Message #19: Well well well

(Message sent Tue, 21 Nov 2006 05:00:22 -0700)

On my last day in Ahmedabad I hired a car and driver to take me out to three nearby sites. The car arrived to pick me up at 6am as arranged, but there were two men in it. They guy in the passenger seat explained that he would be coming along too. Of course I immediately assumed that this was some method of extracting more money from me, perhaps by providing an unwanted and unasked-for guide. So I quizzed the guy. Bleary-brained as I was, it took me a while to work out what was going on. The passenger was actually the boss, the guy who organises the taxis. He was so worried that, as a tourist, I might be put off Gugarat by the fact that my driver spoke no English that he had elected to come along to make sure I got where I was going! And he was on the level - at no stage did he ask for money beyond the agreed price. He turned out to be a really nice guy too.

Of the three sites I wanted to visit, this guy had himself not ever visited two of them, so he did the tourist thing with me. I was very chuffed when at one stage he said, "I've never had a customer so interested in the old places. It creates a curiosity for these places in myself." Nice to know that I might have done something to introduce the man to his own heritage!

The first place we visited was a well. In terms of basic layout it was much the same as the one in Ahmedabad I mentioned in the last email, but on a much larger and much grander scale.

It consisted of a huge round well shaft with a vast stone staircase leading from the bottom up to ground level. Once again the staircase was sometimes open to the sky, sometimes surmounted by a stack of pillar-supported levels. Each step in the staircase was too deep to step down without breaking something, so there were lots of smaller flights of stone stairs at right-angles to the main axis of the staircase to get you from step to step, reminiscent of that first well I stumbled across in Abhaneri.

But the thing that really makes this well special are the carvings. On both walls of the staircase from stair level op to ground level are hundreds and hundreds of fantastic stone carvings, somehow perfectly preserved even after nearly a thousand years.

My favourite of these consisted of a male figure in a heroic pose, his foot raised to rest on a bunch of lesser folk. His head took the form of an elongated boar's snout. Perched on his shoulder was a little imp, who seemed to be patting the guys snout with affection. I have no idea what it was all about - anyone out there know which story was being illustrated?

And the thing that really gets you is that unimaginable amounts of artistic labour have gone into these magnificent carvings - most of which would be expected to be underwater most of the time! (Once again the whole complex is bone-dry now.)

The second place we visited was a well. Picture a tennis-court-sized patch of grass with stone bleachers climbing up away from it on all four sides until they reach ground level. Once again there are little flights of stairs to take you from step to step of the bleachers.

There was a nice moment when two bus-loads of school kids arrived. Predictably they advanced on the well and poured down into it, running along the steps and shouting and clowning about. What made the scene Indian was that the girls were all wearing bright colours, and as they ran along the stone terraces their scarves trailed out behind them.

Perched on the edge of this well is something called a sun temple, also about 1000 years old. It was very hard to see why it was a sun temple, as it was very dark and gloomy inside and had bats roosting in the ceiling. However the two buildings that made up the temple had a common main axis, one end of which opened out over the well, the other of which ended in a shrine. I suspect that on certain days of the year the sun rises over the well and shines down the main axis to illuminate the shrine.

Every square inch of the outside of the temple buildings was carved, although 1000 years out in the elements have taken their toll. There was a strip of face-on elephants at about chest height, each shoulder-to-shoulder with its pals. This strip wrapped all the way around both buildings. Hundreds and hundreds of elephants. Except for one spot. Here the expected elephant had been replaced by a mischievous-looking imp. I like to think that this little guy was put there on the sly by the sculptor.

The third place we visited was, well, a well. It was pretty much the same design as the one in Ahmedabad itself, only substantially bigger. It did distinguish itself however by having like, you know, actual water at the bottom!

I doubt that any of the areas are covered in Google Earth in enough detail to see anything, but you never know:

First well (Patan): 23 51.534 N 072 06.113 E

Second well (Modhera): 23 35.016 N 072 07.985 E

Third well (Adalaj): 23 10.005 N 072 34.809 E

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