Ajodhya Hills, Purulia

 

October 7 to 9, 2022

We are just back from a short trip to Ajodhya Hills in Purulia. It was supposed to be a 3 night trip. But we had to cut it short and make it in two days. On balance it was a very nice and satisfying trip where nothing really went wrong. We followed the route via Kharagpur to go up and came back via Purulia, Asansol and Bardhaman.

The Route

After Kharagpur first we turned right towards Jhargram from Lodhashuli (be careful not to get on the flyover. It will mean a detour of at least 4/5 Km). This stretch of the road from Lodhashuli to Jhargram was in a bad shape and eminently avoidable. Alternatively one can also turn right from Chirchira. Just before Jhargram one turns left towards the Kanak Durga Mandir of Chilkigarh. We stopped at the temple and had a darshan of the idol. She's made of gold but very small. There was quite a crowd there. The parking fee was an atrocious Rs 50. 

The temple has been restored recently. I have not seen the old temple but I am sure the restoration work didn't take into account what it looked like in the past. What stands there now in the forest is a modern looking, ugly concrete structure. Surely it couldn't have looked like that in the past when it was possibly made.

After this the road surface improved and it followed its winding way through lovely saal forests. Small towns that were until the other day associated with Maoist violence came along. Jamboni, Gidhni, Belpahari, Baspahari, Jhilimili, Banduan. Barabazar and then finally Balarampur. (Please remember to take the right turn in the extremely narrow and congested town of Barabazar). I am calling these towns but these are essentially large villages that have suddenly become prosperous in a very ugly way, as it has happened all over the country in the last 30 years.

Between Balarampur and Baghmundi

From Balarampur the road goes in three directions. To the right is the town of Purulia. To the left is Jamshedpur (possibly via Chandil) and straight is Baghmundi. Despite what Google says one has to go towards Baghmundi and turn right towards Ajodhya just before the town. The roads are well marked with direction boards from Balarampur. This final road has a short stretch of very bad "no road" section. But the rest of the road up the hill is smooth like a billiard table.

On the way comes the lower dam and then upper dam. The winding road moves up and reaches the Hill Top quickly enough. If one has the time, one can see the Loharia Temple (shiva temple) at the base of the hill where the really bad road ends. There is a small dam close to the temple also. Unless you are very religiously inclined there is nothing to see here. The temple structure has nothing ancient about it. Perhaps thoughtlessly restored recently.

The Stay

We chose to stay in a hotel that is partly owned by a school friend of mine - Shantanu Maikap. A few of his friends came together to form an NGO and set up this very basic hotel called Backpackers' Camp in Ajodhya. It is close to the Bharat Sevasram Sangha on the Hill Top. 

Although very strategically located and very easy to find once you reach the Hill Top, the hotel is extremely basic. We stay in this type of hotels on our treks in the difficult regions of Himalaya where there is nothing else available. But to be fair to the owners, they don't call it a hotel. They call it the Backpackers' Camp.

The look and feel of the interior of the room reminded me of the lodge in Jaubari on the Sandakphu trail called Indira Lodge. Monisha had brought along a bed sheet which was spread to make some amends. 

I saw a very funny thing in the room. The switch board is high up on the wall and there is nothing to rest

Ingenuity at its best

the mobile phone on if you were to charge it. So they kept a soap case fixed to the wall where you could rest it. I had anticipated this problem (but not the solution) and brought our own spike buster along. The low plastic table in the room was broken but it held our stuff on top that included an electric kettle, the spike buster and sundry other stuff like water bottle etc.

Food at the hotel was also very basic. Although set up by a few city-bred persons (all work in Indian Railways) the hotel is actually run by a local Adivasi called Mahato. All such hotels are run in collaboration with a local who possibly owns the land. Mahato is one such. He controls the cooking and also offers two tents of his own to tourists. The three cemented rooms in the two cottages are rented out to tourists by my friends. 

I am yet to pay for the room but I think it will cost me Rs 1000 per night. The payment for food was made to Mahato.

Apart from being very basic in terms of facilities (the rooms do not even have a ceiling fan), the property is full of plastic trash everywhere. And no one seemed bothered by it. There is no "shree" as we say in Bengali, in the property. Clearly the owners not only do not make any money, they do not see much hope of earning anything from here.

