Rohet: Rajasthan Part 7

India

Rajasthan

This post covers day 9 of a 16-day journey around Rajasthan.

The size of Germany, Rajasthan is the largest of India’s 29 states. With the Thar Desert covering the north and west it is one of India’s less densely populated states, though with 200 people per km² (the same as Italy) it is hardly empty.

After a short drive from Jodhpur, we spent the day in and around the small town of Rohet (or Rohat)

In the 11th and 12th centuries the rise of the Rajputs created some 20 or so petty kingdoms ruled by Maharajas - the ‘Rajput Princes’. These kingdoms, at first independent, later vassal states of the Mughal or British Empires survived until 1947, when the Maharajahs led their ‘Princely States’ into the new Union of India, creating Rajasthan (the ‘Land of Princes’). The rulers became constitutional monarchs until 1971 when the Indian government ended their official privileges and abolished their titles. ‘Maharaja’ is now a courtesy title, but most remain leading members of their communities and some are still immensely rich. Several, like their British counterparts, have supplemented their income by turning forts and palaces into tourist attractions and hotels.

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A Repurposed Fort and a Visit to the Bishnoi People

Rohet and Rohet Garh

The small town of Rohet (sometimes ‘Rohat’) sits beside Highway 62 some 40km south of Jodhpur. There was little to see on the main road, but Umed swung confidently off the highway into the maze of narrow streets behind. We did not get far. Umed is a professional, unfazed by cows, pedestrians or randomly parked motorcycles, but even he was stymied by a stationary delivery truck with no intention of moving.

Our way is blocked, Rohet

Forced to take an unfamiliar route he picked his way with care, but Rohet is not large and he soon encountered a familiar landmark and quickly delivered us to Rohet Garh. Garh means Fort, but Rohet Garh is hardly a forbidding bastion like the forts of Jodhpur or Jaisalmer. It was built by the Thakur, the local ruler, at the time when forts were beginning to resemble country houses.

Standing outside the entrance to Rohet Garh

Rohet is a scruffy little town, but there is nothing scruffy about Rohet Garh, still owned by the family who built it and a Heritage Hotel since 1990. The flowery courtyard….

The courtyard, Rohet Garh

…leads to an immaculate garden...

Garden, Rohet Garh

... and, beside it, our comfortable and characterful room.

Our room, Rohet Garh

Having settled into the surroundings of the rich, there was time before lunch to take a stroll back in the real world.

In one sense there was not much to see,…

Rohet

…though we did observe a barber chasing out three goats apparently seeking to take up residence in his shop. But watching a small town go about its unremarkable daily business is always interesting…

Rohet

…particularly when the small town looks so very different from the places we are used to.

Rohet - there's that van again!

Back at Rohet Garh we lunched in the garden on pakoras and Kingfisher beer.

Blackbucks and Nilgai

In the afternoon we assembled with other hotel guests and a local guide - enough people to fill two Land Rovers - for a ‘village safari’.

We headed out of town into the countryside.

Leaving Rohet on a 'village safari'.

I do not know whether the sudden detour into the fields was planned or if the lead driver spotted something interesting but after bumping across a recently harvested field….

Across the fields near Rohet

…we encountered a small herd of blackbuck. They were all females so were not bucks and nor were they black but calling them Antilope cervicapra sounds so formal. Medium sized antelopes, they are native to the Indian sub-continent though pressure on habitat has led to their extinction in Bangladesh and near-extinction in Nepal. Elsewhere there are healthy populations and they have been successfully introduced into Texas and Argentina.

Female blackbuck, near Rohet

A group of females is essentially a harem, and before long a male came into view. The buck has a black back, black stripes down his legs and a pair of magnificent corkscrew horns. He sniffed the air with appreciation while looking around warily; this was a harem, but clearly not his harem. A cloud of dust hurtling across the field announced the arrival of the dominant male. The interloper took one look and fled, the boss chased him for a while then wheeled round with a look of satisfaction at a job well done.

Male blackbuck near Rohet

Further on we passed a group of nilgai – we had previously seen them on the road to Bikaner. Much bigger and less graceful than blackbucks they are India’s other native antelope.

