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TRIP UPDATE - 2 (December 10-16)
GOA ONWARDS UPTO AURANGABAD
December 10, 2006, Balli (Goa) to Pune
It was a long 550 km ride from Balli, Goa to Pune, Maharashtra. We started off at 6.30 am and rode continuously for five hours to reach Humrut from where we turned off to the state highway 116 towards Kolhapur. The narrow two lane road cut through one of the most scenic terrains we had travelled thus far. Therefore the 110 km distance to Kolhapur from Humrut via Phonda Ghat and Radhanagari Dam was very relaxing. It took us through virgin forests, jungles and mountains where we sighted some unusually colourful avian species.
From Kolhapur to Pune it was a straight and swift ride down the six-lane super smooth and busy NH-4 newly built (2003-04) as part of the Golden Quadrilateral project. For the first time we throttled our bikes to over 95-105 km per hour to reach Pune by 7 p.m. Our hosts Mr. & Mrs. N. Abhayankar were waiting for us with hot dinner. We thankfully partook in the meal and slept soundly, tired after a long ride of 550 km.
 
Phonda Ghat Vistas - quiet and tranquil environs
December 11, 2006, Pune
Our first priority was to leave our bikes for servicing at Century TVS, one of the oldest TVS dealers in Maharashtra. Special thanks are due to Mr.Patel of Century TVS for sponsoring two full tanks of pertrol for our tour After leaving the bikes we called up Tejaswi (Teju), a student of the Symbiosis Law College. Teju had organised a small informal meeting at Open Space the premises of an NGO which is working towards bringing about social change among farming community of Maharashtra – recently in the news for mass suicides. About 15 socially conscious students barraged us with questions about the importance of Equal Education for All, how it can be achieved and how our mission will help get closer to the goal. “Who in your opinion is responsible for this immense gap in education in our country? Is it the government? Or the people? What is the government doing to help your mission?” were some of the common questions. At the end of the session each of the 15 students took a solemn oath that they would teach at least one illiterate adult the three Rs of learning aka reading, writing and arithmetic. I would say even if one of them achieves that, our mission statement for this tour is successful
December 12 & 13, 2006. Pune-Bhimashankar-Pune
December 12 was spent rather wastefully, we first picked up our bikes which were serviced very well and then met up with some old friends and my EducationWorld colleague Michael Gonsalves and spent nearly half a day discussing about our tour, journalism, education scenario in India as compared to other countries etc. Michael filed a good story about our tour in the media and the story has since been published on several online newsportals and in Gulf Times, Qatar. Michael's wife Pricilla prepared a splended lunch (actually feast), after which we left to meet up with Teju and her friends again. Nothing much was accomplished apart from catching up with friends and checking mail etc. We went back home hoping that the documents we were supposed to receive from Bangalore would have arrived but it was frustrating to note that none of them had arrivced. We had to stay put one more day in Pune, it was too bad.
December 13, started rather frustratingly, we were going to be held up in Pune for one more day because the documents hadn't arrived from Bangalore and we were already running behind schedule by over 4 days. We decided to make the best of the day by riding to BhimaShankar temple about 135 km away. Tucked away in the heart of the BhimaShankar wildlife Sanctuary, this ancient Shiva temple is revered as one of the 12 Jyothirlinga shrines in the country.
The Pune-Nashik road off which the shrine is located is perhaps one of the busiest roads out of Pune. After what Seemed like eternity crawling on a single gear we finally came to Khed Ghat, a stretch of about 12 km uphill road which snakes through lush green protected forests, from here on our progress was much faster and soon we deftly negotiated the 22 KM steep downhill Avasari ghat and reached the crossing where we had to turn off the highway into a small, narrow and potholed trail which took or though countryside, forests, river basins while providing panoramic vistas all the way to the temple.
The road climbs up and down different mountains and we also saw a azure lake far away in a vallay down below. The villages we passed depicted the typical picture of the suicide ridden farming community of Maharashtra, cotton is popularly grown in this part of the state, as also sugarcane and sunflower. Some part of the forest are nothing but vast grasslands with golden coloured grass swaying with the breeze. It was a pleasant vista to see a black road running between two vast and seemingly unending golden grass patches.
 
Views enroute to Bhimashankar temple
We reached the temple at about 2.00 PM. The ancient black granite building is an attractive work of art. Each pillar has attractive relief images as also the entrance arches and ever see roof panel is attractively designed and appears like or independent work of art, with its circular and floral motifs. In the centre of the outer courtyard is installed a beautifully executed sculpture of a tortise. An attractive stone sculpted lamp stand in which a large number of oil lamps could be lit up at a time grabbed our attention. Another interesting and rather controversial feature outside the temple is a large bell made of 5-metal alloy with a date 1729 embossed along with a clear cross. It left me wondering what a church bell was doing in front of a temple? How it landed up over there and how come no Secularist has said that this was discovered and built by the British and hence the bell with a cross in front of the temple. I am personally interested to know more about the history of how the bell ended up there. We spent couple of hours in the quiet natural surroundings of the Bhimashankar sanctuary and returned to Pune late evening and were glad to know that our long awaited documents had arrived. we immediately packed up and prepared for our onward journey towards Shirdi and Aurangabad.
 
