Chapter 5: Into the Heart of India
- Bruce Thomas
- Jun 5, 2018
- 8 min read
Updated: Dec 10, 2022
The ascent of the Ghats was not as severe on this route, but the heat continued and the haze clouded the volcanic landscape of the Deccan. The road was very rough with work gangs tearing up long strips of the old concrete highway and resurfacing it with bitumen.
While staying overnight at an Inspection Bungalow at Malegaon, we experienced our only theft of the entire journey. The previous evening, Stuart and I had done some washing which we left hanging to dry in various rooms of our suite. When we awoke, I found a drip-dry shirt missing and Stuart a pair of socks. We had had a caller in the night. Before leaving, we made the disappearance known to the chowkidar and his assistant and told them that we would not pay the bill until the clothes were returned. After half an hour sitting in our car, during which they both left and returned several times, we looked in our rooms again, and lo and behold, the missing clothes had reappeared in exactly the positions they had been in. This form of modest accommodation which we used throughout India and Pakistan - also variously called Dak Bungalow, Rest House or Tourist Bungalow - was otherwise most satisfactory, generally costing less than US$1 per night for the two of us.
We were headed for Ellora and its world famous cave temples. The country was dry and rolling with few trees. Moslem women were now evident and would veil their faces as we approached. About 15 miles out of Aurangabad, during one of our usual stops to cool the overheating engine, Stuart noticed a sheared bolt on the generator housing. We drove carefully into town and spent the afternoon at the Fiat agent having a new bolt cut and fitted – all at no charge, to our surprise.
The caves at Ellora – they are really rock-cut temples as they are entirely man made – are magnificent. Some are Hindu, others Buddhist, and a few are of the Jain religion. They have been carved into a hillside and were often quite detailed and ornamented. There are over 30 of them dating from the 7th and 8th centuries, so using our trusty Fodor’s Guide to India (Lonely Planet did not exist in those days), we tried to visit the best of them. In one of the temples we came upon an English couple, Sandy and Iris Holdom, who had travelled overland in a BMW sidecar combination. They had been on the road for seven months and were now on their way back to the United Kingdom in something of a hurry as Iris was pregnant.
Sandy and Iris were also at the nearby Ajanta caves next day. The Ajanta site is more spectacular than Ellora as the caves are cut into a sheer cliff face of volcanic rocks along a dry river bed. Ajanta predates Ellora and is entirely Buddhist. Some of the 29 temples, in which some interesting frescoes are preserved, are over 2000 years old. For some reason the monks abandoned Ajanta and transferred their activities to Ellora. It is interesting that Buddhism was once widespread in India, where it originated, but was later displaced entirely by the older Hindu religion.
Travelling on next day with Sandy and Iris we encountered some more Europeans, David and Sheila, in a British-registered Land Rover headed for Nepal. Together we continued to the ruined Moslem city of Mandu where we were engulfed by an enormous crowd of Hindus celebrating Rama’s birthday. The men wore colourful turbans; the women were elaborately decorated with heavy earings, nose pieces and foot decorations and dressed in the most brilliant colours. Sandy and Iris also made an incredible sight on their motorcycle. They fitted an amazing amount of equipment onto the machine, then Iris would squeeze into the sidecar and nurse an enormous sitar, which Sandy had purchased in Benares, on her lap.
Next day our convoy headed to Dhar where we had been invited for lunch by a pharmacist we had met in Mandu at the celebration. He came from a well-off family with 25 of them living in a very pleasant 20 room house. We were served a delicious home cooked meal followed by the offer of betel nut, a mild stimulant which is popular in India. It has a revolting taste and stains the teeth red. One taste was enough! They proudly showed us a photograph album of a family wedding. Most marriages are arranged and the couple only see each other briefly before the ceremony, which is a long drawn out procedure apparently involving a horse and a shotgun! Our particular groom did not look very happy at all.
The Land Rover departed, headed for Calcutta before going on to Kathmandu. We continued with the motorcycle through Indore and Kotah towards Jaipur. Navigation was at times a problem as most road signs were not in English and mileage posts did not specify miles or kilometres. Conditions continued to be hot and the countryside uninteresting. Sandy was suffering a succession of punctures. We had had only one, caused by a nail, but had previously plucked pieces of metal out of our tyres without them deflating. The distributor points on the Fiat were constantly closing, causing the car to lose power and backfire, and required almost daily adjustment. We also had to replace a leaking radiator hose for which we fortunately had a spare.
During one of our usual Coke stops, a local inhabitant invited us into a primitive hotel and gave us mandarins and some local alcoholic drink. Although no one appeared to speak English, it seemed that he was ‘shouting’ us and he made it clear that he was very honoured to entertain us. However, when we went to leave, he demanded 10 rupees (US$1), and when we refused, he attempted to stop us driving off by holding onto the car’s steering wheel. Both he and the crowd became quite hostile and we left the town in a shower of stones, fortunately without damage.
