Bush camping and a whole lot of Caves

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We left Udaipur early (as always) and headed south, the next 4 nights would be spent camping, 3 of these in the wild. Despite the early start I made sure to get up in time to take a shower as I was all too aware that I would be smelling and feeling pretty savage after 4 days without a shower. We covered a decent distance today crossing from the dry and mostly flat deserts of Rajasthan into the soaring valleys of Uttar Pradesh, many of these lush and green (albeit because of manmade irrigation). The change in scenery across a relatively small timeframe was dramatic as was the rise in temperature and for the first time on the tour my very white bean poles were exposed to the Indian sun (and very happy they were about it too).

We setup camp a few miles outside of a very rural village among golden semi-arid rolling hills. Ancient abandoned and ruined temples littered the landscape much as tin mines do at home in Cornwall. It was a pretty special place to camp especially with the sun setting spectacularly over the hills. After many days in busy Indian cities and on the death trap Indian roads it was nice to be somewhere with a little peace and quiet and well off the tourist trail. I love bush camping (when it’s warm anyway) especially in a group. The beautiful setting, campfire and circular seating pattern help to create a relaxed atmosphere where conversation, beer drinking and friendships flourish. It always feels really special and a real privilege to be camping in a remote place most people would never see. Another privilege of bush camping is bush toileting aka digging your own toilet with a spade. I was lucky enough to get to bush poop on my first night, ohh what a privilege! Saying that it beat using most of the squalid squat toilets we stopped at throughout the day. We all noticed this evening (and in the day) that the temperature was significantly higher, and about bloody time too, I didn’t come to India to get cold!!! I slept well tonight and would continue to do so for the next few days.

Over the following few days we bush camped by a lake and also on the edge of a farm. We also visited enroute the ancient ruined city of Mandu, previously home to the pleasure loving Governor of Malwa who kept a Harem of 200 ladies! The city was interesting however without a guide there was little to keep us here for long and by this point we were all feeling a little jaded with the inevitable fort and temple overload. In the following two days we visited respectively both the Ajanta and Ellora caves. The Ajanta caves contain Buddhist monasteries, temples, sculptures and frescoes, some dating back to 200BC. The whole site is huge and took around 1000 years to complete, you can believe this when you consider they were using just a basic chisel and hammer to carve out the vast network of caves. The site was abandoned in 600ad and slowly overtime buried underground and forgotten until being discovered by a British hunting party in 1819, after which work began to excavate the site. Fortunately the burial of the site for over 1,200 years has helped preserve the frescoes and sculptors inside the caves. Of particular interest is a beautiful 200ad picture of Buddha which is painted in 3d as opposed to the usual 2d artwork of the time. Our guide compared the quality of the work to the Mona Lisa although I wasn’t convinced by this comparison. While wondering the caves I noticed how disgusting we smelt and how feral we looked, it had been 3 days without a shower and in the humid heat things were starting to get pretty bad. That evening, I along with several others in the group found a tap and hand basin and used it to wash ourselves as best we could, tomorrow was shower day, excitement was in the air. The following day we visited the Ellora caves which were great, but after you have seen a life times worth of caves the day before they were sadly not particularly interesting. More exciting and enjoyable was our free afternoon and our first opportunity for many days to have a shower! After probably the best shower ever (or so it felt, I spent the day lazing around in the sun sleeping and reading, bliss.

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