Junagadh Girnar Hill
First trip to India, January 2015
We decided to get up at 7 a.m. It’s very hard to get enough sleep in India; once again I tossed and turned all night. It was noisy. In Junagadh it also got hot, and there were mosquitoes. While we were drinking coffee and washing our hair, it started to rain. For the first time during our entire trip through India, I saw rain. Girnar Hill, which could be seen from the window of our hotel, was covered with clouds.
We didn’t feel like leaving the room. We decided to sleep a little longer. I quickly drifted into a half-sleep in Wolchy’s arms. I heard him get up after a while.
A couple of hours passed, the rain stopped, and we finally decided to travel to Girnar Hill.
It was only with great difficulty that we managed to persuade the rickshaw driver to take us to the foot of the hill for 60 rupees. The road there turned out to be really long; as Wolchy said, it was our farthest tuk-tuk ride yet. So we decided to pay the tuk-tuk driver 70 rupees.
At the foot of the hill, it was around 12 o’clock. The clouds had almost cleared. The weather was nice, not hot, and the sun wasn’t beating down.
The climb was pleasant — away from the noisy streets and crowds of tuk-tuks. Somewhere around the 1,500th step, the first signs of fatigue began to set in. At the 2,000th step, we drank some water and rested a little.
After that, the markers with the step numbers disappeared, and somewhere around the 3,000th step we came out to magnificent Jain temples. I did not expect at all that there would be such beautiful temples here – scenes, ornaments, and animal figures carved out of stone. The temples are beautifully decorated with white domes adorned with white mosaic patterns.
After climbing higher, a beautiful view of the entire temple complex opens up. Since we happened upon such beauty by chance, it became more joyful to keep going uphill, although by that point we were already quite tired. We wanted to eat and drink.
We soon sat down to eat some biscuits with a view of the mountains and the lake — it’s beautiful here. Silence, peace, fresh air. Then a fairly steep climb began, and our strength was running out. We first reached the second temple, and then the third. We no longer had the strength to go to the fourth, the last temple. Besides, we had already seen the most interesting parts and had indeed reached the highest point of Girnar. How many steps we walked is a mystery. On the way back, we struck up a conversation with a pleasant-looking Indian man; it turned out he had come from Mumbai and was climbing Girnar for the 15th time — he said it is a sacred place for Hindus.
Going down was faster, although our legs were also very tired. Once we sat down to rest and refuel with biscuits and water. By evening the sky was covered with clouds again, but it was still very beautiful.
Closer to the start of the ascent, on both sides of the path in the trees, there were many monkeys sitting. They seemed completely tame, just sitting there and waiting for someone to give them food. Some were eating something. Some were jumping from branch to branch — they really are so agile. Where did this agility go in the process of evolution? One monkey ran along the path behind me, and then, pushing off from me, leapt onto a branch.
We managed to persuade a tuk-tuk driver to take us to the bus station for 50 rupees довольно quickly.
In the evening we went to eat thali at some little hole-in-the-wall place. More out of desperation than desire — there was nothing else to eat here besides thali, and we were hungry.
It was cheaper here than at yesterday’s little restaurant (80 rupees instead of 120), but the food was tasty. Though the atmosphere was so-so. I wish I hadn’t seen how they wash the plates….
