The Amazing Jains!

The last few days have been busy with some great sights and quite a few klms under our belts since Jodhpur. We travelled onto Ranakpur, about half way between Jodhpur and Udaipur.

We remembered from previous travels that this area of Rajasthan was home to many Jains. An interesting and very different religious group of people.

Therefore Ranakpur is home to one of India’s most spectacular and important Jain temple complexes.

While driving along we chanced upon a group of Jain monks walking along the street. Clad in simple white fabric and with their mouths covered with something that resembled a surgical mask, they swept the street in front of them to ensure that they did not crush any small insects while walking and their masks protected flying insects from being inhaled!

Jainism was founded around 500 BC by Mahariva, the last Jain pathfinder.
Jains are strict vegetarians and believe in protecting all life including insects.  All leather goods are strictly off limits in the temple along with shoes, cigarettes and foodstuffs.

The temple is situated in the rugged Aravalli Hills and the drive from Jodhpur is really scenic. The main temple, constructed in solid marble was  built in the 15^th century and took an unbelievable 50 years to complete! They were a patient people back then that’s for sure! The temple design includes 80 amazing domes that are all held aloft by 1444 individually carved marble columns. The detail is mind boggling and both Gool’s and I felt an amazing calmness while walking around the site. It was quite hard to leave as there was just so much to see.

To learn more about these incredibly interesting people, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism when you have finished reading this post! Its well worth the read to learn about their beliefs.

As the journey continued we stopped overnight in a village called Ghanerao. This traditional village was a nice place to break the journey and we spent the night in the old Ghanerao Castle. It is now open to tourists as it has been converted to a hotel. It is not well known yet, and it was lovely but a bit weird as we were the only guests for the night. The manager and staff were great and of course we were very well looked after!

We set off the next day bound for Udaipur.

While driving we learned that we would be passing close by another impressive monument called Kumbhalgargh Fort (yes, there are lots of them). It was a bit of a coin toss to see if we would go for a look. Thommo called heads and won.

We had read in the guidebook that the wall surrounding the fort was 36 klms long and that in places it was wide enough to ride 8 horses abreast!

It sounded like ‘The Great Wall of India’ to us so seeing as though we had the time we dropped in for a look.

 

No doubt it was impressive but to be honest the highlight of the visit was our lucky timing that coincided with an Islamic festival that neither of us had ever heard of..

We sat back and watched 100’s of people walking with a gold coloured, multi storied ‘litter’ adorned with hundreds of Indian rupee notes with incense billowing from its innards. As the contraption slowly made its way up the path towards the fort, carried by a number of men, another 6 men and boys, drummed at a furious and hypnotic pace. It sounded amazing and was extremely colourful as the women and a number of other men and kids followed the procession.

As it disappeared off into the distance we wondered what exactly we had just witnessed?

Sometimes it does not matter, just being there was brilliant!

We walked back to the car and was greeted by our driver an ever smiling Mr Ishu and continued on towards our next stop, Udaipur, our Venice of India!