Mandu is a small country town (population of 10 thousand) which is built inside the ruins of an old city. It's so amazingly quiet in comparison with the cities. The only noise at night was the gentle hum of crickets. Blue skies and grass; you forget the colour of green healthy grass after a week of India cities where nothing seems to grow.
I can't begin to convey the extent of my pleasure with the fresh mountain air. One of the true environmental tragedies of India is their way of disposing of litter. During the morning there are street cleaners which sweep all the rubbish on the streets into piles, then light it. The piles are mainly plastic which smolders like something dieing, in the process emitting clouds of the vilest pollution. It's one of the first smells that greets you in the morning. It was rare to see rubbish being burnt in Mandu, although it is definitely happening evident when we found the hotel staff burning a huge pile of it.
The town itself is a bit 'ho-hum' if you'll have it. Only one restaurant and one snack bar, which is actually a good thing as it makes your choices easy. What makes the town exciting is the mix of ancient and current. From the chai stand you can see the small selection of shops to the left and a giant Afghan place and tomb to the right. Amazing contrast.
As far as sight seeing goes there is the usual bunch of temple things to visit; more 'Arabian Nights' this time. The cool bit was you could hire bicycles for 20rp a day. Awesome as. Indian bikes are about as inefficient as they come making level terrain a struggle. Still, it made for a great ride.
Now we're at Ujjain, another town full of ghats and religious fanatics. Has a peculiarly large amount of ice cream stalls (four in a row in one place) and no restaurants. We wandered around for thirty minutes before finding any real food. Suppose people must eat lots of ice cream here. Lots.
All for now.
The view from the top. You can see the smog, which is almost nothing in comparison with the cities.
Typical Mandu scenery, with people farming in fields around old temple ruins.
The ruined temple complex. There are people living about 100 metres from where I took this photo.
3 comments:
Happy birthday dear Katie - Happy Birthday tooooo Yoooooo .....
Were you aware of the following Ujjain trivia while you were counting the number of icecream vendors or steps of the ghat?
"In the 6th and 7th centuries, Ujjain was a major centre of mathematical and astronomical research. The famous mathematicians who worked there included: Brahmagupta, whose book Brahmasphutasiddhanta was responsible for spreading the use of zero, negative numbers and the positional number system to Arabia and Cambodia; Varahamihira, who was the first to discover many trigonometric identities; and Bhaskaracharya, or Bhaskara II, whose book Lilavati broke new ground in many areas of mathematics." Big Monster Hug
I'm quite sure Nick in fact DID know that little piece of trivia considering the fact that he is in fact a MATHAMAGICIAN.
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