I was up at 5 on the morning of the 29th as we were hoping to make another safari into the Tala Zone of Bandhavgarh National Park. We were told that we would know by 5:30, but not until 6:30 were we finally informed that we couldn't get entry. We had breakfast at the hotel and a little before 9 the five of us, rather than chance the crowded buses, hired a jeep to take us to Umaria. It took us a little less than an hour to get there, a much more pleasant trip than my arrival on the bus from Umaria to Tala. When we arrived, a train for Katni was at the station about to depart and Zafer and Karen (headed for Nepal) and the two Danish women (headed for Khajuraho) jumped on it. I was headed in the opposite direction, with a train scheduled to pass through at 10:45. I sat and waited, talking to some of the friendly people curious about me, including a guy who bought me tea. I expected the train to be late. It had left Indore the previous evening at 5 or so and Umaria was its 45th scheduled stop. The train arrived just before noon and was packed. I jumped on and had to stand for the first half hour, until our second stop, where I got a portion of a crowded seat. Still, when very crowded, the relatively spacious trains are much better than the cramped buses.
My seat mates were friendly and I fielded the usual questions and one unusual one, whether I liked boxing. The young woman who asked me that had earlier asked me what my job was, and later said, "Well, you must like boxing with words," which I thought was pretty clever. It was hot, but not unbearably so, as we headed southeast through the mostly flat, though sometimes rolling, dry countryside. There were lots of trees. I had thought of getting off at a station called Pendra Road and taking a bus about 25 miles up into the hills to Amarkantak, a temple city at the source of the holy Narmada River. But I had been told that April and May are months when Indians do a lot of travel, as the schools are out. I didn't want to face another crowded bus and in fact a lot of people got off the train at Pendra Road. Rather than go to the relatively cool hills and the source of the holy Narmada, I decided to remain on the train to its destination, Bilaspur, a city one of my guide books says is noted for its cement factories.
Amarkantak is in the hills, which we could see from the train, that separate Madhya Pradesh from the newly formed state of Chhattisgarh, part of Madhya Pradesh until 2000. Chhattisgarh (which means "36 Forts") is 40% forested. About 30 % of its people are tribal, mostly in the far north and south. We had risen to over 2000 feet elevation around Pendra Road (the hills along the border rise to over 3500 feet) and soon after descended through hills covered with beautiful forest, including sal trees. We passed through one long tunnel but mostly had some great views of the forest out the windows. The number of passengers on the train had thinned out and I enjoyed the scenery. The landscape became flatter and the elevation lower further south. The sun set into the haze above the horizon about 6:20 and maybe twenty minutes later, just as it got dark, we arrived in Bilaspur, a city of 300,000 at about 1000 feet elevation. I took an autorickshaw to what turned out to be a very nice hotel and got a room with a cooler for 500 rupees, about $10. I was very hungry and had a very good dinner (chicken tandoori, nan and two lassis) at the hotel's restaurant and then washed my incredibly dusty and dirty clothes and day pack before going to bed soon after 10.
I got up the next morning soon after 6 and relaxed most of the morning, with a good breakfast at the hotel and a trip to an internet cafe to check train schedules. I decided to forego inquiring about opportunities to visit Bilaspur's cement factories and about noon caught a train south to Raipur, Chhattigarh's capital. The train was relatively uncrowded and I got a seat. The train made no stops as it sped south through the flat, dry countryside. A lot of cropland was in view, all fallow in this the hot season. It did look very hot outside. It took only a little more than an hour and a half to get to Raipur, a city of over 700,000 people, where I checked into an okay hotel and had a late lunch before checking bus schedules and spending most of the rest of the afternoon at an internet cafe. Not much of touristic interest in Raipur, noted for the huge steel mill built by the Soviets in Bhilai, east of Raipur.
I was up early the next morning and bought my bus ticket for Sambalpur, to the east. I had wanted to leave on a morning bus, but almost all the buses left at night and the earliest bus I could find left at 1 in the afternoon. (I could have taken a direct overnight train to Calcutta from Raipur, or from Bilaspur or Umaria for that matter, but I wanted to travel in the day time and see the scenery on the way.) I spent most of the morning in my hotel room (the morning newspaper reported that the high the day before was 105 and it was already hot in the morning), except for breakfast, and at 1 left on a big pink bus for Sambalpur. It was a fairly comfortable, though well-worn, bus, with reclining seats and plenty of leg room. However, it was not air conditioned and very hot. I had a window seat with a window that wouldn't open fully, but I noticed almost every window was closed to prevent the blasts of hot air from coming in. Mine was stuck partially open and I could feel the very hot air rushing in from outside on the back of my neck.
