The sessions of the conference running today were about leadership, and I had to decide whether to attend or to go touring in the Gujarati countryside. I suppose some would say you can always learn more about leadership, but I wasn’t inspired for today to be the day for me to do that. I enthusiastically took off to tour a World Heritage site called Pavadgarh, about a 1 hour drive from Vadodara.
The part of Gujarat where we are is very flat and basically looks sort of like marshlands or jungle floodplains. But oddly enough, as you approach Pavadgarh, there is this giant cliff that rises up from the plains, and we were headed for its peak. You can hire a rickety old SUV to bring you up the steep cliffside most of the way through a series of hair-raising switchbacks, but many intrepid pilgrims are hiking all the way up this thing. The most entertaining thing about those traveling on foot was that they were organized into small bands of people, typically the majority of them wearing matching red, pink, or orange headscarves, or even matching T-shirts too. Each ‘team’ usually carried a flag or a banner, basically just homemade from scraps of bright fabric and metallic bric-a-brac. Some of the most elaborate teams even had these musical carts with them, that had drums attached and a bullhorn so that their music was amplified around them. The teams would be singing and cheering as they hiked their way up, and would wave and cheer harder as we passed by.
When we reached the top of Pavadgarh, there were further crowds of people and a meandering walkway through an old bazaar where people were selling trinkets for the pilgrimage like headbands and pictures of gods and goddesses. This place was full of oddities and points of interest, for example, as we turned a corner, a herd of donkeys decorated with orange paint stampeded by. Yes, you heard me right, they were donkeys painted orange, although later my fellow traveler joked that perhaps they were tigers in disguise. You can either hike up the stairs, a lengthy climb, or take something called “The Ropeway of the Gods”, which is a cable car to the peak. I can testify that only the most serious of hikers should undertake the stair pathway. It is lined with kilometers worth of further hawkers and souvenir stands, which is sort of impressive. We hopped on the cable car and were treated to lovely views across the Gujarati countryside of lakes and fields. The cliffs of the mountain were lined with ruins in various stages of decay, even ruins that looked basically new. There were also mini-altars and shrines all the way up. I was blissfully happy as we climbed to find that no one on this mountain seemed to speak any English whatsoever, so if they were trying to harass me, sell to me, beg from me, I don’t know, because we couldn’t understand each other. It was wonderful. I did notice that the few English words I heard came from beggars, such as ‘look!’ (pointing at stump where leg should be) and ‘hello!!’ (thrusting bowl into tourist’s chest).
Most of the shops sold Hindu trinkets and offerings to bring to the temple such as coconuts, small loaves and bags of sweets. My favorite shops, though, were these funny little ‘photo booth’ shops. The photo booth shops were just empty rooms with wall coverings made to look like mountainous scenery, with representations of people and gods on them as well, and you would get your photo taken in front of these backgrounds. Most of these shops also had large props you could put in the photos, specifically large stuffed tigers and toy motorcycles you could sit on. I was dying to get my photo taken with the giant stuffed tiger (preferably with both of us astride a toy motorcycle), but was too shy to do so and settled for taking a surreptitious photo of the booth. One of the booths had a life-sized stuffed llama.
We eventually processed up to nearly the top of the mountain, where a very steep stone staircase led to the temple itself. There was a pile of shoes by the base of the stairs, which gave my less-traveled companions pause. I was wearing a junk pair of flip flops that I kicked off, but some were wearing expensive shoes like Tevas and Merrells. They continued on. We climbed the staircase, sweating and puffing, past little carvings of gods that each had red ink on their foreheads. We finally reached the temple and queued to reach the altar. As we waited in the queue, banshee screams started coming from inside the temple. For a moment, I almost sprang ahead shouting ‘do you need a doctor?!’ but I didn’t, based on two things, #1, no one else was moving or looked concerned, clueing me in that this might be some cultural phenomenon. #2, I realized that to some extent, I’ve heard enough screaming in the ER that I can tell a hysterical scream from a true scream of pain or distress, and this sounded like a hysterical scream. My suspicion was confirmed when a woman lurched out of the temple and pretended to faint into a policeman’s arms, waving her arms wildly. There was a 13 year old girl next to me from our group, who looked scared and said ‘did that woman just pass out?’ I said ‘no, she is just being dramatic. Don’t worry.’ And surely enough, the woman picked herself up and walked out, having been dispossessed of the spirit.
A few minutes later, more screams came from behind me. I looked in their direction, and realized the screams were being made at members of our group. “Shoes!! No shoes!! No shoes!!” Angry pointing and gesturing by the crowd accompanied the screams. Luckily, I had a little cloth reusable bag inside my handbag, and we hid all the shoes inside this, although much glaring continued to ensue. As we processed through, a girl approached and said in surprisingly good English: “I am sorry, it is not my place to say things to you, but please do not ever bring shoes into a holy temple again.” We had become very unpopular visitors.
Inside the temple was an altar where two men were busily collecting offerings. They would touch some of the items, like the small loaves, to the temple wall. The strangest aspect of this little white stone temple was that just above the altar was a large digital clock face that was meant to display the time and date. The time was mildly incorrect, but the date read “1, 1, 2000”. Curiouser and curiouser…
As you exited the temple, the actual external walls of the stone building were thick with red, pink, and orange powdery vegetable dye, like the dye was actually seeping out from the walls. Some women had small jars or pieces of paper that they were collecting this powder into and taking it with them. Others, like me, just pressed their finger into it and touched our neighbor on the forehead. It’s good luck, or so I am told. I noticed that as you passed down the stairs, there was a little cave in the rock you could peek into, and inside the crevice, a pair of eyes were painted onto the back wall, and several small offerings had been pushed into the cave. These eyes were apparent in a number of locations in and around the temple, and prompted offerings wherever they were found. I assumed that the message was something like, god is watching you, so you’d better be good. But that may be just my wacky Western Christianized viewpoint of it.
We drove home and my companions joked most of the way back about how the temple visit was a hot, tiring ordeal and not worth seeing, but I found myself quite enamored of this strange place and happy with the journey.
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