Travelling Around Britain and the World

Sunday, 10 March 2019

Bhuj: Gujarat Part 12

Gujarat
India
 This post covers day 12 of a 14-day journey around Gujarat, following our circuit of Rajasthan last year. Smaller than Rajasthan, Gujarat is about the size of the Island of Great Britain and has much the same population.

5,000 years ago, Gujarat was a centre of the Indus Valley Civilization and subsequently played its part in most of the major north Indian empires. When Islamic invaders reached northern India in the 9th century Gujarat held out until 1300 when it became part of the Delhi Sultanate.

Day 12 was spent in Bhuj, the capital of the huge District of Kutch in northern Gujarat
An independent Muslim sultan seized power in 1391and Gujarat maintained its independence until becoming part of the Mughal Empire in the 16th century and later the British Empire, though local rulers of a patchwork of Princely States had considerable autonomy. At independence in 1947 Gujarat was part of the State of Bombay, becoming a state in its own right in 1960.

With a long coast line facing the Arabian sea, Gujaratis have been sea farers and international traders for millennia.

Gujarat is the home state of both Mahatma Gandhi and the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
-o00o00o-
Bhujiya Fort

At breakfast we had the restaurant to ourselves, but there was ample choice on the buffet. After idlis and chutney (me) omelette (Lynne), parathas and fruit we were ready to do Bhuj.

Bhuj was founded in 1510 by Rao Hamir, the 10th of the Jadejas, the Rajput dynasty who had ruled the Kingdom of Kutch since 1147. His son Rao Khengarji I made Bhuj the capital in 1549. Bhujia Fort, on the hill over looking the city, was started during the reign of the 19th Jadeja. Rao Godji I (1715−19) and completed by his son Maharao Deshalji I (1718–1741). About this time most raos and rajas (kings) were being upgraded by the Mughals (or upgrading themselves) to maharaos or maharajas (great kings).

Bhujiya Hill and fort overlooking the city of Bhuj
By the late 18th century forts were giving way to palaces, but even so Bhujia was attacked six times, sometimes by the Mughal Viceroy – from 1590 the Jadejas had reluctantly recognised the supremacy of the Mughal Emperor - sometimes in Jadeja in-fighting, and finally in March 1819 by Sir William Keir. By then the Mughals were on the back foot and Kutch was on its way to becoming a Princely State under British ‘protection’.

Aina Mahal and Prag Mahal, Bhuj

Around 1750, not wishing to miss out on the comfort of a palace, the extravagant and somewhat unstable Maharao Lakhpatji built the Aina Mahal. In 1865 Maharao Pragmalji II – generally a more conscientious and less extravagant ruler - commissioned a new palace. His Prag Mahal was designed by Colonel Henry St Clair Wilkins who was responsible for many other buildings in British India, most notably Frere Hall in Karachi.

 Vijay picked us up after breakfast and L drove us a short distance into central Bhuj and swung into a courtyard with the sad looking Aina Mahal on one side…

Aina Mahal, Bhuj
…and the pompous Prag Mahal on the other.

Prag Mahal, Bhuj
The 7.7 magnitude ‘Bhuj Earthquake’ of 2001 damaged both palaces severely. Almost 20 years on the Aina Mahal remains in poor condition; the Prag Mahal looks much better but there is work yet to do.

Wilkins' buildings have a recognisable style. He liked little towers with pyramidical roofs, reminiscent of Georgian churches....

The Prag Mahal with a small earthquake damaged tower with pyramidical roof
…and clock towers with pointy tops, making both his hospital and synagogue in Poona look churches….

Prag Mahal clock tower
We watched a school group being marshalled by their teachers so they could make safe ascents and descents of the clock tower’s narrow stairs. It is always good to watch professionals at work.

Calm control by teachers who know exactly what they are doing
Prag Mahal clock Tower
Gujarat Tourism describes the Prag Mahal  as slightly out of place at the far western edge of India, [and would look] more appropriate in France. Have they been to France?  It has also been called Indo-Saracenic with a Romanesque twist (for the best of Indo-Saracenic, see the Maharajah’s Palace, Mysore in Bangalore to Mysore, 2016). I think it looks like a Victorian boy’s boarding school.

Part of the interior is open, and it was as stiff and formal as the outside. The main hall was vast…

Main Hall, Prag Mahal
… smaller (cosier?) spaces resembled committee rooms…

Smaller room in the Prag Mahal
…. and the stuffed lion would have looked better in the wild.

