My Trip to Yewat – Day 2

Originally Posted on: Saturday, July 4, 2009

Following is a brief account of the second day of my stay in Yewat.

My Trip to Bhuleshwar
We started off
As mentioned in my previous blog entry, there is an ancient temple near Yewat – called the Bhuleshwar temple. On the second day of my stay in Yewat, me and my cousin set off in the morning to visit Bhuleshwar temple.
We crossed the irrigation canal using the little bridge that’s located behind the building where my uncle stays. It was 8:30 am in the morning, and the canal was a busy place - Village ladies washing clothes; A few men-folk, lots of kids and one or two buffaloes taking a bath in the cool canal water.
On the other side of the bridge, there is a road that leads away from Yewat across farm-land and open brush-land towards the hill of Bhuleshwar and beyond. This road starts off at the highway some distance down from the bridge. From the highway, it runs across the canal and then parallel to the canal and the highway until the bridge. From the bridge, it turns 90 degrees and then runs straight towards the distant range of hills where Bhuleshwar is located.
At the point where the road turns, there is a huge tree at the corner of the road. Local transport – mostly a jeep or a tempo – can be usually found under this tree. After we crossed the bridge, we noticed a jeep waiting under the tree. My cousin asked the driver, but the driver was waiting for a minimum number of fares to assemble and until then he would not leave. So we waited for a few minutes under the tree.

My roadside encounter with the canine kind
While we waited, I noticed a dog lying under the shade some distance away. It was average sized and had clean luxurious white fur. Its hair was neither too short like the street-dogs, nor too long as some exotic breed like pomerians have. It looked cute, so I tried to catch its attention with a little whistle. It looked up at me. I took a step towards it, but my cousin warned me – one can never be sure how a street dog may react to a stranger. So I stopped and whistled to it again.
Now, my cousin naturally attracts cats and dogs. But me, I am usually ignored by the canine and feline kinds. Yet to my surprise, the dog got up and came towards us. I noticed that it was limping. It came and started smelling us up. I have always wondered why, when dogs check up on a new stranger, they tend to smell that human at the oddest of places – like the base of the palm, or the tip of your finger, if you have your hand extended, or on the lower legs – especially the feet, or – most oddly - in between the legs… This dog, did the same – as I extended my hand to caress it on its head, it moved its head away to first smell my fingers and the base of my palm. Then it proceeded to smell us up in between our legs – for what canine reasons, I do not know.
Then, it did the oddest thing. It stood sideways to us, and touched its left side of the body along our legs. And it kept standing like that. Both, me and my cousin found this gesture very endearing. It was as if it was the dog’s way of expressing that it liked us? Or maybe it just liked the feel of the roughness of our jeans? No idea…
We decided to offer it something to eat. So my cousin moved off to a nearby shop to buy biscuits. The dog continued to touch my legs with the side of its torso. My cousin came back with a packet of Parle-G biscuits. We both offered a few biscuits to the dog. But it would not eat. Either it was not hungry, or the biscuits were too cheap by its standards? I do not know.
Just then, a tempo passed by. One of the villagers waiting nearby hailed it. There was no way of knowing when the jeep would fill up. So we had to grab this opportunity. We left the dog behind and rushed towards the tempo.
While coming back I tried to find the dog again. But it was no where to be seen. After that first time, I never saw that dog again.

Tempo-back riding
The tempo was already full in the front. This meant that we would have to travel in the back compartment of the tempo.
This was the first time I got to travel in the back of a tempo. The first big challenge for me was to climb over its collapsible metal guard onto its back. I am quite hefty, and not very athletic. So I found this little stunt a bit difficult. What I did was this – I found a foot-hold on one side of the tempo. Caught the edge of the frame at its side with one hand, caught hold of the edge of the collapsible metal guard with the other, and heaved myself up… Halfway up and I felt my arms about to give up on me… they simply won’t respond to my brain commanding them to heave, heave, heave… My cousin standing behind me asked whether I could climb, or did I need help. The last thing I needed was the embarrassment of my cousin pushing me up by my butt… So with a final heave and push from my legs (which are my strong points) I some how managed to tumble into the tempo’s compartment. (“I should start exercising”, I thought.)
Then I turned back and saw my cousin climb up… and understood what I had done wrong. There was a rope hanging from the ceiling of the tempo’s compartment, right down the middle of its backdoor entrance. The rope was there for a reason. All I needed to do was catch hold of the rope, find a foot hold and heave up like tarzan – piece of cake…
Apart from the two of us, the only other passengers were a couple of village ladies. One of the ladies had with her two little kids. I was still holding the Parle-G biscuits in my hand, and when one of the kids saw it, he pointed at it and started wailing. I offered the biscuits to the two kids, and that made the kid go quiet… A dog’s loss - a kid’s gain…
Fortunately the sides of the tempo were open, and we got to enjoy the scenery pass us by and the wind whipping through our hair. There was no support to rest our backsides upon, so we had to squat down on the floor of the compartment. But the road was quite rough and the jolting was too much for my tender butt to withstand. So I got up and went the rest of the way standing.

At Bhuleshwar Temple
We passed along many a hair-pin turns and climbed up the hill. A small path leads off from the main road towards the Bhuleshwar temple. This is where we got down from the tempo and started walking.
Soon we reached the temple. From here, when one looks around, one will observe that the range of hills are not really hills per se, but they look more like a set of high elevated plateaus connected to each other with hardly a valley in between any two hills. At least that was the impression I got from my vantage point.
A lot can be said about the Bhuleshwar temple. But I find myself short of words to describe it and a picture would have better expressed the temple’s salient features. I still regret I did not carry my cam with me. Anyways, it is mostly carved out of stone. It has lots of beautiful sculptures. Unfortunately, most of the sculptures are broken – whether due to negligence or done on purpose by past invaders is not known to me.
The temple is quite old. I do not know its history so well and hence will not go into many details.
One of its features I found most impressive is the largest statue of “Nandi” the Bull I have ever seen – carved out of a single stone.

