lunch there and then took an autorickshaw back.

It was very hot in my room, on the top floor and with a metal roof, so I found a good place to sit near the beach, where the cool sea breeze was blowing.  The beach was full of people, and two camels had been added to the horses and horsecarts.  I watched a lithe and very strong, skinny guy climb several very tall and thin palm trees sloping over the beach.  He had a rope tied in a circle with a diameter a little less than a foot.  He put this around his feet to keep them from spreading out and with another piece of rope perhaps three feet long which he grasped at each end he climbed up the forty or fifty foot high trees amazingly quickly and agilely.  He carried up a much longer rope which he would tie to a bunch of perhaps ten coconuts.  His much bigger assistant below would hold onto the rope as the guy in the tree cut the stem of the bunch of coconuts, which dangled before being lowered by the guy on the ground.

I walked along the beach again in the late afternoon.  The fruitbats were settled in the trees, with few flying around.  Dave and I had dinner along the seafront.  He is quite an interesting guy, having done a lot of cycling and having worked until just recently for an Icelandic bank.

I had originally thought I would take a bus to Pune via Alibag from Murud, as my guidebooks weren't encouraging about public transport and hotels further south along the Konkan Coast, but Dave and a couple at my hotel who had traveled along the coast by  motorcycle convinced me to give it a try.  So the next morning, after a long walk on the beach (the bats were back in their trees and there was a fog bank hovering over the river mouth just north of the beach that quickly dissipated), I took an autorickshaw about 10 back to Rajpuri, the little port opposite Janjira.  The small, blue, wooden ferry was waiting there for the trip across the estuary to the south.  I hopped on and we left fairly shortly with about 50 people and seven motorcycles on board.

The passage to the very small town of Dighi took only about fifteen minutes, with views of Janjira on the way.  From Dighi I took a shared autorickshaw further south to the bigger town of Borlai through dry countryside.  I had my backpack on my lap so it wasn't a comfortable trip.  From Borlai I caught a larger and more comfortable autorickshaw, called a minidor, further south to Shrivardhan, with views of the sea and beaches along the way.  The trip had been through dry countryside, but Shrivardhan was full of green trees.  I found a hotel that had been recommended to me and checked in, the only customer.  I had arrived about 1:30 and so could have continued further south, but this little town had been recommended to me.

I rested on the balcony of my room for an hour or so before walking to the beach, another long, wide, gray sand one, about ten minutes away.  Unlike Murud, there was no development along the beach, backed by palms and casuarinas.  I retreated to the balcony of my hotel until about 5, when I took a walk along the friendly streets nearby and eventually by another route to the beach, passing a huge banyan tree on the way.  I walked along the beach until almost dark.  There were quite a few people, some swimming and quite a few playing cricket (as in Murud).  The tide was far out.  Back at my hotel after dark I could see a slim setting moon.  I ate at the hotel, a thali prepared by the friendly family that ran the place.  I had mosquitoes at night, though.

The next morning I sat on my balcony and watched the activity on the quiet street in front of me.  Uniformed school kids were heading to the school down the street.  Sellers of vegetables in baskets on their heads came by, calling out their wares.  Bicyclists and motorcyclists came by.  I took a walk, passing the banyan tree and reaching the almost deserted beach.  I walked along the beach and took one last look at it before heading back to my hotel for breakfast.  I had decided not to go further south along the coast, but to head inland.  I wouldn't see the sea again as I was heading across the subcontinent back to Calcutta.

During breakfast school got out and many kids stopped at the little store next to the hotel to buy snacks.  I asked the hotel owner why they got out so early and he, who didn't speak great English, said something about exams.  However, I shortly saw a bunch of school kids, the girls all in Muslim dress, entering the same school that the others had just left.  I wonder what was going on.  About 10:30 the owner of the hotel took me to the bus station on his motorbike and the 11 o'clock bus to Mahad to the east left about noon. We ascended and then descended an 800 foot high ridge, reaching a little town at the far inland edge of the estuary I had crossed by ferry the day before.  The countryside had lots of trees and was very hilly.  We ascended and descended another 800 foot high ridge and reached another small town, where we had a long and very hot wait of about half an hour, before continuing to Mahad, which we reached about three hours after leaving Shrivardhan.