Stuffed Lion, Prag Mahal
We saw live Asiatic Lions a few days before at Sasan Gir

Inside the Aina Mahal

Despite its poor condition and the heaps of surrounding rubble, the Aina Maha is, in part, still open.

Aina Mahal, Bhuj
We entered past the carriage of a long dead ruler…

Carriage, Aina Mahal, Bhuj
…and a sign on a cracked wall suggesting a possible explanation for the cracks.

The reason for the Bhuj earthquakes - elsewhere in the world it might be different

Beyond is a suite of rooms which, despite the delft tiles, owed far more to the Indian heritage of the rulers than their desire to copy western tastes.

Inside the Aina Mahal
If it had been up to me (and if it is possible), I would have concentrated on restoring the Aina Mahal rather than the ugly Prag Mahal.

Anisde the Aina Mahal, Bhuj

The Sharadbaug Palace

The Prag Mahal and Aina Mahal sit on one side of Hamirsar Lake, the Sharadbaug Palace on the other, Bhuj may be a small city, but has plenty of palaces.

Dry Hamirsar Lake with the Prag Mahal clocktower visible on the far side
Unfortunately, it does not have plenty of water. The artificial lake was built by Rao Khengarji I (1548–1585) and named after his father Rao Hamir, the city’s founder. Kutch is arid and the ground water salty, so decades were spent building tunnels and canals to bring in fresh water. The lake dried up after the 2001 earthquake which prompted some long overdue repairs. These were successful, and the lake overflowed in 2003, a cause for celebration and rejoicing. Recent failed monsoons have led to it again drying up.

The palace itself sits in a pleasant garden…

Sharadbaug Garden. I know it is only a bougainvillea, but it's an impressive bougainvillea
 …but is not currently open.

Sharadbagh Palace, Bhuj
Instead, passing through an 8th century portal beneath a flowery arch took us to a modest single storey pavilion, stuffed with the treasures of the kingdom.

Pavilion, Sharadbaug Gardens
Unfortunately, most of the treasures are also stuffed. The animals, tigers mainly, stand in cases beside photographs of the shooting parties that killed them. In hunter gatherer times a man's first reaction on seeing a wild animal was to chase or stalk it and then kill it; we can call that survival. Many acted the same way in the 19th century but they called it sport. Across the world there are still people, largely men, who hunt, in the belief that killing compensates for some deficiency in themselves, I call that barbarity.  The photos were meticulously captioned, and we were surprised to find tiger hunts were still being organised as late as the early 1960s. No photographs were allowed inside – perhaps from a sense of guilt.

Tea with the Prince of Kutch

The Coat of Arms of Kutch, 1893
As we walked back across the garden Vijay said ‘Would you like to have tea with the prince?’ Previously Vijay had asked if we would like to meet ordinary rural people in their own homes (see Meeting the Locals), and if we would like to have tea with the High School Principal (Gondal), apparently his influence covered the entire social spectrum.

‘If he’s at home,’ he added, pulling out his phone. A quick call established that the prince, who lives on the Sharadbaug Estate, was indeed at home and receiving visitors so off we went. Vijay had known him since they were children, he said, when the prince had been ‘very naughty.’

Maharao Madansinhji of Kutch
Maharao Madansinhji, the 34th Jadeja ruler of Kutch came to the throne when his father died on the 26th of January 1948. The previous August, on behalf of his sick father, he had signed the Instrument of Accession taking Kutch into the Union of India, but as that did not take effect until the 4th of May 1948 he was, for 67 days, the last hereditary ruler of Kutch. He retained his title, if not his powers, until 1971 when the Indian government abolished all titles.
Maharao Pragmulji III of Kutch

When he died in 1991 his son inherited the courtesy title of Maharao Pragmulji III. As Pragmulji has no issue (and is in his 80s) his younger brother Maharaj Shri Hanwantsinhji is expected to succeed. We went to have tea with Kunwar Pratap Singh, Hanwantsinhjis second son. He is listed as third in line of succession, suggesting his older brother has no male heir, so he will inherit the courtesy title if he outlives his brother, and his eldest son will eventually inherit either way.

The information above is the product of an hour's hard googling, I knew none of it as we walked across the estate to the Sharadbaug Homestay, yes the prince runs a B&B. On the Homestay website he looks every inch the Indian aristocrat, although there may be a look of discomfort in his eye…

Kunwar Pratap Singh and Ranisaheb Shalini Kumari of Kutch in formal mode on their website.
I hope they don't mind me borrowing this
….which is entirely absent in a casual setting. An amiable bear of a man in tee-shirt and crocs, he and his wife are the ideal homestay hosts, relaxed and informal with their guests, while sending their younger son – a university student, when not pressed into service as a waiter – running round to provide us with tea and biscuits.