The bus initially made good time through the mostly flat, dry countryside, though there were, to my surprise, a few green rice paddies. We did go through a hilly, rocky, forested area. About 4:30 we reached the small town of Sarai Pali, more than half way to Sambalpur. We made a half hour stop there and thereafter made much slower time. The bus had filled up with lots of people in the aisles and began to make lots of stops for people to get on and off. We crossed the Chhattisgarh-Odisha (formerly Orissa, until just last year) state line, with lots of trucks lined up waiting to cross, and reached the city of Bargarh just before 7 as it was getting dark. After another half hour stop there, we drove in the dark to Sambalpur, arriving after 9. I found a hotel and a Chinese restaurant run by an actual ethnic Chinese guy and got to bed after 11. It was warm in Sambalpur, at about 500 feet elevation, but I had a room with a cooler.
I had thought I might do some sightseeing around Sambalpur, but the sites, mostly temples, didn't seem that worthwhile and getting to them entailed a bus trip in the heat. I spent most of the morning in the lobby of a nicer hotel than mine, and a little after 1 left on an uncrowded train heading to Rourkela to the northeast. One of my guidebooks had said that the route from Sambalpur to Rourkela was particularly scenic, but it must have been talking about some route other than the one I took. The train route passed through mostly dry, flat countryside, with some rice paddies. We passed a huge factory near the city of Jharsuguda. The factory had four of those huge cement cooling towers that you see at nuclear plants, plus two even taller smokestacks and a big squarish building. As we passed, I noticed almost naked men fishing with nets in a dirty little pond in the foreground of the factory. We passed through a somewhat more scenic hilly area just before arriving at Rourkela a little before 4. I saw a few oil palms, maybe the first I've seen in India, as we neared the city. I got a hotel and took a short walk before sunset. Rourkela is a steel and mining city, at about 700 feet elevation. Just north of the train station is a long brown hill with a temple about two thirds of the way up. I asked the hotel manager if there was anything of touristic interest in town and he said no.
I again spent most of the next morning in my hotel room and after 11 left on another uncrowded train heading north to Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state. I was hoping this would be a scenic route as Jharkhand is quite a hilly state, and the scenery was fairly nice in places, especially just after we entered Jharkhand, with forested hills and one rocky river bed. However, most of the terrain was dry, fallow farmland, with some hills here and there. It seemed a very sparsely populated area. The train was actually heading all the way to Jammu and a guy I was sitting near was going to Delhi. He said the train would fill up in Ranchi and it did. It arrived in Ranchi about 3:30 and I got off and got a hotel. Ranchi is at about 2100 feet elevation and was noticeably cooler, especially at night, than the places I'd stayed in the previous days. Not much of touristic interest in Ranchi, though.
My seat mates were friendly and I fielded the usual questions and one unusual one, whether I liked boxing. The young woman who asked me that had earlier asked me what my job was, and later said, "Well, you must like boxing with words," which I thought was pretty clever. It was hot, but not unbearably so, as we headed southeast through the mostly flat, though sometimes rolling, dry countryside. There were lots of trees. I had thought of getting off at a station called Pendra Road and taking a bus about 25 miles up into the hills to Amarkantak, a temple city at the source of the holy Narmada River. But I had been told that April and May are months when Indians do a lot of travel, as the schools are out. I didn't want to face another crowded bus and in fact a lot of people got off the train at Pendra Road. Rather than go to the relatively cool hills and the source of the holy Narmada, I decided to remain on the train to its destination, Bilaspur, a city one of my guide books says is noted for its cement factories.
Amarkantak is in the hills, which we could see from the train, that separate Madhya Pradesh from the newly formed state of Chhattisgarh, part of Madhya Pradesh until 2000. Chhattisgarh (which means "36 Forts") is 40% forested. About 30 % of its people are tribal, mostly in the far north and south. We had risen to over 2000 feet elevation around Pendra Road (the hills along the border rise to over 3500 feet) and soon after descended through hills covered with beautiful forest, including sal trees. We passed through one long tunnel but mostly had some great views of the forest out the windows. The number of passengers on the train had thinned out and I enjoyed the scenery. The landscape became flatter and the elevation lower further south. The sun set into the haze above the horizon about 6:20 and maybe twenty minutes later, just as it got dark, we arrived in Bilaspur, a city of 300,000 at about 1000 feet elevation. I took an autorickshaw to what turned out to be a very nice hotel and got a room with a cooler for 500 rupees, about $10. I was very hungry and had a very good dinner (chicken tandoori, nan and two lassis) at the hotel's restaurant and then washed my incredibly dusty and dirty clothes and day pack before going to bed soon after 10.
