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Sanchi

Jan 30 & 31

We boarded the bus to Sanchi. As the bus pulled away from the bus station, it was just too good to be true. There were only about 15 people on the bus and Jeff and I both had seats. We knew it couldn’t last and right we were. A couple of kilometers later, the bus pulls over and we are transferred onto a an already packed full bus. Jeff and I were both standing in the aisle for a couple of kilometers. One gentleman ended up offering his seat to me on the back bench. I ended up sitting on one cheek and was not able to lean back because there wasn’t enough room for my shoulders against the seat back. As the bus bumped along and made its stops, people get on and off and Jeff was able to shuffle into a seat. The bus arrived into Sanchi after two hours and dropped us off on the side of the road. We gathered up our stuff and walked the couple of hundred meters to a guesthouse. Sanchi is a very quiet little town and we spent the afternoon relaxing, reading, and drinking chai in the sun. We walked up the street into the village and Jeff ended up playing a game of cricket with some local boys. Indians love cricket and no matter how many times the game is explained to us, we just don’t understand it. As Jeff was trying his luck, the littler boys of the group were sitting around chatting with me. The only thing I really understood about the game from them is that Jeff is a bad bowler (the bowler is sort of like the pitcher in baseball). When I told the little guy it was Jeff’s first time playing, he said it didn’t matter Jeff was still a bad bowler.

The next day, we went to the market and rented bikes for the day. The roads that connect a lot of the towns and cities are two lane highways, that turn into four lanes sometimes. On the roads, there are people riding pedal bikes (like us that day), some riding motor bikes, cows, goats, and dogs walking down the road, people pushing hand carts heavy with vegetables, fruits, peanuts, and other goods and speeding cars, cargo trucks, and buses that go whizzing by. The roads can be pretty chaotic. The bikes we were riding had one gear, one brake, no shocks, and there were no helmets available for us to wear. I wasn’t having a lot of fun pedaling with horns honking and feeling the wind of the speeding vehicles blow by. But we pedaled 16 km, to the Udaigiri cave shrines. In Lonely Planet, it says there is 20 cave shrines with statues and carvings in them. In reality, there is only about five you can go into and another five or so that are locked up and you aren’t able to enter. So we pedaled the bikes back to Sanchi without getting hit or hurt.

In Sanchi itself, are some hilltop stupas which are temples devoted to the Buddha. There are several stupas, but the grandest was Stupa 1. It is 16 meters high and 37 meters in diameter with a wall encircling it. The wall has four entrances and each entrance has beautifully carved toranas (gateways) dedicated to the Buddha. We spent the evening wandering around site. The next morning we board a train back to Bhopal. The train was so much easier than the bus. It took 40 minutes at half the cost and all four butt cheeks were sat comfortably on the seat!

Outside the cave shrines at Udiagiri

The main Stupa at Sanchi

Bhopal

Jan 29^th & 30^th

We arrived into Bhopal in the late afternoon and found a hotel located on a side street so it was relatively quiet for a bigger city. After dropping our gear and grabbing a bite to eat, we were out to explore the town. We found a little beer stall that had the first beers on tap we’d seen in India. After enjoying one, we jumped on the crowded city bus to visit the New Market shopping area. On the bus, there were several university students that struck up a conversation with Jeff. When we arrived into the New Market area, one of the quieter university students paid for our bus fare and asked where we going. We explained that we just wanted to walk around the market and he decided to join us. We learned that his name Sourabh and he was studying computer science. Over several cups of chai at one of the street stands, we learned that his exam week was approaching and his mom came from their village to stay with him and cook meals while he was studying. He invited us to go back to his room, meet his mom, and have a meal with them. His room was on our way back to our hotel, so we excepted the invitation.

I was a little apprehensive about just dropping in on his mom. What would she think of her son bringing home two Americans that he promised a meal too? We climbed the steps up to the second floor of a large building. Sourabh’s apartment was a large single room with a smaller attached room that served as a kitchen and a shared bathroom down the hallway. I didn’t need to worry about his mom accepting strangers for dinner. The second she saw us her face lit up with a huge beautiful smile and she ran to embrace me into a warm hug saying “Welcome, welcome.” Sonita, Sourabh’s mom, made a us an amazing meal of aloo gobhi parathas (bread, thicker than a chapatti, stuffed with potatoes and cauliflower). Over the course of the evening Sonita asked if I had ever worn a sari. When I said no, arrangements were made to meet the next evening at their apartment and for us to accompany them to the temple with me wearing a sari.

We arrived at their room the next evening and shared our some of our pictures on our laptop from our travels with Sourabh, Sonita, and a few of the neighbors. Sourabh started to call Jeff ‘Uncle’ and me ‘Auntie.’ He explained that this was a form of respect. Everytime a friend or neighbor was spotted in the hallways or out on the street, Jeff and I were introduced as the auntie and uncle from America invited. When Sonita brought me aside and started to show me how to dress in a sari, several of the ladies came to watch, laugh, and giggle with us. I felt a little bit like a dress up doll, and I loved every minute of it. The women were full of smiles and were very generous in letting me borrow some of their jewelry (bangles, necklaces, and bindi dots) so I dressed a proper married Indian lady. They also applied the red powder that went down the middle of my hair part to symbolize that was I married.

