a life in words: life and death in mandu

Mandu - 4th-7th November 2011.

After hearing about a peaceful town by the name of Mandu from some other travelers, the past 4-5 days have been spent chilling out and exploring the small town and its surrounding areas. Accessed by a 4hour bumpy bus ride from Indore along roads containing massive potholes and cracks we finally arrived late at night on the 4th where we found the nearest available guest house to crash after spending 12 hours on three consecutive buses from Sanchi.

Woke up on the 5th to the sound of beeping horns and a voice ranting about something over a loudspeaker, that or a prayer being broadcast by one of those crafty minarets. Although India is dominated by Hinduism, I read from the rough guide (my own travelling bible) that Muslims make up 13% of the population and have representation in most towns and cities. Whatever the noise was it was impossible to get back to sleep which annoyed me as i'm a very bad morning person. Seeing as I was awake I thought I might as well get up and see what the French were upto. Predictably Julien and Lilly had been up for a few hours already and had found a cheaper guesthouse down the road so I packed my stuff up and made the move. Now paying 150rs a night, that's pretty much two pounds! An hour or so later, whilst sat on the front porch outside my room, along walks this highly eccentric looking Italian chap by the name of Alessandro. He had arrived the previous afternoon and was also a solo traveler. He had just been in Thailand where he lives for part of the year with his girlfriend and I explained how the second leg of my trip had me flying into Bangkok. As I have heard there's been bad flooding in Thailand I was keen to ask him about the current situation there. He said that central areas were drying up but the floods have been significant, hopefully it will be ok next month when I roll into town!

As it was a Saturday we spent the afternoon wandering around the local weekly market. A large concrete space in the center of town had been cleared for the occasion and by the time we arrived it was in full swing. Each seller had been allotted a space on the ground upon which to sell their wares and everything from shoes to torches, spices to vegetables were on offer. The food sellers had hand scales and used Kg division weights to counterbalance items of food placed on the opposing scale. Piles of red and green chilies, onions, fresh cabbages, cucumbers, tomatoes and many other foods were neatly stacked side by side one another and the haggling over them was frantic. The highlight of the market for me however was the freshly prepared pekora. Since my first bite of the popular roadside snack i've developed somewhat of an addiction and all I can say is that if you can imagine crack coated in chickpea batter, fried up in vegetable oil, you're only about halfway towards how ridiculously tasty and moreish these things are. A rusty iron shack housed two men side by side, the first man’s job was to create the mix of vegetables, chilies and batter after which the second man would sprinkle chunks off into the boiling oil which sat in a large pan over a log fire. As soon as a fresh batch had been finished they were served up to the counter where a swarm of people flocked round like vultures. I missed out on the first batch as grown women wrestled me out the way to get first dibs. Aside from pekora being mighty tasty another reason for the scrabble was that you often see pekora on roadside stalls or counters, I tend to be wary of these as its impossible to know how long they’ve been sitting there and it’s just another thing that can make you ill. Here in the market however, it was done in front of you so you knew it was perfectly safe to eat. The day faded away watching the sun set and munching on my pekora from Sunset View, a large plateau which looks over the valleys and mountains surrounding Mandu.

The next morning after hiring some bicycles to take a trip into the countryside, we witnessed a procession through town fronted by a drummer and horn blower. At first I assumed it was some political rally but was soon mistaken as round the corner came six men carrying a dead body. Not in a coffin but in full view, a local villager had died and it was standard practice to parade the body through town on its way to what I assumed would be the graveyard. How wrong I was. Although shocking to see a dead body float by we thought nothing more of it and hopped on our bikes. After exploring the area just north for an hour or so we headed back through town to check out some temples to the south. At the end of the road we came across a temple called the Rewa Kund which stood next to a large water tank. We walked through the main entrance and I noticed some logs in the corner of the yard which seemed to have been burning for quite some time. Soon after sitting down near the burning embers we were approached by three men looking visibly animated and concerned. They pointed at the pile of ash (and what I initially thought were branches of a tree smoldering in the flames) and uttered the word 'death'. Yep, we had just unknowingly wandered into a active cremation and the burning log was in fact the body we had seen earlier that day being carried through town! I soon realized that there other piles of ash dotted around the area which were obviously previous cremations. In England death is hidden behind curtains or in a coffin but here in India it’s treated in a much more open and visible way. A rather harrowing experience which obviously resulted in a very somber cycle back to town.

The plan now is to make our way to see the Ajanta Caves and then Goa. I'm just Dying for a pint of Kingfisher. (Excuse the pun).