After the three days in Gwalior we took the Bhopal Shatabti Express down south to Bhopal. It was on time (at both ends) and the ‘A/C Executive Carriage’ we had booked proved far more comfortable than first class on British trains (and a hell of a lot cheaper). The food, included in the ticket price, was not too bad either. The journey took just under 4.5 hours.
After checking into our hotel we embarked on a sightseeing tour of Bhopal. Most people associate the name of the city with the Union Carbide disaster of 1984, which killed thousands of people more or less directly and severely affected the health of hundreds of thousands more. It had the same connotations for us, and the disaster has certainly left its mark on Bhopal to this day. Without doubt it will take several more decades before the wounds inflicted on the city and its people will heal properly. That said, there is a fair amount to see here, the city has some very pleasant districts, and the surrounding area can boast two UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Whilst Bhopal has a Hindu-majority population, mosques appear to dominate the centre. The most famous one is the Taj-ul-Masajid, the largest mosque in India. Its construction began in the 19th century, but, due to a lack of funds, the work suffered lengthy delays and it was not fully completed until 1985.
As the photo above shows, the mosque has three domes and two very tall minarets, meaning that you have to be a fair distance away to get it all into the frame.
We had a local guide and told him about the things we were interested in seeing. High on our agenda was a stepwell called Bada Bagh, which we had found on the atlas available at stepwells.org. We were surprised that he had never heard of it, but it turned out that even people living in its vicinity were unaware of it. Eventually we managed to locate it – there was not much to be seen overground and the area looked unlikely. Venturing down the steps past the weeds and accumulated rubbish, we finally caught a glimpse of past splendour.
This stepwell dates back to around 1819 and formed part of a network around the city. We did not manage to get into the richly decorated, colonnaded part, but succeeded in taking a few photos from the top (through the iron bars). Here is one of them:
Unfortunately, many of India’s stepwells – and there are thousands – are in a similarly sorry state (or have crumbled altogether). As a nation, India does not seem to value this particular cultural heritage and clearly does not see its potential in relation to tourism. If you are interested in the topic, I can recommend Victoria Lautman’s well-illustrated “The Vanishing Stepwells of India”, which I received recently as a birthday present. (The next instalment of this series will contain more stepwell photos – this time of a reasonably well-preserved one.)
The photo below shows the Iqbal Maidan, a pleasant square in the centre of Bhopal.
After looking around this area, and visiting several nearby mosques and small markets, we decided to move on to the Upper Lake. Beyond marketing itself (obviously) as the capital of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal uses the byline ‘City of Lakes’ – there are more than dozen after all. The shot below is of the statue of Raja Bhoj, the founder of the city (in the 11th century), at the edge of the Upper Lake.
At the end of the afternoon our guide suggested a beer near the boat club on the other side of the lake, and we did not need much persuasion. It was a nice place from which to watch the sunset. The beer was also much cheaper than in our hotel – where do these hotels get the idea that it is OK to charge almost as much for a small bottle of beer as for a main course?
After breakfast the next day we set off for the Buddhist monuments at Sanchi, some 45km away. On the way there you cross the Tropic of Cancer. Since we had been at the Tropic of Capricorn virtually exactly 6 months earlier, we decided that we needed a short photo stop. The car in the picture, incidentally, is an Avigo, a model belonging to the final generation of Hindustan Ambassadors (which were based on the design of the British Morris Oxford).
Sanchi is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Buddhist stupas here mostly date back to the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. We were very impressed by the views of the massive Great Stupa as we walked up to the site.
The photo at the top of this piece shows the same dome from a different angle, as does the one below.
The four gateways are richly decorated with scenes from the life of Buddha as well as other tales. Having a good guide along, which we did, is essential here – although there is a lot to take in. The photo below shows one of the few stand-alone sculptures on the site.
The next picture shows an area to the side of the main stupa. There are several small ones there, as well as a larger one, referred to as Stupa No.3.
The site contains a large number of domes and other monuments (temples and monasteries). The view in the next photo is from the Great Stupa towards the remains of a monastery.
Further down the hill in the same direction is Stupa No.2, which has no gateways. However, some of the reliefs on its balustrade are reckoned to be among the oldest stupa decorations in existence anywhere.
We spent quite a bit of time wandering around the site and on a few occasions stumbled across some unexpected finds – such as the remains of the temple shown in the next shot.
Near the site’s exit is a small museum. It is not exactly thrilling, but we found it interesting to see detailed accounts of the restoration work on the stupas. Most of it was undertaken in the second decade of the 20th century.
As I pointed out at the beginning, the area around Bhopal contains not just one, but two UNESCO World Heritage sites. We still had the second one on our agenda for the day. It is called Bhimbetka, or, to give it its full official title, the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka. The shelters contain rock paintings, many dating back to the Mesolithic period, i.e. to between 8000BC and 5000BC.
The shelters were discovered in the 1950s. The early paintings are largely of animals, but there are also some scenes depicting daily life.
The later paintings often involve battle scenes.
Whilst some of the images were little more than child-like scribblings, we were quite surprised how realistically some things, such as galloping horses, had sometimes been portrayed.
To be continued with Pt.4: Mandu