I got up the next morning soon after 6 and relaxed most of the morning, with a good breakfast at the hotel and a trip to an internet cafe to check train schedules. I decided to forego inquiring about opportunities to visit Bilaspur's cement factories and about noon caught a train south to Raipur, Chhattigarh's capital. The train was relatively uncrowded and I got a seat. The train made no stops as it sped south through the flat, dry countryside. A lot of cropland was in view, all fallow in this the hot season. It did look very hot outside. It took only a little more than an hour and a half to get to Raipur, a city of over 700,000 people, where I checked into an okay hotel and had a late lunch before checking bus schedules and spending most of the rest of the afternoon at an internet cafe. Not much of touristic interest in Raipur, noted for the huge steel mill built by the Soviets in Bhilai, east of Raipur.
I was up early the next morning and bought my bus ticket for Sambalpur, to the east. I had wanted to leave on a morning bus, but almost all the buses left at night and the earliest bus I could find left at 1 in the afternoon. (I could have taken a direct overnight train to Calcutta from Raipur, or from Bilaspur or Umaria for that matter, but I wanted to travel in the day time and see the scenery on the way.) I spent most of the morning in my hotel room (the morning newspaper reported that the high the day before was 105 and it was already hot in the morning), except for breakfast, and at 1 left on a big pink bus for Sambalpur. It was a fairly comfortable, though well-worn, bus, with reclining seats and plenty of leg room. However, it was not air conditioned and very hot. I had a window seat with a window that wouldn't open fully, but I noticed almost every window was closed to prevent the blasts of hot air from coming in. Mine was stuck partially open and I could feel the very hot air rushing in from outside on the back of my neck.
The bus initially made good time through the mostly flat, dry countryside, though there were, to my surprise, a few green rice paddies. We did go through a hilly, rocky, forested area. About 4:30 we reached the small town of Sarai Pali, more than half way to Sambalpur. We made a half hour stop there and thereafter made much slower time. The bus had filled up with lots of people in the aisles and began to make lots of stops for people to get on and off. We crossed the Chhattisgarh-Odisha (formerly Orissa, until just last year) state line, with lots of trucks lined up waiting to cross, and reached the city of Bargarh just before 7 as it was getting dark. After another half hour stop there, we drove in the dark to Sambalpur, arriving after 9. I found a hotel and a Chinese restaurant run by an actual ethnic Chinese guy and got to bed after 11. It was warm in Sambalpur, at about 500 feet elevation, but I had a room with a cooler.
I had thought I might do some sightseeing around Sambalpur, but the sites, mostly temples, didn't seem that worthwhile and getting to them entailed a bus trip in the heat. I spent most of the morning in the lobby of a nicer hotel than mine, and a little after 1 left on an uncrowded train heading to Rourkela to the northeast. One of my guidebooks had said that the route from Sambalpur to Rourkela was particularly scenic, but it must have been talking about some route other than the one I took. The train route passed through mostly dry, flat countryside, with some rice paddies. We passed a huge factory near the city of Jharsuguda. The factory had four of those huge cement cooling towers that you see at nuclear plants, plus two even taller smokestacks and a big squarish building. As we passed, I noticed almost naked men fishing with nets in a dirty little pond in the foreground of the factory. We passed through a somewhat more scenic hilly area just before arriving at Rourkela a little before 4. I saw a few oil palms, maybe the first I've seen in India, as we neared the city. I got a hotel and took a short walk before sunset. Rourkela is a steel and mining city, at about 700 feet elevation. Just north of the train station is a long brown hill with a temple about two thirds of the way up. I asked the hotel manager if there was anything of touristic interest in town and he said no.
I again spent most of the next morning in my hotel room and after 11 left on another uncrowded train heading north to Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state. I was hoping this would be a scenic route as Jharkhand is quite a hilly state, and the scenery was fairly nice in places, especially just after we entered Jharkhand, with forested hills and one rocky river bed. However, most of the terrain was dry, fallow farmland, with some hills here and there. It seemed a very sparsely populated area. The train was actually heading all the way to Jammu and a guy I was sitting near was going to Delhi. He said the train would fill up in Ranchi and it did. It arrived in Ranchi about 3:30 and I got off and got a hotel. Ranchi is at about 2100 feet elevation and was noticeably cooler, especially at night, than the places I'd stayed in the previous days. Not much of touristic interest in Ranchi, though.
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