Nagpur Part I: Ramtek and Ambala

Road trip! Friday after studying a friend mentioned to me that Monday was a holiday because of the close of Navratri, the nine day festival, and Dussahra. Dussahra is also an important day for my research. I had planned to visit Nagpur around 14 October, but hadn't accounted for the use of the Muharat calendar instead of the Roman calendar in fixing these dates. 24 hours after this news I was on the bus to Nagpur to stay for three days!

Sunday I arrived around 9 am, after a 16 hour bus ride that wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I guess my rail travel training from my time in Europe has stayed with me. After checking into the Skylark Hotel, I set off to the local bus station for another 90 minute ride.to Ramtek. On the way I could see tents being set up in preparation for Monday, and passed a beautiful Gurdwara, a Sikh temple.

A short autorickshaw ride took me to the top of the hill, where the Ramtek temples were built in the 15th century to honour Ram, an important and widely worshipped avatar or incarnation of Vishnu. “So the clues are ‘key’ and ‘mon.’ . . . Keymon? . . . No, monkey! . . . Coincidence? I think not.” No, the monkeys are not friendly, but instead rather aggressive, and they will steal your prasad, the offerings made to the deity, and the items which are returned after the deity has made them holy.

At the top of the temple complex I did puja, prayer which includes offering any combination of flowers, food, powder, and money. Also, I began my encounterwith celebrity status. While I was in Nagpur and the surrounding area, people took my photo, asked to be in a photo with me, or asked me to take their photo. As a foreigner, I was an oddity, especially because families travel from smaller towns all over Maharashtra for these events.

From the temple I walked halfway down the hill to Ambala Tank, which is surrounded by medieval temples. Many of these beautiful temples are no longer in active use, but they are protected by Maharashtrian law. Village life goes on around them. The photo with the small altar with Ganesh and a Shiv lingam, a symbolic representation of Shiva, is carefully arranged to hide women bathing at the ghats, the steps down into the water.

Thus began my immersion in Hindi for three days. When my Hindi is better than the English of the people around me, it makes for really good practice.






I took a lot of photos. I’m not kidding. Every evening I was in Nagpur I had to visit an internet café to transfer my photos onto my USB drive because I only have a 512 MB memory card right now. If you’d like to see more of my favourites, although they didn’t make the cut for the blog, you can find them on my Facebook page.

But I'm not done yet! Come back in a day or two and I'll post another blog update on my trip to Nagpur!