And here looking much more relaxed dressed as normal people, Sharadbaug Homestay, Bhuj
If the prince and I stood sideways our profiles would be identical - although that is nothing for either of us to be proud of.
They showed us round the homestay - two rooms in the main house, two more built round the garden which is being further developed.

A room in the Sharadbaug Homestay. All have private bathroom, AirCon, TV etc etc
We chatted of this and that. There were questions I would have liked to ask; the couple’s views on the place, if any, of former local royalty in modern India would have been interesting, but we had only dropped in for a casual cuppa and it would have been rude to start interviewing our hosts.

Dabeli – The Bhuj Burger

Taking our leave, we located L who drove us back towards our hotel. Vijay had told us about the dabeli – he called it the Bhuj burger – earlier, and as we passed a dabeli stall (not that we would have known it) he suggested we try one.

Dabeli stalls, Bhuj. The cow has nothing to fear from burgers in vegetarian Gujarat
The dabeli is a Kutch original, though it has become popular street food across much of India; its similarity to a burger starts and ends with it being served in a bun. Being Gujarati, it is, of course, vegetarian, being cheap it is a variation on the mashed potato sandwich – we ate mashed potato in a dosa in Ahmedabad Market on Day 2 – and being Indian it is so much more than that. The man behind the counter made up our dabelis, spiced mashed potato mixed with various other ingredients (including, surprisingly, pomegranate) from the tray at the bottom, spicy peanuts from the top and tamarind chutney were all stuffed into a pav bun.

Ready to make our Dabelis, Bhuj
Then he gave the pav to his mate to heat on the tawa,….

The chap on the tawa does not look that interested, dabeli stall, Bhuj
….top and bottom.

Dabelis on the tawa, Bhuj
Then we retreated inside the stall and ate, and very good it was, too. Vijay took the photo but declined to join us in the dabelis, ‘too spicy for me,’ he said. I had never heard an Indian say that before, and we thought they were only just on the hot side of medium.

Eating in the seating area behind
Vijay grabbed a tuk-tuk for the short trip back to our hotel.

Tuk-tuking back to our hotel, Bhuj

Baraat - the Groom's Wedding Procession, Bhuj

We arrived in the middle of a baraat, the groom’s procession to his wedding, our first in Gujarat, though they were a regular feature in Rajasthan last year. The groom rides a white horse with, traditionally, a nephew or young male cousin aged 2-8 sitting in front to him. Times change, even in India, and in this case the gig went to a female relative. Friends and relatives march along, some dancing in front of the horse. There is always music, blaring loudspeakers are pushed along behind the groom, and there is at least one drummer; volume of noise is important.

Baraat, Bhuj
Some grooms look happier than others – maybe for some the short-term problems of a novice horseman briefly outrank thoughts of long-term happiness, for others…. This bloke looks like the cat who is about to get the cream. If the bride waiting at the end of the procession, feels the same, then all will be well.

The groom rides confidently
The dabeli had been lunch, and as Bhuj is a warmish place – in March the average daily high is 35° - we hid from the midday heat, going out later for a walk and to do some shopping.

A Walk in Bhuj

The streets of Bhuj are hot, dusty and scruffy. I love places like this, they appeal to a side of my personality that often remains hidden, though not in India.

Bhuj
I liked the man on the plinth, though I have no idea who he is, the inscription is in Gujarati, one of many scripts I cannot read.

Memorial to somebody, Bhuj
I cannot resist a picture of milk churns – I failed to notice their disappearance at home until twenty years after it happened and it still upsets me.

Milk churns, Bhuj
We walked towards Desalsar Lake; a Muslim funeral procession crossing the end of the road was heading in the same general direction.

Towards Desalar Lake, Bhuj
Bhuj has many man-made lakes harvesting rainwater, most of them around 500 years old and in poor condition. Desalsar will be one of two used to pilot a development plan and major clean-up. Unfortunately making plans is easy, finding the money to carry them out is another problem. At present the view across the lake to Shree Khodiyar Mata Temple is hardly memorable, but at least there is water in the lake.

Desalsar Lake, Bhuj
But by looking down rather than across, and without moving my feet, I had a vista of feral dogs and rotting refuse. Much as I love India, I am not an uncritical admirer. Grandiose (and unaffordable?) plans are fine – but with the right will this could be sorted in a couple of weeks at minimal cost.