Yet, somehow we quite enjoyed the stay. Possibly because we did not expect anything better and the people were very nice. The waiters are all local innocent Adivasi boys. 

In case you want to stay in the tents, Mahato charges Rs 900 per head per day that includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. You could also perhaps pitch your own tent. The bathroom for tent tourists is very basic.

Local Sight Seeing

We had reached after a day long journey in the late afternoon and were quite tired. So I went for a short nap with the pedestal facing me directly. In the evening Mahato asked us if we were game for going out on a night safari. I immediately agreed to the idea. He would guide us deep into the forest. These forests do not have any leopard or tiger but have elephants for sure. And elephant is the only animal in the world that can kill you even if you were inside a closed vehicle. 

Although revered by the Hindus as God, the villagers who have to bear the brunt of the marauding elephants do not like them.

Mahato climbed on to the seat next to me to guide. Monisha agreed to take the backseat (which is not something she does very often). Another Bolero with a few tourists from Calcutta and related to one of the owners followed my Duster. Although it was the trayodoshi night with the full moon of Kojagari Purnima being still two days away, the road inside the forest was quite dark, because of the dense tree cover.

We drove for about 20 Kilometers inside the Karma forest. Initially there were a few very small villages but the overall forest cover was quite dense. The drive was very challenging because although the road surface was good it was a continuously winding hilly road, going up and down all the time. When you were climbing an uphill stretch in full force you did not know in which direction the road would turn when you reached the top. This problem of driving was compounded by the fogging on my already dirty windshield. 

But I managed to drive valiantly and successfully and got appreciative remarks from the other local driver of the Bolero (Mahato cannot drive because of a leg injury). He was surprised that a city-bred gentleman could drive so well in these paths :-) They have very little respect for our abilities but once they realise that this person is better at doing something that they think they do very well they become very fond of you. 

He took out his drinking water bottle and helped me clean the visor glass when we were standing and enjoying the beauty of the night in the forest.

Shot in front of the hotel but you get the feel

The place where we stopped was absolutely still and pin drop silence prevailed all around. Despite the moon the night was dark. There was a hill right to our left and another to our right which was a little distant off. There were crickets and cicadas calling all around. Mahato said there was no fear of any elephant coming to this particular spot due to the geography of the place. I could not understand this. 

We could see the slope of the hill going down and becoming the plains. The forest was scant in the distance. We also saw small lights in the far off distant horizon. Mahato said it was Muri - the station that comes early in the morning if you were going to Ranchi from Calcutta using the Hatia Express.

We chose to turn around from this point and head towards Marble Lake. Turning the vehicle was not so difficult because there were a few meters of clearing. Otherwise the two sides of the road was covered in dense bushes of perhaps lantana. 

From here we proceeded towards Marble Lake. This is a popular sight seeing point for the tourists but there was absolutely no one here in the night. There is an ugly new building set up by the PHE department with lots of light. But keeping that behind us we proceeded towards the lake. 

The lake was surrounded by dark hills and the water was still. The moon was up in the sky but behind clouds. We soaked in the silence and beauty of the place. This is perhaps a better experience than the Taj bathed in full moon.

After spending some time there we came back to our vehicle and drove back to the hotel. Here is an interactive map of the drive we made that night. The starting point in the map is the place where we went first. The drive ends in the hotel. I recorded it with Garmin. I am not sure if you need Garmin's Connect software to see it.

Emboldened by our night safari experience, the next day, post breakfast, we went out to explore  Ajodhya Hills' typical tourist spots. Mahato helped us create a check list of sights to see. It included Bamni Falls, Turga Falls, Loharia Temple, Lower Dam and Upper Dam. After this we would go to Muruguma Lake, which is a bit far, and come back after lunch at a local eatery.

Except Muruguma Lake the other points are all close to one another and not far from the Hill Top. One by one we ticked them off. The drive was more beautiful than the actual spots. Bamni Falls wasn't so bad but it had lots of noisy tourists. However, the roads were absolutely a dream to drive on. Empty roads with lovely curves and a billiard table top. We saw a big crowd near Turga Falls and gave it a miss but covered the other points. Loharia Temple was a damp squib. It is a Shiva Temple with a recently restored architecture that paid no heed to any traditions. There was a dam next to it. It had a Durga idol floating in the dam, making the place look grotesque.