Bhimashankar temple views
December 14, 2006. Pune-Shanishingnapur-Shirdi
We had a long way to go and lot of ground to cover so we started riding by 7.45 am basically to avoid Pune city traffic. But the Pune-Ahmednagar road (SH-50 aka Nagar road) was not so empty as we expected. After about 30-mins we emerged into the open highway and gunned our steeds towards Ahmednagar from where we had to detour to ShaniShingnapur, Shirdi and if possible reach Nashik for the night halt.
Our first stop was at a small village Supa (pop. 5,500) where we visited the local government school. The children and teachers at the school weren't even open to the idea of 'Equal Education for all'. "How is this possible when each state in India is different and education should teach children about their immediate surroundings," asked one of the teachers. "Why should our children study what people in Jammu & Kashmir are studying?" asked another. It was a long session when we explained the concept of 'Equal Education' in the respect of quality of content and whatever children learn should be comparable with elsewhere in the world. At last the teachers seemed convinced and said that they would study books of national boards and make their children equally prepared for the future.
Our next stop was at Ahmednagar where we couldn't visit any school because we arrived at 1.00 pm when most schools were closing for the day. We rode a further 35km and took a left turn at Ghodegaon towards Shanishingnapur, a small village in which none of the houses, shops, business establishments have doors. Common belief is that the local deity Lord Shani protects everything and the people of the village are frighteningly honest and don't steal. According to some villagers there has not been a single theft or burglary reported from the village thus far. In the heart of the village is a vast sprawling temple dedicated to Lord Shani. Surprisingly there is no priest in the temple.
 
Shani temple at Shanishingnapur
Anyone who wishes to do pooja directly to the idol can do so after having a bath and wearing a saffron cloth. But all said and done about the honesty of the people one has to be careful with the stores around the temple. These little shops sell all kinds of pooja items at notoriously high prices (for example 100 gm of mustard oil is sold for Rs.25, a small string of flowers for Rs.20 etc) and one has to be careful not to be lured into their trap. Some good things happening out there are a free school being promoted by the temple trust for village children by the earnings of the temple, every visitor is provided free meals etc. The best part of our visit to Shanishingnapur however was the array of landscapes we got to witness once we turned off the highway towards the temple town. We passed through dry barren black soil belts, fields with golden sunflower blossoms, a quiet flowing river, several gurgling streams, massive hills etc. It is best to visit this locale during winter as the climate gets highly inhospitable during summer with mercury climbing to 44 deg C.
We forged ahead towards Shirdi on a very bad and highly damaged state highway. It is a toll road (Rs.10-50), but it is far worse than even a village road. Our average speed dropped to just 30 km per hour. Being a connecting road between two important pilgrim centres Shanishingnapur and Shirdi, the road should be good. There is tremendous business potential for hotels, restaurants and eateries, which have been well realised by the business savvy Maharashtrians, there's either a dhaba or a sugarcane juice outlet every 500 mts, not to mention the few fancy upmarket hotels. One thing unique about the sugarcane juice outlets on this road is that almost all of them are wooden mills driven by oxen, which walks round and round to crush the cane and derive juice. Stone age technology in use a mere 150 km from Pune city which is trying to beat Bangalore as the IT city of the country. The sad thing is the bull has to stand all day long even if there are no customers because the mill is yoked to its neck, where are the animal rights activists, who keep shouting themselves hoarse in big cities in front of TV cameras and journalists.
 