Feral dogs and rotting refuse, Desalsar Lake, Bhuj
As we returned to the hotel we encountered the funeral procession again. Three more weddings and we could have won a cardboard cut-out Hugh Grant.

Muslim funeral procession, Bhuj
Dinner at the KBN

Our hotel restaurant was good enough, but we were tired of dining alone, so we had asked Vijay for a recommendation. He suggested we cross the road to the KBN. It turned out to be another hotel, but after passing reception and going up one floor in the lift we found a restaurant crammed with diners.

The food was of a similar standard, but the atmosphere was far better. Like most restaurants in Gujarat it was vegetarian, we had a paneer curry and a vegetable dish washed down with sweetened lime-soda – always the drink of choice in dry Gujarat.

Dinner at the KBN restaurant, Bhuj
But we have a foreigners’ liquor licence and a legally acquired stash, so afterwards we returned to our hotel room for a nightcap of Chennai distilled Old Monk rum.


11-Mar-2019

Swaminarayan Mandir, Bhuj

Next morning, before leaving Bhuj, we visited the Swaminarayan Temple near the south east corner of the dry Lake Harmirsar.

Entrance to the Swaminarayan Temple, Bhuj
On Friday we had visited the Swaminarayan Temple in Gondal. I wrote about the Saint (or is it God?) who founded this Hindu sect at the start of the 19th century, and the schisms that followed his death in the Gondal post.

The Swaminarayan Temple, Bhuj
The Bhuj temple belongs to the same BAPS group as Gondal, both temples are newish and the surroundings, polished marble and well-watered grass, are entirely litter-free.

The swaminarayan temple, Bhuj

The damaged temple in 2001
Photo by Around the Globe
The original Bhuj Mandir was built in 1822, one of 6 constructed during the lifetime of the founder. That temple was all but destroyed by the 2001 earthquake.

The BAPS foundation seems remarkably well funded and where restoration of the Prag Mahal is incomplete, and the Aina Mahal hardly started, the damaged temple was swiftly demolished and this new one built on an adjacent site.

Inside the Swaminarayan Temple, Bhuj
Although the temple is not identical to Gondal’s a certain sameness is inevitable; in both, the carved marble and pietra dura are beautiful.

Inside the Swaminarayan Temple, Bhuj

The cobra necklace and third eye suggest the god in the garden is Shiva.

Shiva in the garden of the Swaminarayan Temple, Bhuj
Most Hindus primarily worship either Vishnu or Shiva, while Swaminarayan saw Krishna as the centre of the Hindu trinity, but all the gods must be respected. With that thought we left Bhuj and headed north towards Hodka.


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Saturday, 9 March 2019

Gondal to Bhuj, Gujarat Part 11

Gujarat: The What, Where, When and Who

India
Gujarat

This post covers day 11 of a 14-day journey around Gujarat, following our circuit of Rajasthan last year. Smaller than Rajasthan, Gujarat is about the size of the Island of Great Britain and has much the same population.

5,000 years ago, Gujarat was a centre of the Indus Valley civilization and subsequently played its part in most of the major north Indian empires. When Islamic invaders reached northern India in the 9th century Gujarat held out until 1300 when it became part of the Delhi Sultanate.

A long drive took us from Gondal, by-passing the district capital of Rajkot, then north and west to Bhuj, capital of Kutch

An independent Muslim sultan seized power in 1391and Gujarat maintained its independence until becoming part of the Mughal Empire in the 16th century and later the British Empire, though local rulers of a patchwork of Princely States retained considerable autonomy. At independence in 1947 Gujarat was part of the State of Bombay, becoming a state in its own right in 1960.

With a long coast line facing the Arabian sea, Gujaratis have been seafarers and international traders for millennia.

Gujarat is the home state of both Mahatma Gandhi and the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

-o0o0o-

Gondal to Rajkot


 Gondal* sounds like a stronghold of the Riders of Rohan, and Bhuj is obviously somewhere to the Hubside of Klatch. My mental preparation for a journey from Middle Earth to the Discworld was, I soon discovered, irrelevant.

Rajkot, the district capital, is an hour to the north and with 1.2m people is another major Indian city that is little known to the outside world. The road from Gondal passes through a heavily a populated land where industry and agriculture sit side by side.

Milk churns disappeared from our rural landscape without me noticing, though the internet tells me churn collections ceased in July 1979. I rather miss them, and I am always delighted to see them in India.