I had come to Mahad, at only about 150 feet elevation, because I wanted to go to Shivaji's hilltop fortress of Raigad, north of Mahad.  My guidebooks had been not at all helpful about getting there, but it proved quite easy.  I left Mahad for Raigad on a bus half an hour after I got there, through flat, dry countryside at first and then up a steep, twisting mountain road.  I couldn't see the fortress, but I saw what I thought was the hill and it look impossibly steep to ascend.  After less than an hour we reached the end of the road, under a very steep cliff, where the ropeway up to the top is located.  I had been told there was a hotel at the ropeway, but upon arrival was surprised to hear it was at the top end of the ropeway, in the fort.  With my backpack and three Indians, I got into the small cage and began the trip up.  The views were fantastic as we ascended in about five minutes from about 1300 feet elevation to about 2700.  The cliff was almost vertical.  Quite an exciting ride, and for only 170 rupees (about $3.40) round trip.  At the top I trudged up stone stairs with my pack to the hotel.  There was a dormitory for only 200 rupees, but I took a room for 900 (about $18) and it was pretty nice.

I didn't spend much time in the room, though, as I wanted to look around before nightfall. It was about 4:30 when I entered the nearby gate of the ruined palace.  Apparently there had been a fort on this hilltop since the 12th century, but Shivaji enlarged it and eventually made it his capital.  It is a fantastic site for a fort, with almost sheer cliffs on every side but the northern one, which is still very steep.  The ropeway ascends the western side and the uneven plateau on top is something like a mile by a mile and a half in size, so it is quite big.

I looked through the ruins of the palace, with six large enclosures that they think might be the quarters for Shivaji's queens.  Adjacent is a large court, where Shivaji was crowned Chhatrapati (something like "Lord of the Umbrella") in 1674.  At the site is a small stone domed structure housing a statue of Shivaji.  You are only allowed to approach it with your shoes off, so he is treated like a god.  There were a few Indians around, but I was the only foreigner.  I left the palace through a high gate and walked past former market stalls to the site quite a distance away where Shivaji was cremated after his death in 1680.  This, too, is a sort of holy site, next to a temple to Shiva.  Oddly, nearby is a statue depicting his dog, who is supposed to have loyally jumped into Shivaji's funeral pyre.  I have read that an Indian scholar published a book questioning some of the stories about Shivaji.  The book was banned by the state government and the institution that published it subjected to protests and some disruption.

I walked back towards the palace and noticed below, on the north face of the mountain, the main gate to the citadel.  It turned out to be about 500 feet below the summit, but I scurried down the steps to check it ou before dark.  There is only a relatively narrow crease in the northern face through which you can ascend.  This crease is protected by a double wall, with a narrow gate between two massive bastions about 70 feet high.  I looked around and then made my way back to the top along with some townspeople from below who apparently were coming up to a small shrine near the palace.  At least they all gathered there as I continued just before dark to the hotel.

I was very hungry but had to wait almost two hours for them to prepare the thali dinner.  There were about 25 Indian young people staying in the dorm, so I'm glad I chose a room.  I had a hot bucket bath and slept well.

I was up and out before 7 the next morning to explore the fort further.  The sun had just risen.  There were already Indian tourists, or perhaps "plgrims" is a better term, wandering around and posing barefoot before Shivaji's statue at his coronation site and at another Shivaji statue just outside the palace.  I walked through the ruins of the palace again and then through the marketplace ruins to the far northeast corner of the hilltop plateau, reached via a narrow ridge.  The views approaching the ridge and point, and the views down a thousand feet and more, were fantastic.  From that vantage point I could see the narrow path below the main gate that traverses just below a very steep cliff face. 

Check out time at the hotel was 10, so about 9:30 I came back and had an unsatisfying breakfast of spicy rice at the restaurant before depositing my backpack behind the counter at the restaurant and beginning the hike down.  I went through the palace one more time, walked by the tanks partially filled with water, and walked down the stairs again to the main gate 500 or so feet below the summit.  I looked around that area again and then exited the main gate and walked down more steps, with great views up towards the massive 70 foot high bastions on either side of the gate.  About 250 feet below the gate I reached the more or less level narrow path that runs just below a massive, almost vertical cliff.  There were a few people coming up and down as I walked along.  Eventually, I reached the edge of the face of the cliff and started down stairs that led through a forested area where a man in a tree was vigorously hacking off branches with a long axe, using just one arm at a time.  He was remarkably efficient.  I watched for a while and then continued down out of the forest and onto a dry, grassy ridge that took me down to the road.  I had some great views back to the mountain I had just descended and could make out the narrow line of the walls I had passed through.

