The Road to Surat

We reached the Ajanta caves at midday on Tuesday after a long drive from Ahmadnagar. We hadn't read much about the caves, just the brief history. They were discovered in 1819 by a party of British army officers who were tiger hunting. In 1844 an artist was sent to copy the paintings, taking 27 years to do so. His works were displayed in the Crystal Palace in London, and were destroyed by fire in 1866. The Bombay school of arts sent a team out in the 1870's and their copies which were stored in the Victoria and Albert Museum also burned in a fire. In 1918 a team from Kyoto arrived and sent copies of the sculptures back to Japan, but an earthquake destroyed most of them in the 1920's.

Finally, Italian restorers were commissioned to fix the peeling paintings within the caves. Over the years, the varnishes applied darkened and rendered the murals less visible, adding to the peeling as they cracked. They've had a bit of bad luck these caves... Monks used to reside here in the seventh century. The caves run along a ridge at the side of the valley and house huge carved statues of Buddha, various animals and flowers. We gave a Canadian a lift to the next city, Jalgaon, where we all stayed the night and were entertained by a festival of drumming and singing to celebrate a past leader of the lower classes. Our very enthusiastic hotel owner told us to take the highway all the way to Surat, without mentioning the carnage we might see on the way. Blocks of concrete by the road side displayed warnings and advice to motorists;
"Hospital is boring, avoid accidents'' and "This is a highway, not a runway''.

Of all the funny (but also quite serious) incidents we saw, a dark blue small van - sort of like a Toyota Hiace taxi, stood out. It usually seats 9 + 1 (driver) but when we saw it, it held nearly 20 people. Seriously. There was a guy hanging out of the front passenger door, standing and holding on to the roof, acting as a human indicator as the car raced up the highway. We had passed them 3 times already, once just because they were slow, then when they were unloading a passenger and his goods, and then at the scene of an accident. While writing this they just sped past us again. Not so funny on the highway are the buses and trucks. Auto rickshaws race along with anything from 1 to 10 people jammed in a seat made for 2. Outside the car it is 40 degrees, and sitting in the front with that hot wind blowing on our faces we are constantly getting dehydrated. Our fridge is invaluable, a constant supply of cold water. Andrew's team at work gave him a 'nalgene' water bottle holder and we wonder why we never had one in Africa! It is brilliant, as we no longer need to carry a backpack when walking about, and the water stays so cold.

Up into the Western Ghats again, entering the Bansda N.P we came upon an area where a fire had recently ravaged the mountains, and there were clear signs along the sides of the road where vehicles had gone over the edge. Cars pull up beside us to look at the landcruiser while on coming trucks roar towards us. (We just saw dead dog number 14 - gruesome). We saw about 4 serious accidents, just moments after the event along the main highway to Surat. Even though it is a well surfaced road with good signs, the buses drive like they are in a rally, the trucks weave in and out and the small cars often sneak up beside trucks, ignoring the 'Blow Horn Please' signs painted on every truck. Blind corners and the occasional cow add to the hazards. There's no apparent enforced speed limit, people drive as fast as they can. We've seen so many near misses, and use our air horn consistently (sometimes a little too enthusiastically Andrew). It might even have saved our lives! We stopped for the night in an unknown town where we were given new directions north that would enable us to avoid Surat and the congested highway north from Bombay. A small piece of paper listed village names, with no hints of distance or time between places. There were a few discrepancies between spellings, but we managed to roughly map out a route using the GPS and our India map, and headed north. 5km later we were following a guy on a motorbike, who was kind enough to show us which way to go. The new route took us through some towns and villages and a national park forest.

The houses were of a different design in this region (we were now in the state of Gujerat). They were lovely large square buildings with wall that were made from woven reeds and sticks, then smothered with a clay/mud mixture and set to dry. This provided real privacy and protection from the sun. The roofs were tiled. The country was so dry and barren in most parts, with the occasional river still holding water from last year's monsoon. The rains are due soon and the cattle and people will be grateful. There were still some accidents on this route but it was less hectic driving. Once back on National Highway 8 the road was fast and in excellent condition. Toll booths cost us about 100 rupees and were worth the money, with one or two letting us through for free! We took a ring road around Ahmadabad and stayed the night in Ghandinager, a city planned and named after Mahatma Ghandi. We found a nice hotel (too hot to camp) and were convinced that the car would be safe by a man who said his brother owned the hotel. 'I am trusting man. I played over 500 matches as opening bowler for this area cricket madam Ricky Ponting'. How could we say no. Upstairs he organised a reduced rate for a nice A/C room and we grabbed one of the Australian bottles of red wine Andrew bought back, and settled down for a nice relaxing movie. The phone in our room rang and on the other end was our friend asking if we were happy. I laughed and said 'Yes, very. Thank you.' A few minutes later there was a knock at the door, and there he stood with another fellow. We said hello using some of the very little Hindi we know 'nameste' - and in his excitement the man slapped us both on the face! It was a fair whack and made us both laugh. We got changed, and were shown an excellent restaurant with Gujurti thali, all you can eat! A small dish of creamy white sauce was placed on our already full metal trays, and Andrew bent to smell it to determine if it was yogurt to go with the curry-like sauces or a sweet. A waiter ran over and quickly put a spoon in both our dishes. He was worried that Andrew was going to try to eat the sauce by drinking it and with no hands! The look on his face was priceless and I laughed till I cried. We were certainly the entertainment in the restaurant and dessert turned out to be a bowl of pureed mango. We woke fairly early...and drove to the most beautiful stepped well in all of India (or so our guide book boasted). It was indeed very special, being five stories deep. As you descend the sandstone steps the temperature dropped considerably, and as usual the carvings were intricately done. We were shown around by a VERY friendly guide, before heading north to Udaipur.