We were in Rajasthan now and at times there was abundant wildlife. Vultures are ever present in the Indian countryside and in some areas monkeys were common. Near Bundi we saw peacocks and hens apparently wild, and camels became more common both in the fields and on the road drawing carts. Kotah was a surprisingly large city and remarkably clean and modern. Bundi was quite spectacular, being built in a narrow gorge with a fort high on a ridge and a maharaja’s palace. The country was generally flat with occasional high razorback ridges which were composed of bare stone.
After nine days on the road from Bombay, we reached Jaipur, the Pink City. It was remarkably neat and clean, with broad streets all geometrically arranged and a unique and attractive style of building. The centre of the city is enclosed within a wall which is pierced by magnificent arched gates. At the Tourist Bungalow where we stayed there was a French television crew who were driving around the world filming various marriage customs. They had been 18 months on the road with another 18 months ahead of them.
We had now entered what some tourist brochures call the Golden Triangle of India (Jaipur-Agra-Delhi) and there was much to see. It was disappointing to find that the beautiful Palace of the Winds was largely a façade, but the bazaar nearby was very colourful and extensive. A local industry was in tie-dying cloth for saris, which we could watch in progress in the street. The maharajah’s observatory was most unusual. The giant marble and stone instruments are capable of making accurate astronomical observations and were in excellent repair. Handicrafts were also available in abundance in Jaipur. They were made in ivory, sandalwood and brass but were of variable quality.
Just 6 miles out of town is the magnificent Amber Palace. The road leading to it runs between steep ridges which are capped by imposing fortresses linked to one another by fortified walls. Amber is perched above a cliff face, with a lake below, looking like something out of a fairy tale. Decorated elephants waited to carry visitors up a zig-zag ramp to the main gate of the palace. It was one of the great sights of India.
The conditions were taking their toll. Sandy was ill, apparently with an attack of malaria. Stuart was having problems with diarrhoea - an occupational hazard for all travellers in India - and after two days rushing around Jaipur, I seemed to be suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration again. As a consequence we made a slow start next day for Agra, arriving at sunset.
The first time we saw the Taj Mahal was in moonlight, on the evening of our arrival. The white marble shone brilliantly under a full moon and the whole scene had an unreal quality to it. Next day we spent several hours leisurely walking around the Taj again, inspecting its exquisite detail. There is little novel left to say about such a perfectly beautiful structure; it is justifiably the premier attraction in India and, perhaps, all of Asia.
Sandy and Iris went on to Delhi while Stuart and I diverted to Fatepur Sikri, about 25 miles away. This is a deserted rather than ruined city, as most of it remains in good condition. It was the capital of the Moghul emperor Akbar for 14 years at which time it was larger than London. It was then abandoned, possibly because of a shortage of water.
The road from Agra to Delhi, by Indian standards, was a superhighway. It was frequented, it seemed to us, by dozens of large American cars (rare in India) taking tourists to Agra and back. At last we were on the Grand Trunk Road. Finding inexpensive accommodation in Delhi was initially a problem, but we ended up in a dormitory in Mrs Colaco’s Guest House in Janpath Lane near Connaught Place. This establishment was full of young people travelling on a shoestring and a few hippie types. A bed cost 40 cents US per night.
Delhi was a big city, but much neater and cleaner than Bombay. It is the centre of the tourist industry in India with government-run shops selling souvenirs from all over the country. There was even an American-style self service snack bar selling hamburgers and hot dogs, which made a pleasant change from the vegetarian fare we had been eating for weeks.
Staying at our doss house was a chap from the Oriana who was one of several passengers who had spontaneously left the ship in Colombo to make the overland journey, rather than continuing on by sea to the United Kingdom as planned. He told us our Canadian friends had just left Delhi the day before, heading west after visiting Nepal.
Our car was sick again, refusing to idle and hard to start. The symptoms had been developing for some time and I assumed it was due to our worn distributor. After struggling back to Mrs Colaco’s, I found that the carburettor throat was choked with dirt and there was sediment in the float bowl. After a thorough cleaning it ran much better. We very much wanted to visit Benares and Kathmandu, and possibly Khajuraho as well, but did not fancy making the long journey east in the slow and troublesome Fiat. We looked into flying but all planes were booked for a week ahead. We decided therefore to take the train to Raxaul on the Nepal border, stopping off en route for a couple of days in Benares, then travel by truck to Kathmandu. We could possibly fly back to Delhi and would have to miss the temples of Khajuraho.
Before we left, I wanted to post my exposed Kodachrome films to London for processing. To be certain they would arrive, registered mail was required. This was a complex procedure in India involving several queues first to buy a stamp, then to register the parcel, and finally to have the stamp franked (lest someone steam off the unmarked stamp to use it again). Two hours later a similar process was involved at the Old Delhi Railway Station to buy Third Class Sleeper tickets to Benares. When it was finally apparent that we could leave on the evening train, we went to the Automobile Association to enquire about garaging for our car, but they were unhelpful. Instead, we went to a local Fiat dealer and put the car in to have the distributor repaired and the engine tuned, thus solving also our storage problem while we were away in Kathmandu.
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