Travelling in Rajasthan in February 2008
Jaipur >> Shekhawati >> Pushkar >> Jaisalmer >> Jodhpur
+ Previous: Badal Singh and Khuri Village
At Khuri’s sand dunees, a bunch of camel drivers coax me into going on a ride with them. But I want to walk, feel the soft sand and let my feet sink into it. I want to look back and see my footprints disturbing the virgin sand. I would like to sit on the sand, spray the fine dust with my hands and watch the wind blow it away gently. I would like to spend the evening quietly in a far away corner undisturbed, and watch the sky getting painted orange by the sun as he takes leave for the day.
But as I climb up one of the tall dunes, the sinking feet made me wish I had large hooves like a camel that would let me walk with ease. These ungulates effortlessly stride on the dunes with the same ease as we walk on solid ground. And they seem to take the slopes with little effort, carrying two men up on their back. The sand-walk is a definite pleasure for a newbie that I am, but long walks on this sinking ground would be hard without the aid of these ships of the desert.
Sunset on the dunes..
Khuri’s dunes are a good fifty feet high, long and narrow, with many dunes spreading parallel to each other. Shrubs scatter along the depressions between the dunes where birds gather, hopping from one bush to other looking for the last feed of the day. This place has a surprisingly good bird life for its arid landscape. Chirpy sparrows flock small trees near villages, while Desert Wheatears and White Cheeked Bulbuls are common farther into the desert.
Up on the ridge of a dune, I spot a crowd of tourists gathered to the west in a small shelter popularly called the ‘sunset point’. I head in the opposite direction in search of a quiet place – not hard to find one in these vast sand dunes. It is an hour to go before sun down, giving me time to walk on the yellow expanse of small striations and large undulations. At the hour of sunset, the bright ball changes into orange and eventually red, painting the sand-scape into a golden yellow ocean of tall waves.
White Cheeked Bulbul
Cold wind takes over as the sun goes down, forcing me to cover up with warm clothes and beat a retreat to the village sooner than I wished to. Back at Badal House, the evening is spent listening to the stories of a French Couple who are just back from spending two days in the desert. The excited portrayal of star studded skies, lonely landscapes and bumpy camel rides make me look forward to my day in the open.
The dinner that night is in Badal’s kitchen. We listen to his stories of the desert as we devour on Bajra Rotis freshly cooked in wood fire by his wife. Badal tells us how much the Bajra Rotis have become an essential part of their diet. One of his guests had taken Badal to Udaipur, where he was treated for a plush dinner at the Lake Palace. But he was just not at home with the luxurious food, and came out eating something that still left him hungry. He later fixed his hunger by buying groundnuts off the street, and wished he could have some Bajra Rotis.
The cold evening did not let me linger outside for long after dinner. I cuddled under the rajai with a book, looking forward to my day out in the desert next day.
To be continued..
My first ever tryst with self driven rented car was on a longish trip to Goa. Since then I have stuck to personal cars and have never bothered renting one. But a lot of people love to take a bigger car on rent and go on multi-day trips. Shrinidhi has a detailed post that answers all the basic questions for the first timer. Is it economical? How much do they cost? What are the risks? etc,..
Santro, Indica: Rs 1300-1500/Day, Getz/Swift: Rs 1800-2000 per day, Ford Ikon, Accent: Rs 2000-2200 per day, Ford Fiesta, Honda City: Rs 2200-2500 per day, Civic, Skoda Octavia, Toyota Corolla, Chevy Optra, Scorpio, Innova: Rs 3000-4000 per day. (note: A security deposit ranging between Rs 5000-20000 will be payable..
Read Self Drive rentals: cost comparison, procedures and more. He has many more stories on self driven rental cars. The post has links to all of them.
Author: John Keay
Publishers: Harper Collins
Pages: 172
‘The Great Arc’ is the story of mapping India and discovering the highest mountains on earth.
It all began in the first decade of 19th century when the British were slowly establishing their empire, starting with Madras and surrounding territories in South India. An expanding kingdom needed mapping to define and survey its territories. An effort first started by defining the earth surface by a long survey line stretching from Madras to Bangalore. The subsequent surveys got larger and larger, and an ambitious plan was made to measure the terrain along a long line stretching from Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari) to as far north as Agra.
Keay’s story of mapping India comes with some first hand research and some documentary evidences of the survey that have remained. He traces the grave of William Lambton, the great man who initiated the survey in Madras, to a small town in Central India called Hinganghat. He visits George Everest’s office and base station at Mussourie, and goes to many places where the survey team had passed as they made measurements.
Emphasized through the book prominently are the challenges that the survey teams had to endure. Tough and challenging terrains called for some ingenious solutions to carry on the survey. Suspicious natives who did not understand the reasoning behind the survey in those times often did not allow the survey teams in their territory. There was malaria and several other types of fevers to deal with in the monsoons.
The struggle of surveyors to ensure precision in data has been brought out impressively in the book. Just measuring a baseline that marked the beginning of the survey to precise length alone was a job of several months. The process involved considering all possible influential factors, like refraction of light rays from the atmosphere, plumb line deflections from aberrations of earth surface and adjustments for curvature of the earth.
The line from Kanyakumari to Agra eventually took four decades to complete, and was called The Great Arc. The implications of survey data were many – it helped measure earth’s curvature, and aided in making precise measurements of Himalayan peaks that eventually lead to discovery of the world’s highest mountain.
The story of the survey, besides taking the reader through each stage of it, is also a description of lives and temperaments of the great surveyors who toiled for it. While the gentle William Lambton was the initiator of the process, it was taken over by cranky George Everest (after whom Mt.Everest is named) who successfully completed it. Going through the initial parts of the book, which contains technical details of the survey, requires the reader to be equipped with basic knowledge of geometry, without which the book is hard to read and understand. But that hurdle surpassed, it is an excellent read on how India’s geography was understood and mapped.