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Other entries in Jūnāgadh

second time lucky

Bum. Tried to post and of course had been logged off, so its all down the drain. Now I've been logged off again (first downside to small town communications) but I'm just going to write and then try and remember to log back on. Cross your fingers.

Junagadh (Jew-nah-ga) is awesome on many levels. First, there is the ice cream, which is not much of a suprise seeing as we are in Gujarat, but is still very much appreciated. My personal favourite here is bonanza, available from the Jay-Ambe Juice Centre on Kalwa Chowk. Its vanilla ice cream with a tiny bit of saffron, as well as almond, pistachio and tiny bits of glace cherry. Yum. Meryl's faves are milkshakes - preferably without an English name. The most interesting so far have been custard apple (good!) and chikku - a small fruit that looks like a potato - which was not so good. The "Cold Drinks Centres" here are strategically placed at intervals of about 15m all the way down the street, which enables us to pop straight from one into the next, without ever being spotted. Sweet!

The next awesome thing about Junagadh is the hotel. We are staying in the somewhat ominous GOVERNMENT hotel - usually this would equate to a hospital sized building, smalling of dentist and infested with raging hordes of cockroaches as well as an army of broom-brandishing old men, who sit on the stairs and drink chai. Amazingly, this is what we got: a hospital sized building, in the middle of a huge garden, presided over by a diminutive matriarch in a flouescent pink sari who never lets her male serfs have a moment to sit down. The whole place is spotless and everywhere we go we get smiled at, wished good morning and offered water/tea/coffee/newspaper etc. The manager joined us for dinnner last night. Our room has a bathroom with western loo, hot water, shower and a SINK. It has real beds with matresses, a verandah and huge window. We also have a desk, 2 nice chairs and a water dispenser, mossie coils, sheets, towels, and loo roll, all of which are topped up as many times as we allow. Its a break from our usual - normally we would get a damp, windowless cell with a hole in the floor and a charpoy (indian/matressless bed), for the same price. INSANE!!!! Apart from all this the hotel is about a km out of town - meaning that the only noises at night are the jackals, birds and cows. And we have an assigned "helper" who spends his days knocking on our door to offer breakfast in bed/clean the room/transport/dinner orders... he makes us omelettes,, toast and coffee every morning, which we eat in the vast, empty dining room. We are the only people there now, and probably in the last century or so. Its just WONDERFUL, if a little surreal... I keep expecting to wake up on the concrete floor in the ladies room at the station, having been dreaming about the perfect hotel.

The only real thing to do here apart from ice cream, is the fort. We went yesterday and I had the best time! The fort was apparently built in 300BC, and standing in the gates imagining all the thousands of people who must have passed through was quite a moment. Apparently the fort has come under attack 16 times, and seige 12. The gateways are filled with shrines and sadhus (holy men in white loincloths, who constantly try to paint my forehead orange. Never Meryls.), and the fort itself is filled with wild boar and squirrels. We walked along the walls and disturbed a family of boar in the middle of their mud bath - they ran in all directions with mud flying everywhere! Hehe. The Jama Masjid (royal mosque) is now deserted and is eerily silent; we sat there for ages just watching the squirrels running about (coming right up to us) and taking in the views of the hills around. Its built of grey stone and is just a big hall filled with pillars - endless rows of them, holding up the still intact roof. The fort was abandoned in about 1500AD, and "rediscovered" in the mid-1800s, all overgrown apart from the mosque. Its gloomy in there but also friendly, with all the little squirrels. The baoli (well) is much creepier. Its unusual for wells here in that it is just a crack in the ground, rather than a whole series of descending rings. You go down 620 steps that take you down and down and down to a tiny (but deep-looking) pool of black water - the passageway is only about 3m wide so by the time you get to the bottom you can only see a tiny glimmer of light at the top. We were so puffed after coming back up, I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like to be one of the water-carriers. Grim.

Today we climbed the 10,000 steps to the top of Girnar Hill. It was, well, 10,000 steps. The view from the top (well. Our top. 2,800 steps.) was nice, and the temples all the way up were too, but it didn't do that much for me... what did was the monkeys! All the way up there were hundreds and hundreds of them. They would shake hands, take food from (other people's) hands, chatter to anyone who would come close enough... completely wild but also so tame and used to peope, plus they were much cuter than the usual city monkeys. There were grey with white ruffs and tiny black babies. You'd be walking along and then suddenly a branch would crash onto the path, and there'd be a monkey perched on top grinning away. It was so nice seeing them in their real habitat, and not cities... playing around in all the trees, grooming and other monkey things. When I got a Thums-Up (kind of like Coke) halfway down, I got a big circle of monkeys all blatently wanting it. I felt very watched to say the least! They are just like the little street kids who wont leave you alone if you have food!

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