Ox driven sugarcane juice machine
Finally after a rough ride over the potholed and unrepaired road through dry and drab scenery we managed to pull into the town of Shirdi, famous for the Sai Baba temple, which receives an average of 15,000 visitors every day. The temple administration board has built up several guesthouses and staying places. We went there seeking a room to stay the night and the staff promptly refused. "We don't rent out rooms to bachelors. Our rooms are only for families," said the man at the reception rather curtly. Surprising I thought and despite all our explanations and requests he refused and asked us to sleep in the common hall, which was totally unacceptable. Unable to decide what to do we were thinking and suddenly a lady clad in white robes accosted us and told us to proceed about 5 km out of town towards Aurangabad to the Janglee Baba Ashram where they will give us rooms to stay. We thought we'd try our luck and went to the ashram where we were courteously received and a comfortable room was immediately allotted to us immediately. On coming to know about our mission and adventure the ashram administration even waived off the room rent.
The Janglee Baba Ashram is sited on a sprawling 45 acre green field property. Apart from spirituality, yoga and metaphysical studies the ashram also runs a CBSE fully-residential co-education free school for over 2,500 children. The school is funded by the income the ashram generates out of donations, room rent, agriculture etc. Children are given holistic education including sports coaching, yoga, mainstream Hindi or English medium education. Children of higher classes are given basic training in organic farming and teaching.
After settling down in the room and having had dinner at the ashram we proceeded to Shirdi again to visit the Sai Baba temple so that we could head towards Nashik first thing in the morning. Being a Thursday, the holy day for Sai Baba, the temple was full of people even at 10 pm. We got into the serpentine queue to go to the temple and after about 45 mins entered the sanctum of the temple just in time for the final Arathi. The arthi on thursday is an elaborate 45 minute ritual accompanied by chanting of hymns. It was an ethereal experience to witness the aarathi while the chanting reverberated all around. Feeling good we exited the temple only to find that someone had swiped my shoes left outside the temple in the stands. Anyway since we couldn't do much about it, we rode back to the Janglee Baba ashram.
December 15, 2006. Shirdi-Nashik-Aurangabad
The bumpy ride of the previous day took its toll. Being very tired we over slept and woke up only at about 8.30 am. After quickly freshening up and a quicker breakfast at the ashram kitchen we departed towards Nashik. For me it was all the more difficult because I was barefoot the cold winds really gnawed at my feet. It was difficult even to shift gears or apply the rear brake and hence I couldn't ride fast. So we settled to a steady 50 km per hour and reached Nashik by afternoon. The road was narrow and semi-smooth so the progress was anyway slow. All along the route we saw several makeshift shops selling sacks and sacks of onions, freshly harvested from fields. On enquiring we found that Onion, sugarcane and sunflower is the most frequently grown crops in the region. One of the most popular village level home industry is sugarcane juice extraction and selling on the roads. Each village had more than ten small tented juice centers selling sugar syrup.
Just 22 km before Nashik at Sinner village is a wonderful place named 'Gargoti - The mineral museum'. The museum established in April 2001 displays over 1,700 exhibits of various stones, crystals, minerals and native ores of various metals. It is the personal collection of K.C. Pandey, an entrepreneur. It reportedly took him over 30 years to put together the collection on display in the 10,000 sft fully aircontitioned museum. Classified into two galleries - the Deccan Plateau and the Prestige. The former displays some of the best zeolites and natural crystals while the latter displays rare mineral samples collected from across the world including rock samples from moon and mars. It is indeed a fantastic place for children to get exposure to the mystifying world of minerals and zeolites. The museum has been established to introduce and educate children and adults about the amazing formations of minerals and metals. I think the museum should be put on the annual scientific visit list of all schools. Entry to the museum costs Rs.100 per person but when the manager came to know about our mission, he said that for us no entry fee would be charged. We were thankful to him for recognising our efforts in the direction. A small souvenir shop attached to the museum sells some attractive natural rock formations and stone jewellery, the range is highly affordable and starts from a mere Rs.30 and there are pieces available for several thousand rupees too. WARNING: Don't take your girlfriend there, if you dare then be prepared to spend a lot of money in the souvenier shop. The stone jewellery for sale there is just irresistable. We saw a woman making her husband spend about Rs.5,500 in just half an hour....
 
Exhibits at Gargoti Museum in Sinner village
After spending about 2 hrs in Gargoti we sped on towards Nashik and reached there at about 3.00 pm. Our first stop at Nashik was at Ram Kund, sited on the banks of river Godavari. Since the city's sewage flows into the river the waters are quite filthy and one can see floating debris and garbage all over. There are several temples dedicated to the Mythological characters such as Hanumnan, Rama, Lakshman etc sited along the banks of the river. People were seen bathing, washing clothes and even drinking the same murky waters of the river. But the temples are very beautiful and ancient and display a high excellence of artistry and intricacy.
 
