Delhi -> Palitana – Experiences are lined up one after the other

8. December 2024

 

 

To start with the cliffhanger from the previous blog post: the train arrived too early! Much too early! 20 minutes! I’m sure Deutsche Bahn just looks stupid! We travelled 12 hours (minus 20 minutes) from Delhi to Ahmedabad. It was my first time travelling in 2nd class, so only 2 couches on top of each other instead of 3. Dinner was included and breakfast too. In the middle of the night there was a big commotion in my ‘compartment’ with new travellers with an extreme amount of luggage and some kind of chaos in the berths, which was eventually sorted out again and everyone dozed off afterwards.

 

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The journey ended at an outstation of Ahmedabad. The good thing about it: it wasn’t that big. Everyone scurried out in confusion, as we were much too early. I wasn’t the only one who had to wait for the people picking us up.

 

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And then my travelling companion for the next few days came scurrying along. It was Raghu, an agency partner of Diamir, passionate about tigers & co, photography and much more. He actually wanted to invite me for the whole trip, but I only accepted the first half. I didn’t realise that he would actually turn up here himself and travel with me, but all the better! We started to get to know each other a bit and travelled through modern Ahmedabad and then later through typical – yes, what is that? Lots of undergrowth and water or damp patches.

 

road

 

Landscape next to the road

 

And next to this landscape were a few shops selling second-hand clothes from western industrialised countries for very little money.

 

biggest Shop

 

The clothes are just sorted into piles

 

and there were also soft toys

 

Our destination was Palitana, which is basically the pilgrimage capital of the Jains. And so, or for whatever reason, there are hardly any western tourists there. It seemed to me that I was actually the only one there at the time. When they do come in an organised way, they stay at Vijay Vilas – a hard-to-find old-established country estate of a prince from generations ago, where a great-great-granddaughter or so now resides with her son – and rent out 6 rooms. I liked it straight away, I love these old buildings, especially in the Indian countryside. There wasn’t much money for renovations, but the rooms were well equipped. Mine only had these three round holes as windows, but it’s amazing with the light. When I opened the door, I always thought I had forgotten to switch off the light. That’s how bright it was.

 

from the back

 

room

 

Veranda

 

living room

 

landlady

 

What I also really liked there was the food. There were always lots of dishes, very unspicy and very tasty.

 

lunch

 

dinner

 

Raghu aat hte entrance

 

Incidentally, this is also Raghu’s first time in Palitana, so he explored it just as much as I did. Yes, and then we set off on our first sightseeing tour. I’ll write a bit more about Jainism in the next blog post, as I need a bit more peace and quiet than I have at the moment. Anyway, there are around 1500 Jain temples in the area (counting the temples in a building complex individually), most of them on hilltops. We travelled to the first one by car.

 

view on landscape

 

view on pieces of temple

 

Temple

 

It turned out to be a little difficult. Large cameras are not allowed, but mobile phones are. But not then, at least not to take photos with. We would be monitored by cameras (CCTV)! But there weren’t any, there were human CCTVs chasing us. The guide (a nice young ‘guide’ who wants to become a bigger one) really wanted to take some pictures. Raghu too. And so did I – it looks so pretty and I don’t really understand why you’re not allowed. And so, as well as admiring the grounds, we were also very busy trying to get some pictures and wondering what the photo ban was all about. And as we simply couldn’t think of a good reason (someone thinks they might not want to become an Instagram hotspot), we now have the pictures to look at:

 

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It was also possible to take a few officially pictures at the entrance and from the outside:

 

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Incidentally, the accommodation was a little out of the way in the countryside and the town was completely confusing with the roads (even google couldn’t keep up with all the roadworks) and so we kept driving back and forth and forth and back, arguing our heads off about which of the small alleyways or dirt tracks would lead to success.

 

Unfortunately, we were too late for an aarti at a temple, everything was already streaming away. The evening market was not so interesting, but there was still a shop famous for local sweets. And next door, a man was making large donation boxes for temples.

 

manufacturer

 

And so I went to bed very satisfied and tired. The next morning we wanted to get up very early and experience some great new adventures!