INDIA 26: Gujarat. Stage 4

I had been looking back through my India diary from 1994. All the bus trips seemed to be on ancient, packed, uncomfortable, rough old buses, the journeys lasted forever and it was boiling hot. The buses still looked pretty old but the modern journeys were actually quite comfortable, organised (everyone had a seat number) and the highways fairly pot hole free. I was slightly concerned that my next journey – a seven hour trip to Jamnagar only cost 262Rs (less than €3). In actual fact the bus was fine but we were held up for about an hour and a half due to a crash on the motorway. Some things don’t change!

I wasn’t too disheartened as I had booked a deluxe room at the Aram Hotel, a “heritage hotel”. Hmm. I was shown to my room which was quite nice but when I opened the curtains and looked out the window, there was the wall of a building less than a metre away! They were in the process of building an extension right next to the old hotel. In old photos I had seen a garden restaurant. This, they had paved and turned into a car park. Very disappointing. Anyway, after complaining to the manager he put me in an enormous suite (the Imperial suite no less!) and I could access a little bit of natural light so all was not lost even though it ended up costing me €40 a night! I already missed City Guest House!

One thing you can say about a posh hotel and this was no different, I always sleep soundly between clean, crisp white sheets and with a bit of air con. The following morning I was up bright and early, breakfasted on tea, toast and cornflakes and headed off to the centre of the old town and the old Victorian Subhash market.

The market sprawls on to Willingdon crescent and the entrance to the Darbar Garh which was the original palace of the Raja of Jamnagar. I managed to have a peek through the door but was quickly shooed away. On google maps you can see it is the entrance to a huge area but is completely dilapidated. shame.

Around here are many old Victorian buildings built by the Maharaja of Nawanagar (basically the princely state of which Jamnagar was the capital). He was better known as  Ranjitsinhji, the “Father of Indian cricket”. He spent a great deal of time in England and hence his penchant for Victorian style buildings. Unfortunately a lot are in a poor state of repair.

Jamanagar was actually quite an interesting little place. In addition to the Victorian buildings around the Subhash market, The holy buildings around were in a much better state, including this Hindu temple with Hanuman guarding the shrine.

Also nearby was the impressively tiled 19th century Ratan Bai mosque:

Adjacent to the mosque were two Jain temples. There were some hard core Jains inside as they were wearing cloths over their mouths, this was so they couldn’t swallow any insects. I think in reality it is just to show their piety. They pretty much ignored me however while I admired the architecture and the huge number of marble icons.

I also went for a walk around the Lakhota lake which was quite pretty where I saw cormorants and a pelican. Near here was the Bhujiyo Kotho, a heavily fortified building which was badly damaged in the 2001 earthquake. It looks pretty much all fixed up and will be open to tourists soon.

All the photos from this and more of my day in Jamnagar are here.