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Kumbhalgarh & Camping in Ranakpur Wildlife Sanctuary
We found ourselves exiting Udaipur by late morning and took a leisurely ride out to Kumbhalgarh, a large medieval Fort just north-east of the bustling hotel-town of Kewala. It came highly recommended by fellow travellers staying at Nukkad guest house who had already embarked on the day-trip tour on offer. We passed through village settlements, and marvelled at how they still use bulls to haul around water wheels on a torturous looking circumferential exercise regime. Initially our naivety assumed this was for extraction of ground water for drinking, washing etc (as there are no river systems in the landscape); but on closer inspection of the low-lying bright green fields of new wheat and millet crops, it was obviously for irrigation within the dry valley plains. It suddenly became clear of how the wheel, or more accurately the circle is the most basic underlying form of all life, and on which life depends in many parallel examples. (Is this the effect that India is having on us per se or do we really need to put to rest "Zen and The Art of"...?).
Enjoying the slow progress up steep, twisting mountainous roads through the Aravali Hills in the full sun of the day, we pulled up to the impressive looking stone fort walls. A solitary, imposing reminder of man's presence within this wilderness country; evidently important enough to want a stronghold on, if not now then certainly back in 1443 when it's construction began. Entering the gates after parking up and freeing ourselves of the multiple layers which were slow-roasting us in the heat, we were pleasantly surprised with the various styles of sandstone carved temples inside the fort walls, dating from the 1450s. Also inside were a couple of restaurants and a small hotel. We proceeded up the ramps to view the interior of the Fort and the ruins of the old palace, up to the newer two-storey Badal Mahal palace dating from 1855, which once stood proudly defending its position here against the vacant landscape. The Fort also interestingly plays host to the Palace of Queen Jhali - Maharana Pratap's birth place. The mustachioed man in the terrible paintings within the City Palace museum in Udaipur. We stopped to watch a small lizard and chat to some passers by as an old lady requested rupees for no real reason, conveniently placing herself in a lonely courtyard halfway up. Cruelly shunning her, we continued up to take in the hilly views from all directions. On the way down, school students were posted in small groups all around, chatting and laughing, pretending to make sketches of their historic surroundings they were obviously not particularly interested in.
Back into the heat we rode on and on, for a good 40 minutes before arriving in a town which was possibly the same one as before, approached from a different direction. We pondered if we had just made a huge zig zag loop around to our original location or whether the towns were almost identical. Ordinarily we would have been slightly put out by this fact, but the beauty of it was that it really made no difference; our tour had been brilliant following sweeping curves and sharp corners traversing the mountain ranges, passing through the unspoilt natural beauty of the back-to-back National parks and small inhabited spots with speckles of striking bright green and yellow fields against a hard brown scrubby backdrop. Adam and Christian were just loving the winding roads through the hills. We rested on the corner of a large bend and ate bananas, knowing that Ranakpur was just around the corner as we could see it in the valley below.
We arrived in Ranakpur as the light was growing softer around 4:50pm, after what had been the most enjoyable riding to date. Informed there was only ten minutes until closing time we realised that we would have to wait until sunrise to see the Jain Temples. We looked for somewhere to have dinner before sunset. We had decided to embark on some bush camping on this occasion as Ranakpur itself was quite small, lacked reasonably priced accommodation, and didn't offer the natural experience we were craving. We ate at the only hotel we had passed since the temple entrance, went inside the large deserted residence and ordered Veg Thalis. The restaurant was clean and tidy but had the appearance of having had been used for lunch a few weeks before and the tables not re-set.
It took us about an hour to scout around for a suitable camping spot, out of plain view of the road. Immediately back from the road we were confronted with some 'live'park wildlife, as two large Samba Deer eyed us and the motorbikes curiously, motionless from the thin treeline, only a few metres away. Finally we selected a position which was relatively flat, and although not completely secluded (as we were passed by several farmers ushering their stock back to their homes for the night within a few minutes) we were out of sight and in a flat clearing. Further into the parkland and just behind us was a lake which had been dammed at the far end. We scurried around for suitable firewood, but anything dry or large had already been looted long ago by the locals, and judging by the spindly greenwood and the hacked up stems and trunks of new growth, firewood was in low supply and high demand. Adam, Captain Campfire, had constructed a fire-ring with large rocks whilst Chris erected his 4-man pitch-roof yellow tent. Lana meanwhile, having had enough of being scratched by thorns trying to untangle dry tree branches lying around, wandered down to the Lake, returning with a cow's skull, horns still intact, their green and red paint now flaking off from exposure to the elements. We put it at the front of the tent to deter potential stampeding mammals in the night!
Just as the fire was beginning to crackle away nicely in the dark, our head lamps and flames were spotted from the roadside and somebody was shouting to us things we didn't understand. Chris began to panic (haunted by his previous camping attempts in India) that we had been spotted and now locals from all surrounding villages would flock upon us at all hours of the night with their persistent 'hello? Hello? Where you coming from? What is your name?' harassment.The invisible figure approached slowly with his own torch. By the fire light we could see that it was somebody from the same hotel we had eaten at earlier. We made out that he was telling us we were not permitted to camp here as it was a wildlife park. After a couple of minutes we determined that now the tent was up we could stay but we would need to extinguish our fire. He warned us that the animals come to the lake to drink. We're not sure if this included any dangerous breeds which may be tempted by juicy human flesh...With little else to do; we squeezed into the tent and watched a gory, B-grade Rodriguez movie which kept sticking for some unknown reason. Getting bored of this we gave it up, Lana and Adam going top and tails in attempt for more room, we lay like tinned sardines and listened to the growling, barking and grunting of the rather large sounding animal activity outside of the tent. Suddenly feeling concern towards the possibilities of wandering, ill-tempered wild elephants, we determined that they would be the most dangerous threat to our current trapped bait demise...
Morning came, and other than some nudging from pigs or deer in the night we were unscathed. We packed up swiftly, tidied the fire away and headed back to the bitumen. Riding further along the road we soon realised that we hadn't even reached Ranakpur town site! We pulled up for some breakfast at a small snack-shop which already had a pot of chai on the go and was frying up fresh samosas. We ate hot samosas, drank lots of tea, and sampled a couple of sweet balls from the cabinet and a rice and spice dish which was being served out to gathering locals on small card plates with pleated edges and lined with shiny silver surface to retain the heat. Moving on shortly after we agreed to ride together til the highway where we would need to re-fuel and we would then part ways; Chris heading south, aiming for Goa and ultimately even further south around to Chennai, from where he would be able to send his bike on a cargo ship across to South East Asia. We went through several towns, some quite large and not even named on our maps, then hit the crossroads. We pulled in to a fuel station and took a final, parting photograph; our bikes positioned in opposite directions and us standing between and sitting on the backs, much to the amusement of the fuel station attendants and the crowd of around 25 people who had seemingly come out of nowhere! Saying final goodbyes wasn't particularly sad as we somehow know our paths are likely to cross somewhere, sometime in the future.
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