I had to walk about 20 minutes on the road along the steep western face of the mountain to the ropeway.  I got there just as they began their half hour lunch break, so I had one of my own, and ate a good thali at the restaurant next to the ropeway.  Soon after 1 I again took the ropeway up, retrieved my pack, and took the ropeway down.  The views from that little cage as you go up and down the mountain are spectacular.

 I soon caught the bus back to Mahad, arriving about 3.  There was a bus to the hill station of Mahabaleshwar, my next destination, at 5, but one of my guidebooks erroneously stated that hotel owners would not rent rooms to single men, and that in fact to do so was illegal.  Therefore, I decided to spend the night in Mahad and go to Mahabaleshwar in the morning, so that if I couldn't get a room I would still have plenty of daylight to move on.  I found a nice little hotel in that ugly but very friendly town.  The power was off so I sat in the lobby in the sweltering heat and read a newspaper and, once I had read that, a book.  About 5 the power came on and a little later I took a short walk around town.  I had a good tandoori chicken dinner there and for desert found a bakery with very good coconut chocolate balls.  I washed my very dirty clothes and slept well under a fan despite my warm room.  My thermometer registered 86 degrees before I went to bed.

Early the next morning I had breakfast, two omelets, bread (much like rolls and called pau, after the Portuguese word for bread) and tea, at a little cafe.  The proprietor sat with me and told me he had spent 27 years working as a Toyota mechanic in Bahrain, visiting several Arabian countries along with Japan (the latter for training).  He was quite interesting and wouldn't let me pay for breakfast.

I left at 9 on a bus for Mahabaleshwar, heading south at first through low ground and then turning east and heading up into the Western Ghats on a narrow, twisting road.  The views as we ascended were great, though hazy.  We climbed slowly up the steep road, passing the road to the hilltop fortress of Pratapgad, a thousand feet above us, when we reach about 2500 feet elevation.  We entered more wooded terrain and I began to feel the noticeably cooler air.  We had more great views as we slowly climbed and reached Mahabaleshwar, at about 4500 feet, soon after 11.  When I got off the bus three guys accosted me, trying to get me to go to their hotel.  I went with one and got a hotel on the main bazaar,  a shop filled strip catering to the many tourists who come from Mumbai and Pune.

Mahabaleshwar was discovered by the British in 1824.  They soon established a sanitorium there and it became a favorite place to escape the heat of Bombay.  It apparently once was quite a pleasant town, but now is ugly sprawl of concrete development.  It is supposed to be packed on weekends and was quite busy with Indian tourists (I saw no westerners) during the two midweek days I was there.  I found a good little restaurant on the bazaar and had chicken kebabs, butter nan and a lassi for lunch.  Mahabaleshwar is famous for its strawberries and they were on sale everywhere.  Along the bazaar, men sat on the street next to little pyramids of strawberries for sale, along with blackberries and mulberries.  The strawberries were delicious, and cheap, 60 rupees a kilo, so about $1.20 for 2.2 pounds.  I tried the mulberries, which I don't think I had ever had before and they, too, were delicious.


After lunch I took a walk along a dirt path through lovely forest along a cliff edge to Bombay Point.  At least I think it was Bombay Point, as the signs were all in Marathi.  The view was pretty good, through facing west into the midafternoon glare.  I sat for a while under the trees and then walked back, with a slight diversion. In the later afternoon I walked about 45 minutes on a paved road through more beautiful forest to Lodwick Point and Elephant Head Point.  Quite a few cars whizzed by, and honked, as I walked.  These two points are near the end of a long ridge, with steep cliffs down.  You reach Lodwick Point first, named after General Lodwick, who "discovered" Mahabaleshwar in 1824.  There is a memorial pillar to him there, erected in 1874, a year after his death at age 90, by his son, an official in the colonial government in Madras.  A plaque says he joined the service of the "Hon'ble E. I. C." (East India Company) in 1799, when he would have been 16.  He died in France.  Another plaque honors his grandson, an army officer whose ship was torpedoed in the Mediterranean during World War I.  Yet another plaque say the memorial was destroyed by lightning in 1974 and restored by the Mahabaleshwar Hotel Association.

Slightly further on is bulbous Elephant Head Point, as far as you can go along the narrowing ridge, unless you want to scramble down steeply.  The views over the hazy distance all around were good.  The sun was setting and looked like it would disappear into the haze well before sunset.  Looking below, I could follow the progress of the road I had come up for quite a distance.  I headed back about 6.  There were perhaps a couple of hundred people at the points and along the trail by then, and about 50 cars in the parking lot.  I managed to get back to town through the forest before almost all the cars began their journeys back.  They must have stayed till sunset, just before 7.

