Sinhagad

I keep meaning to post about this, but somehow I never quite do. Better late than never, I suppose!

The Saturday before I got sick, I went to Sinhagad. Sinhagad is a ruined fort dating from around the 14th century, located some 30km from Pune. The guidebook described it as ‘much adored’ and ‘a desired picnic and getaway spot’. In my naivety, I imagined a rolling park sort of thing, fairly sedate and with a couple of picturesque tumble-down walls and such dotted around, maybe a tower or two, if I was lucky.

My first clue that this impression might not be entirely accurate came when my driver, who arrived in a plush jeep-type thing, got a peculiar look on his face at the mention of Sinhagad, and proceeded to spend a long ten minutes on the phone in Hindi. He finally hung up and we set off, but we hadn’t got past the first set of traffic lights when his phone rang and he pulled onto the pavement. After another, quicker conversation – still in Hindi, of course – I was handed the phone. The line was kind of crackly, so it took me a moment to work out that we were going back to the hotel and they would send another car for me. The guy said it was because ‘this car wasn’t allowed’ to go to Sinhagad, but since his English wasn’t fantastic, I assumed he simply meant that the driver didn’t have time to go all that way, or something like that. In any case, we did a U-turn, went back to the hotel, and I was soon picked up by a perfectly comfortable but noticeably smaller Fiat.

The drive took about an hour through some very lush, green countryside. We passed the lake created by the Khadakwasla Dam, which the driver was very keen to point out to me, and finally arrived at the foot of a hill, guarded by a couple of military gentlemen with large guns. As the driver paid them the toll, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of plaques pinned to the surrounding trees, with some Hindi writing and the unmistakable image of a leopard. Since someone had mentioned to me that the place was rather isolated, and big cats were occasionally seen in the area, I couldn’t help but be a wee bit worried. Still, I reminded myself I was unlikely to be alone, and in any case, no leopard with any sense would be hunting in the middle of the day. The driver finished talking to the guards and we set off up the hill.

The first ten minutes, I sat in the continuous expectation of at any moment rounding the corner into a parking lot of some sort. There was no shortage of corners, after all – every 20m we seemed to change direction. It wasn’t until around a quarter of an hour had passed, and the vegetation changed abruptly, that I realised that we were not actually on a small hill, winding our way through a forest as I had thought, but were, in fact, in the process of climbing a mountain. At this point, the leafy trees which had surrounded us, obscuring the view, gave way to clusters of coarse, low-lying bushes and shrubs, and I was able to see for the first time just how steep the way down was. As it turns out, Sinhagad is located 1350m above sea level!

We continued our ascent for another ten or fifteen minutes, occasionally having to pull in to let pass motorbikes or other cars coming back down, before finally arriving on a small plateau that functioned as a parking lot. It was a bit confused, stuffed with cars parked every which way, and tents and stalls selling chai and snacks along every side. We found a space easily enough, though, so I didn’t think any more of it. The driver seemed a bit concerned for me because of the heat, but there was a pleasant breeze, so I wasn’t too worried. He gave me his number, telling me to call him if I had any trouble, and I set off.

At this point, I knew we were pretty high up. The parking lot offered a fantastic view, and we had, after all, been climbing steeply for almost half an hour. It wasn’t until I started to move around that I realised just how high we really were. The first part of the way up to the fort was a narrow, flat path in deep shade, lined on one side with fruit and snack vendors. Already walking along there, I began to feel a bit out of breath, but I put it down to the heat and ignored it. The path was followed by some steps – wide, low ones, cut into the mountain, not dramatic in any sense: I managed to climb about a dozen before I either had to sit down or fall over. It was actually a bit frightening; I am not in the best of shape, but I am not hugely unhealthy either, and I am used to my body doing what I want it to, or at least giving me fair warning before it stops. Now, though, after hardly any exertion, I was quite sure that if I stood up again, I wouldn’t remain that way for long. Even walking back to the car seemed at that point like an insurmountable obstacle. Eventually, of course, though it took several minutes, I began to adapt to the quality of the air, and was able to continue up the steps to what was left of the fort itself.