Nilgai near Rohet

The Bishnoi People

The wildlife was all very interesting, but our safari’s quest was for the Bishnoi people. Fortunately, they were not difficult to find as unlike blackbuck the village stands still.

Arriving at the Bishnoi village

The Bishnoi are a Hindu sect who follow the teachings of Guru Jambheshwar who lived from 1451 to 1536. The Guru’s 29 tenets cover the usual grounds of religious devotion, respect for others and cleanliness in mind and body, and also instruct followers to be vegetarian and treat plant life with consideration. In 1730 in the village of Kherjali 20km east of Jodhpur the Maharaja’s soldiers set about felling a grove of sacred Khejri trees for use in construction. Amrita Devi, a local Bishnoi, put her arms round a tree, telling the soldiers they would have to chop her down as well. They did, and 362 more Bishnoi died following her lead before the Maharaja discovered what was happening and put a stop to it. I have no idea how much truth there is in the story, but as an essential Bishnoi myth it has great power, as does their reverence for Amrita Devi.

Our local guide told us this at some length while we were seated on benches at the village entrance. At even greater length he told us he was a Brahmin, and Brahmin’s are very important and very spiritual, and we were privileged to have a Brahmin as a guide. The Bishnoi, he said, were a sect not a caste but, whatever they were, Brahmins were more important and he was a Brahmin. The village elder listened in dignified silence, though his serenity might have wavered had he understood any English.

Bishnoi elder, not really listening to the Brahmin

The village, home to four related families, consisted of a few basic huts...

Bishnoi huts

... and a simple kitchen containing nothing that would not have been there two hundred years ago – except for the plastic transistor radio hanging from a tree.

Bishnoi Kitchen

The men, mostly dressed in western clothes, were willing to say ‘hello’ and offer a smile, the women and some of the older children sat in sullen silence.

Bishnoi Village

Almost all the women were in traditional dress with a large and elaborate half-moon nose-ring attached by a chain to their left ear – they never take them off. As we wandered round the huts the women were there to be photographed, but seemed to have absented themselves in every other sense. Lynne and I (and others) had been uncomfortable since we arrived; it was like being shown specimens in a zoo, but these were not zoo animals, they were human beings.

Bishnoi woman

One young woman – not in traditional dress – was called over by the Brahmin to introduce herself. She was, she told us in English, studying natural sciences at Jodhpur University. Further questions would have been interesting but did not happen - life here clearly has some undercurrents.

Scratching a living from the arid land around Rohet is nigh on impossible, so the men spend half the year working in the city while the women (except the student) remain in the village, which maybe accounts for their different demeanour. Perhaps the women should get out more.

The Guru also gave instructions for animal husbandry, and we finished our tour with the animals. The cows are never slaughtered, but the Bishnoi are vegetarians not vegans and appreciate the dairy products.

Calves, Bishnoi village

We left the village with mixed feelings. The ‘zoo’ aspect was offensive, but we did at least see a living culture, the alternative (and the Chinese are shameless about this) is worse - hiring actors to fake a sanitised version of the culture. We applauded the young woman university student, while acknowledging that education, particularly the education of women, will destroy the community. Perhaps that would be no bad thing, we were superficially looking at Bishnoi culture, but did we see anything more than picturesque poverty? The Bishnoi are not the Amish - they do not deny everything that came after their founder, the teachings of Guru Jambheshwar sit well with modern environmentalist thought and can be (and are by other Bishnoi) followed in the 21st century as is in the past.

Opium and Clay

Not very far away, and back on a tarmac road, was a much larger village, which we were allowed to believe was also Bishnoi. Here there was electricity and farm machinery and other conveniences of the modern world.

 

Village near Rohet

In a small room beside the square we perched on benches to watch an opium ceremony, the traditional welcome for honoured visitors. Opium poppies are grown legally for medicinal purposes and ‘opium water’ is made from the dried seed cases. Although technically illegal, we were told, the authorities turn a blind eye; true or not, it provided a small frisson of excitement.

Broken up seed cases are placed in a filter bag and hot water is poured in. The water is run through the filter bag several times and, hey presto, you have opium water. The product was passed round, poured from the spout of a small wooden vessel into outstretched palms.

