Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

To conclude, what made our trip in quite untraveled Madhya Pradesh – who has heard of it? – very pleasant is that we discovered I could actually speak Hindi! 

I started by throwing in a few words to the herd of rickshaw wallahs jumping on us at Gwalior train station. Till there nothing too unusual… But then in the car, while the driver was chatting restlessly to impress us with his tourist guide skills, both my parents, in turn, told me one: “I don’t know what is happening I understand less and less English?” and the other: “They really have a strong accent in Madhya Pradesh don’t they? I don’t understand a word he says.” The driver had been going on and on in Hindi and I had been ‘ha-ha-ing” all along to encourage him! So here I was, able to kind of understand Hindi!! (With the valuable help of the English words sliding in here and there ;) ) 

And guess what? We had a very chatty driver the day we spent 10 hours in the car… Ah, dear Ravi, who hated Muslims and truck drivers, and who almost threw us in a river. He kept calling “Imli-ji” (“ji” being a mark of respect) to make sure he had my attention.

The ultimate was the lesson I got on how I should hurry up with my marriage and kid plans because if I waited more the age gap would be too big and all. My Hindi was not good enough to explain that in my case I can’t first fix a date and then look for a husband to fit in the plan… 

On a more serious note, throwing in some Hindi with everybody opened a lot of doors and got me a lot of nice smile!!  

Great trip!

 What a contrast between over busy Gwalior fort and the completely empty Orchha fort we visited the next day! With beautiful surroundings!! Full of flashy greenery due to the great monsoon we have been having this year! 

On the following Sunday we visited the Maheshwar fort and the ghats, both crawling with people. Which meant we had to pose on a hundred of pictures (see my previous post regarding this). So I learnt a lesson: if I travel in India and have to visit a touristy place on a Sunday or a bank holiday I should think of either going there very early or get a massage in the hotel… 

I had been told about Mandu (2 hours from Maheshwar) and was really looking forward to seeing it. And it was really nice! There is a lot to see, a lot of history and a lot of greenery as well. 

But Maheswar was the highlight of the trip. A place with an amazing vibe! And the hotel in the fort (Ahilya Fort) just added to the surprise: a friendly staff (even if they are really anti-Indian tourists (themselves being Indian)), a nice pool, a vegetable garden, hardly anybody, unlimited booze. Wow!!  

T

hey even arranged for the driver to kill a baby goat (by driving twice on it), escape, get chased by the bakri wallah (goat keeper) who had traded his bull cart for a bike (kinda faster), be part of village fight with guys surrounding the car, reach the police station, pay off the bakri walla (1500 rupees) and the police walla (1000 rupees) to avoid a report, meet the MLA (some local political eminence) who saved the driver’s ass (so that he didn’t have to call the hotel for help and lose his job).

When I moved back to Mumbai in January I was dead on doing a road trip from Delhi with my best friend, like Thelma and Louise and all! 

Well, it would have been an I20 instead of a convertible and Madhya Pradesh instead of the American far-west in the background. Maybe not as glamorous but you do with what you have right?! Thelma and Louise IndianSamourai-style! 

Because of lack of time, unavaibility of Thelma, cold winter, cat to transport, bad states of the roads and all my Indian friends recommending against my road trip, I finally flew to Mumbai… 

But I did more or less the planned itinerary with my parents this summer and I have zero regret to have cancelled the road trip! My car would probably be good for a toss, and my back as well. That is if we had made it at all… 

5 hours to travel 250 kilometers from Gwalior to Orchha. On the good road. The bad road is only 125 kilometers but apparently too bad to be travelled. I can’t even imagine what the bad road is like after travelling the good road. The first part is full of holes which are not there in the second part (the new highway) but both are equally full of trucks, people, carts, cows and god knows what else… Total anarchy… 

Which made me even happier to have opted for train rides from Delhi to Gwalior (3 hours) and from Gwalior to Indore (overnight)! I hesitated a lot with a car drive for the whole trip… 

Gwalior appeared to me as a very busy city. But this may be due to the fact that we visited the fort on Independence day. It felt like the one million inhabitants of Gwalior had decided to do the same thing… We were constantly surrounded. It was even funny to see how fast a crowd would gather around us when we would move to another place in the fort… Unfortunately my GoPro had no more battery. 

After an hour or so my smile faded though. It was a very hot day (38 degrees) and I started suffocating.  

We found shelter in the Taj heritage hotel. Nice but soulless. So we fled back to our heritage hotel, the great Deo Bagh by Neemrana!