After this we went off in search of Muruguma Lake. The road wasn't so great but went through beautiful traditional tribal villages with mud huts and without any signs of commercial activity. Unfortunately prosperity will soon destroy the uniqueness of these villages, as it has done to villages elsewhere. Ugly cement houses will come up selling mobile recharge vouchers and noodles in plastic packets. 

We as a society do not see these structures as our part of our heritage that needs preservation. These are seen as poor people's compulsion. I am not saying that poor people should remain poor and stay in mud houses and not use mobile phones. They can make concrete houses while retaining the unique architecture, colour and look and feel of the traditional villages. Bhutan has done this in its cities like Thimphu. All new concrete structures there are built in the traditional Bhutanese architecture.

But go to Leh. It's just another ugly Indian city with scant regard to traditions in its architecture. 

I could perhaps draw a parallel with the use of cycles in our culture. It's seen as a poor man's compulsion. Everyone who rides a bicycle to work dreams of owning a motorcycle sometime in future. 

However, for everyone to think in these lines we have to reach a certain level of sophistication through education, exposure and prosperity. That will take time to happen. But by then this heritage will surely be lost.

We ambled along the bad roads through lush greenery all around. It's just post-monsoon and greenery is all over the place. Who said Purulia was arid? We kept asking people, wherever we saw them, if we were on the right path. After some time it seemed we were perhaps not on the right track. We didn't see a single tourist vehicle or any village or villagers for a long time. After quite some time came another beautiful village where we asked a local girl if this was the way to Muruguma Lake. She seemed to get the shock of her life and said with a lot of incredulity in her voice, "no, no. This is not the route. Go back and follow the road in that direction", she pointed in the direction from where we came. 

I turned around and was totally determined to go back to the hotel. But Monisha turned Google for its opinion and it showed us a particular narrow but concrete road that slipped into a dense bush of lantana on both the sides. It showed Muruguma was 7 Kms from here. I kept driving down the snaking road at a relatively high speed. I was a little scared because the road is really narrow and if this was the wrong road and if we had to turn around it would be difficult. There was not a soul in sight. Suddenly I had to brake hard because there was a tourist vehicle in front that had stopped. It had another vehicle in front which had also stopped. I have no idea why they had stopped but we felt reassured that perhaps for a change we were on the right track. 

We drove the last seven kilometers to the lake with a relaxed mind. About two kilometers before the lake there is a view point from where the lake looks quite nice. There is a steep descent here with some sharp switchbacks. It's not easy negotiating those bends on the way up. They are just as good or bad as any Himalayan road. 

Muruguma lake looks very pretty with its emerald water and the quietness of the place. We went for lunch at a restaurant where we had informed well in advance about our food requirement. Upon arrival we realised they started the cooking process after we showed up. 

After waiting for 45 minutes and fuming all the time for this sort of lie (they gave us the impression that food would be ready) we dumped them and came back. 

The return journey seemed short and we had lunch at a street side dhaba on the Hill Top. 

We had planned to stay for another whole day but had to cut it short due to a medical emergency in Katwa (Monisha's original home). We came back through Purulia, Asansol and Bardhaman and halted for the night at Katwa. 

The character of Mahato is quite something and worth studying. He walks with a limp and said it was from a bullet injury he sustained many years ago when he was part of a gang. His awareness about things is remarkable. We were discussing adivasi culture and how their language is being destroyed by Bengali and Hindi and he said, "a race that has lost its language has nothing else left for itself". This is a remarkable observation. 

I hope to go back to Ajodhya and certainly cultivate him more. Till then .................

Some of the important numbers for future reference - 

Shantanu Maikap (my friend and 1/5th owner of the place) - 9002080098

Arnab (the main leader among the five friends and a very amiable gentleman) - 7044835402/ 9123067823/ 7890581231 

His wife Gouri Bhattacharya (Arnab's phone is often out of reach) - 9123067823

Mahato (runs the place and extremely resourceful for taxi, stay, local sights to see including night safari etc) - 9434316978/ 8145410838