The riddle of Champaner

During the train journey to Baroda we were a little bit frightened by our own courage but we cried just a little. Actually we met a very nice man on the train that invited us to be his guests in his home but I couldn't write down his number and he hasn't written an email yet. It is amazing where one can sleep when tired enough. The train has no compartments and where there is the aisle in Austrian trains Indian trains have two more berths. So each coach has 70 people in an open space and for every 8 passengers there are 3 huge howling ventilators. The windows have no glass but iron bars that seem to be there to prevent people from falling out. This is not taken very seriously though as all the trains exits are open during the ride. The toilets are in use from the very second people enter the train and it smells as if they are right under your bed. Surprisingly we were not totally tired in the morning and the train arrived a full 3 hours early!

Our way continued on a local train to Champaner, a Unesco World Heritage Site, or so we thought. On the train we met a very nice welding instructor that commutes on the train every day for 4 hours total and he kept asking us what we want in Champaner. We tried to explain our intentions, sight-seeing, ruins, history the temple but he kept insisting that Champaner is a tiny village with no points of interest whatsoever. He drew a map and told us to leave on an auto-rickshaw, the common name for tuktuk here, to Halol and then take another vehicle to Pavanghad. When we arrived we found out that his description was spot on, Champaner had only 20 houses or rather sheds. We immediately caught a tuktuk but since it already had 15 people on it we didn't think we could go. Wrong again. We strapped the backpacks to the roof and sat in the back with two women and their 4 children. But this was far from maximum load, at one point the tuktuk carried 21 people and we paid only 10 rupies for 45 minutes thats just around 20 cents. In Halol people surrounded us as if we were aliens from a different planet. They guided us to a jeep that took us to our hotel. The driver drove over a dog on the way there and although he hit the brakes and tried to avoid the accident it was very brutal for us. They didn't care in the least and I can only suspect that this kind of incident is far from uncommon as cows, buffaloes , donkeys, geese, chicken, dogs, cats and monkeys roam free and cross the street all the time.

The hotel is on a small mountain on thew edge of a steep cliff. The mountain is of volcanic origin in a flat landscape and looks as if somebody dropped a piece of the Himalaya on Gujarat.

We spent the rest of the day sleeping to wear of the travel and the strains of Mumbai.

Prof. Joshi

The next morning we booked a local guide that turned out to be really cool. I first thought he was the major as he wore formal dress and looked like a professor. It turned out he is indeed a professor and of economics and history on top. He provided us with background stories of the monuments and also explained why Champaner is such a tiny village. The Champaner we searched for was the capitol of a mighty Sultan's empire but fell in 1530 or so. Since then it is in ruins and the modern Champaner is merely an attachment to a train station.

The seven arches (actually just six)

Small temple above the hotel

Highlight was the beautiful Jami Masjid with stone carvings rivalling the Alhambra.

There were also ingenious stepwells that provided water probably of a better quality then now.

The riddle of Champaner

Champaner, India