Saturday, October 17, 2015

Episode 2 : Western India
Ep. 2 Part
4: A modified plan and visit to an ancient City in ruins.

Woke up late today by 8.30 around and packed our bags and got ready. I kinda have mentally decided to visit Dholavira and told this to Sid. Even Sid had the same thoughts as it seems. So once the decision is made, now it's time to celebrate that by having breakfast clear.png.. Had a nice heavy breakfast and we started our journey again. Oh , before that we need to feed our chariot too. Went to the HP fuel station next to Hotel KBN for Diesel. And again, few guys came to us at the station, "Kaunsi movie ki shoot ho rahi hai?" (which movie is getting shot?). I was like why they are asking us and how would we know clear.png. Then they pointed to the camera/lighting equipment on our boot. Wanted to give them an imaginary movie name but refrained. clear.png
Just at the outskirts of Bhuj is the "Bhujodi", a place created for the artisans/craftsman of Kutch region to make and sell their handicrafts. It's an interesting place to visit. Although when we reached there, many of the shops/workshops were not open yet, as it was just start of the day. Did a bit of shopping there, clicked a few pics and moved on after an hour.
This Lady in her local attire was very fascinating person to shoot. She actually have told us that many people have take her photograph and she is used to getting clicked..
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A loom at one of the workshops in the place. Would've loved to see the weavers working on it but we had a hard luck that day. Waited for sometime but without any luck,
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Another view of the loom. These were different then the ones I've seen in my place.
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Metal works at Bhujodi. I loved those bells/windchimes. Bought couple of them for my home,
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Another one of the interesting metal bellworks.. (didn't notice the shake in the photograph till I opened it later in my comp)
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We initially thought that it won't take much time to reach Dholavira. But we underestimated the distance and also took a different route which appeared shorter on map but ended up taking a lot more time than expected. The route suggested was via Bhachau-Samkhiyali-Chitrod-
Rapar. But we saw a different route just before reaching Bhachau and that connects at Rav-moti (Meghpar-Kharoi-Ramvav-Suvai-Ravmoti). The road was narrow for most of the journey and just not possible to maintain any kind of decent speed.
Yes, we atleast spotted a camel sawari during this day long journey,
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By the time we actually reached the bridge over the Great Rann it was already past 4PM. But the view of the Rann made it worthwhile for sure. This is what I was having in my mind when I wanted to see the Rann. An endless carpet of white spread over miles and miles. It almost feels like a snow covered sea. This probably was the best view of the whole Gujarat section that we have visited.
The beasty enjoying the White Desert,
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Road/bridge to Khadir bet thru the white dessert. It was white till the eyes can see. I was expecting to witness the white desert and this is the place which fulfilled the wish,
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Next in line was Dholavira itself. We reached Khadir bet after crossing the bridge on the white desert. But Dholavira was turning out to be elusive. The light was fading fast and we were worried that we might not even be able to see anything. Tried my best to reach there before the Sun goes to sleep and we were there after an hour. It seems we were the last visitors for the day. Talked to a guide who agreed to take us around. It was already 5.45pm and we didn't had much time to explore around. But what we've seen from the ancient civilization was enough for us keep our mouths wide open. The way they've planned the city, the underground waterways, the huge door hinges which looked almost like machine-finished were astonishing. I wondered how advanced actually those ancient civilizations were and have actually not progressed as much as we believe to be. It surely was an eye-opener for us.

Entering the ruins of a great City of the years unknown. The planning of this ancient city really surprised us,
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One of the water reservoirs near the entrance of the city. It seems there was a canal/river flowing next to the city. They've engineered an way to catch the water and make it fill the reservoirs.
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Entering the main compound area of the walled city,
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One of the main door hinges. That piece was so smooth that it felt like it was machined.
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One of the water channels of the city. .The whole city is networked with lots of such channels,
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Some of the living quarters of the city. All it remains are the ruins,
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I'm unable to recollect what this structure was. Probably was a granary,
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Our guide,
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Sid capturing the setting sun over the Great Rann from the Ruins of DholaVira,
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We would've loved to spent a bit more time there. But it was already getting darker and time to move out. We had a long way to go to our next destination. But by this time all hopes of going till Jaisalmer was abandoned and we decided to drive as long as possible to till 9.30/10PM and then call it a day. So that also meant that we could spend a bit more time on the bridge over GRK and capture the white desert at moonlight. And so we did, we took some moonlit photographs of the white desert on our way back and left the place by around 8.30pm. I wish I could've take some light streaks of cars traveling on that road but within those 2 hours just two cars passed by on that road clear.png Great Rann is surely a desolate place.

The Scorpio stood guard while we tried to capture the white desert on a moonlit day.. Oh yeah, another dream come true. The view of the white desert on a moonlight is surely a stuff made of wonders.
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The almost failed attempt to capture a light trail. One of the buses that crossed the road while we wait for hours,
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Now after the shoot of white desert it was time to have our dessert, err I mean dinner and dessert. Again a dhaba which I don't even remember where came to our rescue. Next task was to find a place to stay overnight. It was already very late and we were in no mood to travel all night. We could've but we wanted to travel by daytime so that we can see the places around. By 10.30-11pm around we reached Radhanpur and this basically was the place where we should take the turn to go to Jaisalmer. We had no idea where to stay as this was not a very known place. But luckily Google Baba helped us again and Sid was able to find a place to stay. It was a nondescript hotel called Hotel Sagar but we were not complaining. We needed a place to sleep for the night and we hit the sack as soon as we get into the room. The Land of the Kings awaits us tomorrow..

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