My Climb down the Hill
When we left the temple, my cousin suggested we climb down the hill instead of going back via road. I was intrigued. “What a brilliant idea”, I though. The temple lies on a wide flat plain at the top of the hill. We walked towards one such edge of the plateau and began to descend down along the slope.
No sooner had we taken just a few steps down, that I felt something tugging me down. Every step I took made me stall myself, as my legs stayed back, while my upper body threatened to topple ahead. It was as if gravity was literally holding me by my collar and pulling me down. If one has a protruding mass of stomach at the front and a protruding backside to counter it, his center of gravity is bound to go a bit haywire, I suppose. “I will need to reduce my weight”, I scolded myself for the umpteenth time.
I struggled ahead a few more steps, while my cousin had already descended quite a bit ahead of me. The soil here was quite loose. It was made up of small stones instead of fine dust. There was not much vegetation, except for an occasional thorny shrub every few feet. And neither were there much hard big boulders one would expect on the slope of a hill. The loose stones did not afford any strong support underfoot. And the next moment I found myself sitting down squat on my backside, wondering how was I ever going to climb down?
When climbing down hills your excess weight becomes your foe. And loose stones underfoot don’t exactly help either. So there I was squatting on my ass and looking down at my cousin who was half way down already. By half way I mean, half way towards the edge of the slope that was visible from my vantage point. The slope where we were located currently was quite gentle. It extended a few feet down, flattened out a bit to form what looked like a small path, and then simply ended there. Whether the hill face sloped further on or simple fell off to form a steep cliff, I had no idea. I did not even want to know. Because the more I saw it, the more I worried what would happen if I lost my balance and went tumbling down and over the edge (Humpty Dumpy had a great fall). I looked back and seriously considered retracing our steps back up the slope and go along the roadway – the way that all mortals in their right mind take. But we had already descended quite a bit, and I did not fancy climbing up a slippery loose slope, more than climbing down one. Besides, now that I was resting on my butt, I was not really sure I could collect enough courage to stand up again.
By this time, even my cousin had realized how difficult it was to walk upright with the loose stones rolling around underfoot. Years of sun, rain and wind had eroded the rocks and broken them down into rubble – small stones and soil, waiting for years for some rolling stones like us to stumble by and dislodge them. So even he squatted down. But like me, he did not just sit there wondering what to do. He simply slid down. And soon he had reached down to the little flat ledge near the edge of the current slope.
Standing down there, he asked me to simply let go and slide down the slope taking help of the loose rubble under me. It was easier for him to say. He is slim, and average in weight – not overweight like me. And however much anyone says – letting go is not always easy.
So began my slow and perilous journey down the first slope of the hill of Bhuleshwar. Down the way, I would have my tender bums assaulted and poked by various bric-a-brac – bric-a-brac including stones big and small, dried tree branches and a big half-inch long thorn (ouch). I have never worked off my ass (literally, in this case) so much before. Also down the way, I would have my hands scratched by the stones, and blistered by the heat of the sun – for the stones become hot very quickly. My legs, in a vain effort to find some foothold, would dislodge even big boulders from their place and send them rolling down the slope. And I would have to take support of big boulders, small shrubs and even loose soil, to hold on and stop myself from simply succumbing to gravity and sliding down the slope… and beyond…
After what felt like hours, but were just a few minutes, I reached the flat ledge, where my poor cousin was patiently waiting for me. Actually, he probably had a pretty good time standing down there, looking up at the spectacle of a fat guy struggling to get down a gentle slope, and having a good laugh at my expense. If he did, he was pretty humble not to express it to me.
Anyways, the flat ledge turned out to be a path of sorts, occasionally used by local villagers. From there onwards, it was comparatively easy. I say comparatively because, though I did not have to squat down and slide much after that, the way down was still perilous enough. Many a times down the way, I caught myself just in time from loosing my balance and stumbling ahead. And that’s when I realized that climbing down a hill can be a very difficult affair. May be more difficult that climbing up.
Anyway, we reached down safely and reached the main road at the base of the hill. From here we would have to flag down a bus or a private vehicle and ask for a ride back to Yewat.

Our long walk back to Yewat
Instead of waiting for a ride at one place, we decided to start walking. So we walked… and walked… and walked… We kept walking and walking. We must have walked for hours (that’s how it felt, but to tell the truth, we just walked for appx. 2 and half hours). And all the while there was no sign of bus or a private vehicle. Sure, a few trucks passed by – but none would stop to take on passer-bys. Also, a jeep and a tempo passed us by. But they were completely filled up and had no place to accommodate even one of us.
So puffing, panting, sweating and dragging our legs, we kept walking.
And we ended up walking all the way to Yewat…

How many people can sit in a Jeep?
In the evening, I accompanied my cousin to Pune. We went via the roadway – along the Pune-Solapur Highway. There are buses that run along this route. But buses here (like everywhere else in India) are not known for their punctuality. So we hailed down a private jeep. Such private vehicles form the bloodline for people commuting between a city and the rural areas.
The plan was that the Jeep would drop us off at Uruli, and from there we would catch a bus to Pune.
When we sat in the Jeep, it was already filled to its normal capacity – 10 people including the driver. But the driver kept picking up people along the way, and by the time, we reached the final destination – Uruli, the jeep was filled with 14 adults, 6 noisy children and lots of luggage (from suit-cases to gunny-bags filled with vegetables). It was an experience worth taking – sitting in a jeep that’s filled up beyond capacity and is speeding rashly along a busy highway.