It was wonderfully cool in Mahabaleshwar at night, and the bazaar was full of people.  Besides the few, relatively cheap, hotels along the bazaar, there are many more all over the town and surrounding area.  My thermometer registered 73 degrees in my room before I went to bed, quite a bit cooler than the night before in Mahad.  I've read that Mahabaleshwar gets drenched in the monsoon, something like 240 to 280 inches of rain, and in only about 100 days from June to September.  The monsoon hits the high Western Ghats and drops much of its moisture.  Pune, just east of the Western Ghats and 2000 feet lower than Mahabaleshwar, gets less than 30 inches of rain a year.

I missed the 9:15 bus to the fortress of Pratapgad the next morning as I had been told the day before it left at 9:30.  Instead, I took a bus that left for Mumbai at 10:15 and got off a half hour later at the turn-off for Pratapgad.  On the way I could look up and see Lodwick Point and Elephant Head Point.  I could see the memorial pillar at Lodwick Point and make out Elephant Head Point's vague resemblance to an elephant head.

I started the two and a half mile hike to the base of the fortress, a climb of about 800 feet, but very soon a taxi stopped and offered me a ride.  I said I didn't want to pay for a taxi, but he said no charge.  He talked all the way up along the curving road through beautiful forest about Shivaji and the fort.  The fort is in ruins, but in a beautiful spot.  There is no entrance fee and there are shops all along the 500 or so steps through the fort to the top, where some people live.  The fort has one set of lower walls and another set of upper walls, rising to 3500 feet above sea level.  To the east runs one narrow walled corridor to a bastion, but generally the fort runs north to south, with very steep drops to the south, west and north.  It was hot, but with a cool breeze, and there were lots of tourists.

I made my way to the shady plaza garden at the top, where there is an equestrian statue of Shivaji.  Pratapgad is famous for Shivaji's encounter with Afzal Khan, a general serving the Sultan of Bijapur, a Muslim kingdom to the south.  Shivaji's attempts to establish a Hindu kingdom were opposed by the huge Moghul Empire to the north and the Sultan of Bijapur to the south.  It seems Shivaji more or less waged a guerrilla campaign against both, retiring when necessary to fortresses in the Western Ghats.  In 1659 he agreed to meet Afzal Khan at the base of Pratapgad Fort.  The story is that they met alone, but for two bodyguards each.  Afzal Khan is supposed to have tried to stab Shivaji as he hugged him upon greeting.  (Afzal Khan is said to have been very big and tall.  "Seven inches tall," the taxi driver told me.)  Shivaji was wearing a wagnukh, similar to brass knuckles, but with claw shaped spikes on the palm side.  With these he disemboweled Afzal Khan.  According to the little booklet I bought at the fort, one of Afzal Khan's bodyguards then tried to kill Shivaji, but one of Shivaji's bodyguards killed him.  Afzal Khan scooped up his intestines and tried to flee, but was decapitated by the other of Shivaji's bodyguards.  Shivaji fled back to the fort and set off a cannon, which was the signal to his army hidden in the forest to attack the Bijapur army, which was defeated.

I walked along the walls of the upper fortress along its western and northern sides, with great views.  I could see the twisting road leading down to the west.  I exited through a gate at a tower on the northeast corner and walked along the lower walls on the east until I reached the gate to the upper fortress.  By then it was about 1:30 and I went up to the shady plaza with the statue of Shivaji to rest.  There were fewer tourists in the afternoon.  I sat here and there for about two and a half hours in the afternoon heat, eating peanuts and potato chips and watching the monkeys in the trees.  Both macaques and langurs were eating green and red fruit growing in big clumps in the trees.  Chunks of the fruit, perhaps an inch to two inches in diameter, dropped quite frequently from the trees.  They looked to me like a type of fig.  I quite enjoyed watching them eating the fruit.

About 4 I again made the circuit of the upper walls on the west and north, with great views in the late afternoon sun.  Two women were gathering firewood inside the walls.  About 5 I started down and, upon reaching the parking area just below the base of the fort, was surprised to find that a bus heading for Mahbaleshwar was just getting ready to leave.  Very lucky timing.  (I was prepared to walk the two and a half miles downhill to the main road and then catch one of the buses coming up the mountain to Mahabaleshwar.)  I got back to Mahabaleshwar soon after 6 and walked along the very crowded bazaar, with mounds of strawberries all along.  I had another cool night, my last one for a while as it will be hot crossing the Deccan Plateau back to Calcutta.  April and May are India's hottest months, before the monsoon arrives in June.