Rann of Kutch over a weekend

Rann of Kutch is a large area of salty marshes spread across Northern Gujarat and Southern Pakistan. Our plan was to use Friday, February 7 and the weekend to do a quick trip there.

 I liked this dog, with the flopping ears, waiting for the leftovers after we have breakfast at the street hawker in Bhuj!

The street hawker was making Poha (which in Gujarat is syrupy sweet, just like all other food).

Bhuj is the closest city to the Rann of Kutch. We reached Bhuj at 6:30 am in the morning.

Bhuj suffered from a devastating earthquake (7.7 Richter) which killed 167,000 people in 2001.

 Mandi also has a ship-building yard where several Western cruise ships get made and exported.

 This area is the Mandvi beach. We went there at around 11 am in the morning, and it was deserted except for a few stragglers on the beach.

Vijay Vilas Palace was the place where the Maharaja of Bhuj had his summer residence. It has been converted into a musuem where you can see the opulence that the Maharajas claimed in pre-independent India. The last Maharaja was a fan of tennis, and reportedly had two seats at Wimbledon permanently booked for him till he died in the 1990's.

 A view from the top of the 750 acres of land surrounding the palace.

The Unjon of India bought over all the land in return for a "princely purse" to be paid every year to the Maharajas, and allowed them a small parcel of land, with their private palaces. This is one of those private palaces and the land surrounding it.

 At Comfort Inn Hotel Prince, Bhuj, this vegetarian thali was the best that I had, since quite a few years.

 At the Kutch musuem there are inscriptions from 11 AD of the Scythians (Sakas) who ruled this region. The Sakas were Iranian speaking nomads who extended their rule right till Gujarat (Western Satraps).

The myth of the sub-continent being a peaceful region way back in ancient History is all wrong. We had Iranian rulers, Indo-Bactrian rulers of Yuezhi origin (Kanishka) and our Indian National Calendar is still the Saka calendar

The Yuezhi were a Chinese people who hailed from modern day Gansu. Kanishka's capitals were in Gandhara (Pakistan) and Kapisa (Afghanistan).

 The Bhil Tribal people: Another remnant in the Kutch Musuem reaffirming how the Dravidians were forced farther south by the invading Indo-Aryan tribes, the Scythians and the Yuezhis.

Bhil is derived from the word "Billee" meaning bow in Dravidian. The origins of these people is not known, and probably they were indigineous from the original migration of Homo Sapiens around 65,000 years ago.

The Bhill populations were just one of the Adivasi (ancient residents) tribes among thousands in India, far before the Indo-Aryan nomads overran India.

 The Prag Mahal palace in Bhuj

Dr. Ismail Khatri, one of the most famous artisans of Ajrakhpur, Bhuj who specializes in Ajrakh work.

Ajrak typically means means a large swathe of cloth, used as a headscarf, or a lungi in Sindh, Pakistan. It is woodblock printed using natural dyes exactly as it was for centuries.

From Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of people migrated to India in the 1970's, and came across to Gujarat as refugees. While most of these refugees were Muslims, some of the tribes were Hindu too. All of them became citizens of India by the 1980's, well before the current ill-conceived Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019.

These handicraft villlages dot the region from Bhuj to the Great Rann of Kutch, and are an essential part of any tourists itinerary.

The Kala Raksha Vidyalaya works with the artisans of Kutch, preserving old designs, helping new artisans develop their work, marketing their work across the world.

 A small shop inside the Kala Raksha Kendra.

 Each piece of work takes several weeks to months to complete. This particular cloth had patterns with stitches that took 9 months to complete, priced at Rs.45,000.

Clearly, while it seemed a paltry sum for working for 9 months, it may be beyond the budget of the common Indian man to spend so much on a single piece of cloth. But not beyond the budget of enough multi-millionare Gujarati businessmen, or of a rich foreign tourist.

I was content to touch and feel the cloth, and admire the artwork.

A woman working on creating the pattern. Since none of the patterns are ever drawn on the fabric, they exist only inside the individual artisan's mind, and it is not till they are complete that you can make out the art that has been worked.

 This particular piece of work has been preserved since 1960's just to illustrate to the new artisans exactly what type of stitches, mirrors, and patters were used historically. At the Kala Rakhsa Kendra Museum.

A swathe of games created using cloth. Chess (Pachisi), Chamma-Chakka, snakes and ladders..

 A villlage scene in the afternoon at Ludiya

 Portrait of an artisan at Kutch

 The women still practice purdah, and it was difficult even in this day and age to capture her face. I didn't even try asking, because I knew it was uncomfortable enough to sell to male tourists.

Marriages used to be decided on the quality of work made by the bride, based on which you had to figure out whether the woman was beautiful, intelligent, and could take care of your family. Of course, from the male side, the requirement was how rich gifts could be given by the man. Handicrafts therefore played a key role in a woman finding a husband without their looking at each other.

I was again in that world where a woman's worth is judged against cattle, and the cattle might win.

A view from the Black Hill (Kalo Dungar) of the Great Rann of Kutch. What you see in the distance is not a blue sea of water, but a great desert of salt, where nothing grows.

 These salt flats of the Great Rann of Kutch almost seemed to have their own beach, with white waves of salt breaking on land. Except that the whole scene was frozen. In the distance behind the hilll, you can see a bridge and Pakistan beyond it.

When you view the Rann, borders and nationalities merge, except in the narrow mind of humans who like creating the other.

 There's a scam of the camel ride that we fell for, from the vehicle parking to a watch tower over the Rann of Kutch. Having come this far, no one minds shelling out a couple of hundred rupees to travel on a camel cart because it is supposedly so far.

 A camel cart with people walking in the far distance at sunset, on the Great Rann of Kutch.

 At the Great Rann of Kutch with the full moon in the background. Forgive the grainy picture taken at 12,800 ISO.

 Patgar Tents by Nova just 5 kms from the Rann of Kutch. I opted for budget accomodation, which meant sleeping in a drafty dormitory tent (14 degrees Celsius) at Rs.750 including dinner and breakfast.

At Sabarmati Ashram again, because we had an hour to spare for our flight back to Hyderabad.