When I got there, I was quite astonished. I had been expecting something really quite isolated, with just my fellow visitors and one or two food vendors. Some of that had already been dispelled by the large amount of stalls I’d already seen in the parking lot and along the path, but I was still a bit shocked at what I found at the top. It was practically a little village! In addition to the food and drink I had been expecting, there were shacks and huts all over the place, obviously home to a number of families, following the little ‘streets’ left by the ruins. People were everywhere, visitors and residents both, sitting on picnic blankets in the grassy areas, drinking chai in the shade of the tents, or just wandering around looking at the ruins and enjoying the view.

I did the same, and spent about an hour exploring the site. The ruins themselves weren’t much to look at, being only a few bits of wall left over. There was one piece that had been kept up, though, a memorial to (as I later discovered) Tanaji, one of the military leaders who died there. And old guide was performing a rather impressive ‘story through song’ thing when I got there. Everyone in the shrine area seemed to be barefoot or in socks. I didn’t fancy taking off my shoes just to get to the other side, so I very carefully made my way around the edge, on top of the thorny bushes, to avoid causing offence. Just as I had finally made it, a group of Indian youth passed me and went straight across the middle in heavy black trainers. I felt a bit silly.

Mostly, though, I spent my time admiring the view from different vantage points. It was truly spectacular, quite unlike anything I have ever seen outside of National Geographic. Huge (to my flat European mind), tree covered mountains in every direction, the more distant ones shrouded in faint mist, and birds of all kinds swooping in the void between. It was amazing, although I don’t know what it says about me that my first comparison was to a sort of cross between Feralas and the Barrens (if you don’t game, don’t ask).

On my way back down to the car, I met a small family coming up in the opposite direction: An impish little girl of about five, her father, grandfather, and two women in their thirties, one of whom was probably the girl’s mother. The child walked up to me, quite fearlessly, and, when I didn’t immediately realise she wanted to talk to me, said, smiling, ‘She would like to say hello to you.’ Which she then did, in perfect, lightly accented English. We exchanged brief pleasantries, but when I began to move again, the grandfather, having heard that I was alone, took me aside and warned me, very seriously, to take care of myself, because there were bad people about. If he had been patronising about it, I would have just ignored him, but the fact that he was so grave took me by surprise; I hadn’t experienced anything, at any point in my trip, to make me even a bit worried about going around alone, but he was the third person that day to warn me, in all seriousness, about ‘bad people’ (the other two being the driver and the person who helped me plan the trip). So, either the dangers of travelling alone in India as a Western female have been grossly exaggerated, even amongst the local population, or I have been very lucky. Thinking about it, I suspect a bit of both.

Anyway, I made it down to the parking lot, and there discovered why it is generally a good idea to mark out parking spaces properly: When I had left it earlier that morning, there had been two rows of cars, not exactly neatly lined up, but close enough. Now, there were three, set up in such a way that made it clear that no one, at any point, had ever thought to consider that there was a possibility, however remote, that the cars in the middle row might just want to leave before the ones on either side. Our car, of course, was sitting neatly in the middle of the whole mess.

I like to think I am a fairly philosophical person, and since there was obviously nothing anybody could do, I let the driver take me to one of the shady tents on the edge of the plateau and sat sipping my water while he tried to find the drivers of the cars blocking us in. Now, I say drivers, because of course, these were not nice, neat lines, where one car being removed on one side or the other would have allowed us an exit. This was a case of incoming drivers finding the nearest available space and simply leaving their car in it. As a result, not only were there three very muddled lines in centre of the space, but cars had also been left randomly dotted around the edge next to the tents, making it virtually impossible for even the cars on the outer rows to pull out far enough to turn. To put it in more practical terms: Within ten minutes or so, my driver had managed to locate the owners of two of the cars directly behind us and one in front, yet we still couldn’t move an inch. It wasn’t until the driver of the van opposite the car in front of us was found that we began to make real progress. Even then, though, it wasn’t a case of just driving the offending cars away and putting them back once we were out, oh no. Due to the lack of space, it ended up looking more like one of those puzzle boxes, where all the pieces have to be moved several times in a very specific in order to open it. It took about twenty minutes and three guys standing around directing the various drivers (no mirrors, remember) before we were finally able to leave, and yet somehow, I didn’t feel the least bit annoyed about the delay, nor even surprised that it had happened. I think the Indian spirit is beginning to take hold of me…