Making opium water, near Rohet

Confession time: when offered a tot of locally distilled firewater, as occasionally happens, I feign innocence and ignorance, but in truth I know exactly what to expect. I may have drunk little of that particular beverage but I have experience of a large variety of similar legal, illegal and semi-legal drinks. When it comes to opiates I am a virgin.

A few declined the opium water though most tried it. Only two had accepted the home-made cigarettes of local tobacco passed round earlier, so clearly it is more socially acceptable to be a junkie than a smoker. The opium water tasted, unsurprisingly, of burnt wood and drinking it was not a mind-altering experience. I suspect there was a vanishingly small concentration in the water, and the quantity I sucked from my palm was a teaspoonful at most. I think its impotence left me still an opium virgin. Is it unduly cynical to suggest it was a cheap way to make tourists feel they were doing something daring while actually drinking woody water? I might add that Guru Jambheshwar’s tenets 24 and 25 forbid the use of opium and tobacco, so perhaps this village was not Bishnoi.

If I had my doubts about the opium ceremony, I had none about the man we went to see next. The local potter worked just across the square and we watched as he inserted a stick and gave his wheel a good spin.

Winding up the wheel

 With no motor, just a large and well balance fly-wheel, he was able to produce several pots before the wheel slowed.

Throwing a pot

It is always good to watch a craftsman at work, and there was something magical about the way a lump of clay transforms into an elegant pot when caressed by skilful hands.

Throwing another pot

Evening at Rohet Garh

We were back at Rohet Garh in early evening and at the appropriate time presented ourselves in the bar for a G&T. Indian made Blue Riband gin is cheap and very acceptable.

The dining room overlooked the pool. In days gone by Maharajas would optimise the acoustics by seating their musicians on a platform in the centre of a pool, though no one ever swam in it. Today’s circumstances are different so the musicians entertained us from the far side.

 

Musicians across the pool, Rohet Garh

Eschewing the tourist buffet, we chose Kema Mattar (lamb with peas) and Aloo Gobi Muselman from the à la carte. Both were good enough, though not exciting and neither of us can remember (and the internet won’t tell) how a Muslim eats his (or her) cauli and spuds.

Returning to the garden we found a magic show in progress. We sat down to watch but only caught the last few minutes, though in that time the young man demonstrated impressive sleight of hand. He finished, there was a ripple of applause from the dozen or so watchers followed by a prolonged cultural misunderstanding. The magician sat and stared at the audience, the audience like a class that has not been dismissed, remained seated, fidgeting and avoiding his gaze. After a while, with a look of exasperation, the magician reached into his robes, pulled out some banknotes and ostentatiously started counting his money. He was waiting for a tip but westerners do not tip an act who has been booked. If we had seen the whole show I might have helped him out, but for five minutes…we slipped away and left it to others.

Under-paid magician, Rohet Garh

02/02/2018

Another short journey today meant a leisurely start and after breakfast we sat in a sort of roof-garden overlooking a lake watching the birds. I photographed a heron of some sort…

Heron, Rohet Garh

…but then the nearby trees were infested by a crowd of rose-ringed parakeets. [update: A colony of these has become well established in the London area in recent years, but this year (2018) we have had one visiting our bird-feeder. Whether it is a new escapee or the precursor of an invasion remains unknown, but although it might find the unaccustomed heat-wave to its liking, the North Staffordshire winter could be a problem.]

Rajasthan, Land of Princes

Part 1: Jaipur and Amber (or Amer)
Part 2: Mandawa, Town of Havelis
Part 3: Bikaner, Sweets and Palaces
Part 4: Across the Thar Desert from Bikaner to Jaisalmer
Part 5: Jaisalmer in the Heart of the Thar Desert
Part 6: Jodhpur, Not Just a Pair of Trousers
Part 7: Rohet and the Bishnoi People
Part 8: Narlai, Small Town, Large Rock
Part 9: Ranakpur Jain Temple and on to Udaipur
Part 10: Udaipur (1), Royal City
Part 11: Udaipur (2) Bagore Ki Haveli and Dal Baati Churma
Interlude: Breakfast Thoughts in Udaipur
Part 12: Chittorgarh and on to Bundi
Part 13: Tiger Hunting in Ranthambhore

THE END