Milk churns on the move, Gondsl
Motorcycle helmets, unlike milk churns, remain the rule at home, but are not universally used in India. I suppose wearing bulky helmets would make it difficult to fit three young men on a motorcycle.

Three on a motorbike, north of Gondal
A contra-flow on the dual carriageway caused by an overturned vehicle had slowed us down, so with a long journey ahead, the existence of a Rajkot by-pass was a boon. North of the city we passed several outbreaks of what looked like tented encampments, one step down from shanty towns.

Tented encampment north of Rajkot
Entering Kutch

 The Gulf of Kutch, separating the Kathiawar Peninsula from the vast but sparsely populated district of Kutch, is the substantial estuary of a short and apparently nameless river. The salt pans crossed by Highway 27 some 20km from the advertised coast are where the river would be if it had any water.

Salt pans beneath Highway 27, Gulf of Kutch
Beyond the salt pans we left Rajkot district and entered the former Kingdom of Kutch – definitely Pratchett territory, particularly when spelled Kuchchh as in the map below. Twice the size of Wales, Kutch is by far the largest district of Gujarat and with 46 people per km², the least densely populated (Wales has 150, Rajkot district 400).

In my previous experience coastlines were simple. A cliff or beach has land on one side, sea on the other - that is how you know it is the coast. Had I spent more time in Norfolk I might have realised that the relationship can be more complex. Here it messes with your mind, the coastline is variable, the land and sea swap places with the seasons and any map is at best a snap shot.

Inland is the Little Rann of Kutch where we successfully hunted for Wild Asses only a week ago. From the narrow neck of an occasional river, the Rann (Salt Marsh) widens out, sprawling over south-east Kutch and parts of Morbi and Surendranagar Districts, covering some 5,000km² (coincidently, about the same as Norfolk).

Kutch (Kuchchh) and its Ranns. Borrowed from wikipedia, the map is the work of w:User:Miljoshi
The map is pre-2013 when seven new districts were created (Kutch was not affected)
In the rainy season most of the Little Rann floods with brackish water, hence the salt industry there. This causes few problems; everyone knows it will happen and nobody would be so stupid as to build a town on a flood plain (unlike some western countries I could mention). We will visit the (Great) Rann of Kutch in a day or two – that is even bigger.

The previous map of the Ranns of Kutch shows the coastline as it usually appears on modern maps. On this 1909 map it looks very different.  The differences are due more to the passing of seasons than the passing of decades.
We lunched at a branch of Coffee Day, a chain of air-conditioned, upmarket cafés that can be found everywhere in India you would expect to find them, and several places you wouldn’t. Cappuccinos and toasted chilli-cheese sandwiches would keep us going for the afternoon.

Kutch was not only a Princely State during the Raj, but on independence became a State of India in its own right, albeit a ‘Part C’ state – one ruled by a commissioner appointed by the President. India is defined as democratic in its constitution so ‘Part C’ states were only temporary and in 1956 a major reorganisation placed Kutch and Saurashtra State (largely the Kathiawar peninsula we had just left) into the already overlarge State of Bombay. In 1960 Bombay was split on linguistic grounds, the Marathi speaking south became Maharashtra, the Gujarati speakers to the north gaining their own state

Southern Kutch is flat, some scrub some fields prepared for planting, but not much to look at, so we were happy to stop at a dyeing and block printing works.

Southern Kutch lanscape

Block Printing in Kutch

I should no longer be surprised by Indian factories, though ‘factories’ is the wrong word in the local context. Many companies do ‘factory tours’ at home; there are tickets and guides, viewing galleries and roped off sections, safety briefings and sometime special clothing. Here we walked into the yard, introduced ourselves to a member of the family – of course it was a family business – and were warmly welcomed.

Dyeing and printing factory yard, southern Kutch
Saying that the family had been in this business for 400 years, he told us they used only vegetable dyes, organically and sustainably produced, and because they were natural, they were permanent and would not fade in sunlight. The marketing speech was modern, the rest of the enterprise had changed little over the centuries – which is normal for India.

Colours and dyes are one of my areas of ignorance; I know indigo is the I in ROYGBIV, but it was only in 2012 in Vietnam when we saw an indigo plantation that I discovered it was a plant. Native to India, it has been used for producing blue dye since antiquity and arrived in Europe down the Silk Road. The Greeks called it Ἰνδικὸν φάρμακον (Indian dye) which became Indicum in Latin and eventually Indigo** in English, where the word’s earliest recorded use was in 1289. The dyeing agent, indigotin, is the same chemical my ancestors had previously extracted from woad, but indigo has far more of it.