Dressed to the nines (actually it was only three pieces) in the sari, we were off to temple. Sourabh and his mom were so proud to show us the temple and share their religion (they are devote Hindus) with us. They patiently explained the gods that the temple was dedicated too and how to perform each of the rituals. At one point, we stood in line to be blessed by the Braham, the priest, and we held out a cupped hand as he poured water into it. You are supposed to drink the water placed in your hand, but I took mine and dumped it on my head like a good Catholic. As the red streak from my hair started to run down my forehead, Sonita helped me get another handful of water and perform the ritual properly. After prayers and offerings were completed, we enjoyed another wonderful meal at their apartment and shared a cup of chai over that the neighbors room. Sonita gave me a beautiful purple sari as a gift.

The next morning, Sourabh meet us at our hotel with two of his friends. They helped us carry our bags to the bus station where we were catching a bus to go 40 km to a little town called Sanchi. We had to come back through Bhopal to catch our next train and we promised Sourabh and his mom we would contact them when we came back through town.

Bundi

Jan 24-28^th

Having survived the train ordeal we now faced a new obstacle, it was now about 12:30 am and we needed to find a place to sleep. We hired an autorickshaw driver to take us down the deserted streets of Bundi and drop us off at what we thought was a guesthouse we wanted to stay at. It was like a ghost town. Luckily Teresa endured and was able to locate us a very nice setup on the cheaps. (Jeff’s plan was to set our tent up on a little grassy spot we found. There was NO WAY I was sleeping in the tent after the sardine train. I wanted a bed and a place to wash my hands and brush my teeth!) So, It was lights out for the night finally and we didn’t move until around noon the next day. When we finally got up for fears of pressure ulcers we decided to take a small walking tour around town and scope out the activities we wanted to do in the next few days. We did some light shopping and explored the step wells that Bundi was known for. The wells were massive with stairs built into the sides of the walls so people could walk down to the water level that varied due to the monsoons. Most have been converted to trash pits and long drop toilets but some were well preserved and remained very impressive especially the Raniji-ki-Baori which was about 150 ft deep laced with beautiful carvings. We headed back to the guesthouse for dinner and call it a night. The next day we rented a 125 cc scooter to make the 36 km ride out to some impressive waterfalls at Bhimlat. It took a bit to get used to the flow of traffic (or lack thereof) and it was discovered that the horn was just about as important as brakes or the throttle. Good horn, good brakes, and good luck is what you need to navigate the roads of India. We safely made it to the falls and hiked down to the bottom to spend the afternoon soaking it all in and taking a splash in the cool pool.

It was decided that Teresa would get some scooter lessons as we left and since we were in a pretty remote area with a straight flat road. She climbed on and fired her hog up, she immediately knew that she was dealing with 125ccs of sheer moped power. After receiving instruction on the brakes and throttle she was on her own. Disaster almost struck when she made the most common mistake to new riders, instead of letting go of the throttle and applying brake she over compensated with the throttle and almost went shooting into the ditch. The second attempt went much smoother and pretty soon she was tearing off down the road leaving me in the dust. After she finally took pity on me and turned around to retrieve me. After some convincing I climbed on back of the scooter and she drove the 5 km to the main road where she adamantly demanded that we switch places. The rest of the ride home was luckily uneventful.

For our final day in Bundi we climbed up to the old palace and fort overlooking the city. From the elevated viewpoint you could really take in why Bundi was considered to be a blue city. The majority of building were painted Brahman blue making it look like a smurf village. The palace was sort of ho-hum but did contain a few beautiful murals, decorated rooms, and a massive wasp hive in which its inhabitants took pleasure in stinging me. The fort was full of monkeys that were reported to be aggressive so we took a bamboo staff with us to ward off the angry primates, Teresa had a good time perfecting her ninja skills. The fort at the top of the hill had been abandoned many years ago and had not been restored in any way so it was interesting to be given free rein to explore the massive complex at will. At one end there was an old temple where we were able to catch the setting sun in peace and quiet (two things that are almost impossible to find in India). We made our way down to the city to grab dinner at a nice restaurant we had found the day before called Tom n’ Jerry (like the cat and mouse but I’m fairly confident the owner did not seek the rights to use the name), but the service was friendly, food was good, beer was cold, and free wi-fi to boot. We made our way to Bhopal via an hour bus ride to Kota where we caught the train (AC chair car this time so the events of the last train ride were repeated) to Ujjain. Spent the night in Ujjain then caught the morning train to Bhopal which is in the heart of India.