Nashik temples and pilgrim area
A little distance away is Sita Gupha, Panchavati and Jataayu's death place. Sitha Gupha is a small cave temple where Sitha lived during their 14-year exile. Panchavati means five banyan trees, planted around the Sitha gupha, according to local guides and priests by Lord Rama himself some few thousand years ago. But the trees look fairly young and healthy can't be that old. Anyway we had had enough of the city and pilgrim centers and we started off towards Aurangabad 185 km away on Maharashtra state highway 25 which was being re-surfaced and hence our progress was pretty slow. It took all our night riding skills to get to Aurangabad in one piece. It was a long journey and the road was not all that good. Moreover a cold wind had started blowing and despite our super heavy riding jackets we were feeling cold. We stopped at a wayside dhaba for dinner and reached Aurangabad at 10.30 pm. Luckily Dr.Anand Pandre had arranged for our accommodation at the guesthouse of Dr. Hedgewar Hospital and we retired for the night in the comfortable guesthouse.
December 16, 2006. Aurangabad local sight seeing
Got up and were getting ready to move out when Dr. Anant walked in to say hi to us and formally welcome us to Aurangabad. He elaborated that Dr. Hedgewar Hospital is a charitable institution and though it was promoted and manged by the Sangh Pariwar (RSS), it is very popular among the Muslim community which comprises the majority in the district. "The main idea behind our organisation (RSS) is to bring in social transformation and inculcate patriotism in every Indian citizen. This can't be achieved by alienating the minority communities. Hence at our hospital we are service oriented and we welcome anyone who comes here for treatment. We operate on a cost-to-cost basis and all our infrastructure has been built up by donations and grants. Moreover doctors and specialists work here for a subsistance salary and none of us have any private practice. This is how we can keep our operating costs low and provde best treatment at low costs even to the poorest of patients," said Dr. Pandre. Very true in fact Dr.Hedgewar Hospital is ranked among the best hospitals in the district and has some excellent treatment facilities.
We set out to explore the city and on the way we chanced upon Mahesh TVS the main dealer of Aurangabad and decided to walk in and say hello. The showroom incharge Mr. Vighnesh and Mr. Dhaval Gandhi were happy to meet us and extended a warm welcome. "We will organise a press conference for you, can you come in at about 2.00 pm?" asked Vighnesh. Not to miss an opportunity to promote our sponsors we said yes and quickly moved to finish city sight seeing. Local sights include the Bibi Ka Makbara aka Baby Taj, Panchukki or the water mill, 52 gates of the old city and the Aurangabad caves. Yes apart from Ajanta and Ellora caves (sited 33 and 106 km away), Aurangabad has its own series of 16 caves which are not very well known.
 
Baby Taj views
The most popular and visited monument in Aurangabad is the Bibi Ka Maqbara aka Baby Taj built in memory of Moghul ruler Aurangzeb's wife Rabia Ul Dawani alias Dilras Banu Begum by son Prince Azam Shah. According the signboards the mausoleum took over a decade to construct between AD 1651 to 1661 and was designed by Ata Ullah and Hanspat Rai was the engineer of the monument. Designed on the same lines as the Taj Mahal in Agra, this is made of limestone and plaster unlike marble of the original. It cost an enormous sum of Rs.668,203.5 to complete the monument. The entire monument is surrounded by a fort like wall with four entrances on all cardinal points and there are beautifully landscaped gardens all around. Apart from being a tomb or whatever the monument is definitely worth spending lots of time in. Since the crowds are not as much as in the original Taj Mahal of Agra one can sit in the gardens and spend a quiet moment amidst greenery and soak in the history around the place.
Another interesting but highly damaged monument in the town is the Aurangabad Fort which has a moat around it currently filled with the town's sewage. The fort walls run across a distance over 15 km and have 52 gateways named differently as Delhi Gate, Taj Gate, Daulatabad Gate, etc and to this day around 42 of them continue to serve as major intersections in the city. One thing I must mention about the city, all main roads are 4-laned and have road divider, the roads are pot-hole free and it is a pleasure riding over them. Apart from erratic traffic during peak hours Aurangabad is a pretty well planned city and needs to be emulated by town planners across the country.
One of the 42 fort gates that exist and Panchukki
Another interesting monument we visited is the Panchukki or the Water driven flour mill. This unique mechanism was used to achieve dual benefits for the towns populous, water supply from a well about 6 km away and use the same water to run the mill to grind flour between two flat rocks. It uses the medieval style of architecture called Naher to bring water from Sangolia Well by earthen pipes. Then the water is raised by a siphon to the top of a rectangular tower from it plunges into a large pool below. The Panchukki was built in 1744 AD to commemorate Russsian religious teacher Hazrat Baba Shah Musafir's visit to Aurangabad.
After a brief exploration of Panchukki and another fort entrance nearby we visited the Aurangabad caves, a series of 13 caves in a nearby mountain hardly 5 km from the city center. The caves have predominantly Buddhist and Hindu sculptures and one can easily say these caves provide a sneak preview of the splendour that one is about to get in Ajanta and Ellora caves.
Aurangabad Caves
We returned to Mahesh TVS just in time for the press conference. The media asked us how our journey will help achieve our mission of "Equal education for all". One of the common questions was why we chose the Apache as the bike for the tour. We answered that since Apache was one of the few 100 percent indigenous bikes under production we chose this. After a lengthy interaction we returned to our room in Dr. Hedgewar Hospital and retired for the night.
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