I have never visited a dyeing works at home - to be honest my ‘factory visits’ have largely involved breweries, distilleries and the occasional cheese maker. If I did, they would doubtless be using artificially produced indigotin rather than indigo plants and I would certainly not expect to see five men in plastic macs up to their knees in a tank of indigo, dyeing cloth by dunking and slapping.

Dyeing cloth with indigo, Kutch
One particularly vigorous slap showered me in droplets of dye and my previously orange tee-shirt acquired an interesting pattern of green splashes – indigotin is green but oxidises to blue during the dyeing process. ‘Don’t worry,’ the manager said, apparently forgetting his little speech about natural dyes being permanent, ‘it’ll wash out.’ [He was right it did – after three of four passes through the washing machine.]

The next stage is block printing, surely a process from a by-gone age. An inked block is repeatedly struck onto the cloth to create a repeated pattern which can be simple…

Block printing in Kutch
…or complex.

A craftsman at work, block printing in Kutch

A rank amateur, Jaipur 2018
Printing a border, Lucknow 2013
I had a go myself in Jaipur last year; one small rectangular print but in four colours, so I placed each successive block with ever greater care.  It was a slow process. We first saw block printing in Lucknow bazaar in 2013; a stall-holder adding a patterned border to a piece of cloth with more speed and accuracy than I would have thought humanly possible. Compared to the man above, he was an amateur. This guy never paused to line up his strike, indeed he hardly seemed to look, he just moved along the cloth hitting the required spot again and again and again, his hand so fast it is fuzzy in the photograph.

But this is an easy process to automate. Despite their super-human accuracy, the printers must occasionally make a major error – the pressure when making the last few stamps on a large multi-coloured piece must be considerable. Machines never err.

We thought we might buy a tablecloth, and in the shop across the road our host’s brother showed us hundreds of cloths, no two of them the same.

The finished products, block printers,Kutch
And this is the tablecloth we bought. It has been used and washed more than once; the colours have lost some of their vibrancy and the brown was once darker, but it remains a pleasing design.

The tablecloth we bought
But is it any 'better' than a machine printed cloth? The only way to tell the difference is to find the little errors – preternaturally precise as the printers are, they are only human. So, should we value something because of its errors? That sounds perverse and if it were true, a machine could be programmed to make random errors.

Not absolute perfection, but to spot the errors you must look more closely than any sane person would look at a tablecloth
Hand printing was once the only way to print and it survives because of inertia – and because these skilled printers are paid a pittance. I would not want to put them out of work, but historically mechanisation has created more and better jobs than it has destroyed.

Or looking at it another way: we were privileged to see a dying craft that our grandchildren will only be able to read about in books (and blogs).

Embroidery

Those readers who now think I am a philistine, thank you for reading this far and allow me to confirm your suspicion.

We dropped in on a village of widows (!?) to see their embroidery. A little further down the road was an embroidery museum – it is an important craft locally. So much in India is underfunded that when you visit somewhere money has been spent, it stands out. The embroidery museum was modern and purpose built, air-conditioned and with subdued lighting to preserve the colours. The displays were cunningly lit so there was no glare or reflection from the well-polished glass cases and the captions, in Gujarati and English were clear and comprehensive – it was a model of what such a museum should be, though the meanies would not let me take any photographs. But embroidery? Lynne was not particularly interested and I would have been happier outside watching the grass grow, Vijay seemed to enjoy it, though. We might also wonder who it is for, there are few tourists in these parts and we had the place to ourselves.

And the Philistines were as cultured and sophisticated as any other iron age tribe – they had a bad press because their enemies wrote the book.

Bhuj

Although once a state capital and with an alleged population of 200,000+ Bhuj has a small-town feel.

We checked into our hotel, a new building full of dark plastic strips and right angles and had little time to look round before the light went. Our first impression of Bhuj - hot, poor, dusty and dirty -  may be a little unfair. It will be the main feature of the next post, but here is a photo to be getting on with.

Bhuj
With no time to explore we dined in our hotel. The restaurant was hardly crowded but the Punjabi lamb, mixed veg, rice and butter roti was fine and I like the dessert of rasgulla - soft paneer and semolina dumplings cooked in a light syrup.

 *Gondal was also the name  of an imaginary country invented by Emily and Anne Brontë in their teenage years
**The word 'Indigo' has been imported into India in the form IndiGo, the name of the domestic airline that took us from Jaipur to Delhi last year.


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Location: Gondal, Gujarat 360311, India
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