Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
The Tungabhadra flows
between Hampi and Anegundi, and makes her presence felt all over the place.
That the land is so fertile even months after the rains is evidently due to
her, and the fact that even in January there is enough water is a sight which
makes us smile.
We crossed the river by
a coracle to get to the Navabrindavanam…
Our coracle driver was
Ramzan Amma, a Muslim woman who earned her living by ferrying people to and
fro, mainly to Navabrindavanam!
A dove peered at us as
we went past!
And while the river bank
on the Hampi side had been covered by sand,
we found a rocky bed on the other
side…. Covered with potholes! I had never seen potholes on riverbanks before
Nighoj, and was really surprised to see more here!
And then we took a motorboat
to get to the main portion of Anegundi to visit the other places…..
We expected to see many
birds at the Daroji Bear wildlife Sanctuary, but, in fact, we saw more while
walking around Anegundi, and every time we saw a bird, I realized that we were
on the banks of the Tungabhadra. It started with this purple heron we saw on
the river…..It stood on the rock in the middle of the river, oblivious of the
crowded motorboat chugging its way down the river….
I was able to take a
couple of photos before the rest of my co-passengers became aware of the bird
and started pointing the bird out and making a ruckus. The bird was probably
disgusted, and flew away…
But we saw it again,
and this time, it was
joined by a Little Cormorant…
Later, when we gingerly
walked across a makeshift bridge made of ancient pillars laid out across a
stream diverging from the river, we spotted this Pied Kingfisher….
Unfortunately this is all my poor camera could do….
A dove posed for us….
As, for the first time,
did a Little Green Bee Eater!
We did see more birds,
but unfortunately, not close enough to click!
We took a coracle to
get back to Hampi,and this time, Samhith
got to help while the coracle was being emptied of the water which had
collected!
Interestingly, all the
coracle drivers on the Anegundi side were women, and those on the Hampi side
were men! Each brought one load of people to the other side and went back
empty, even if there were many people waiting for a ride! When we asked why, we
were told that there were two groups of people running the coracles, and this
was the arrangement they had agreed on, so that they could both survive!
I was interested to see
that most of these coracle drivers were women (see the second pic in the post),
and they were as capable of handling the boats filled to capacity, as the men.
In fact, they were much more efficient, better at calculations, and got into
lesser arguments with the passengers than the men! Oh yes, and they were a lot
more united too! When one of the women refused to take us to a particular
dropping point, all the other women ganged up and refused to ferry us there! The
lone male driver at the moment dithered, but he finally gave up! We had no
choice but to go the way the majority wanted to!
The concept of women drivers
seems to work well, since it gives them something to do while the men are at
work, and it also adds to the income. The fact that it is a viable prospect is
evident from the new project the ASI is trying out at the Vitthala Temple.
Electric cars ferry passengers from the parking area to the temple and back,
and all these vehicles are driven by women!
It was at least a positive
note to look back on, as we readied to take our leave of Hampi and Anegundi!
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