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Thursday, 24 July 2008 12:42
The Deccan

And then came the Deccan (the vast, dessicated plateau
in the center of India).  Starting with the star of
them all, Gulbarga.  Wow.  Timbuktu comes to mind.
For two reasons:  first, it is not merely in the back
of beyond, it is in the back of THAT.  One drives
there over some of the worst roads in India, where
covering 100 km means 5.5 hours dusty, shaky drive
through some of the most desolate country I have ever
seen (I am so glad the driving was done by our driver,
Ismail Khan, not me.  Btw, Khan means a descendant of
Chingis Khan  his descent was very evident in his
driving style).  Miles and miles and miles of red and
yellow earth sparsely sprinkled with yellow dry grass
and here and there and green (-ish) bush or a twisted,
withered acacia tree; earth tortured by geology:
twisted and broken with steps, pinnacles, gorges and
ravines, and large, naked, undulating, naked hills,
under a hot, white sky; and here and there a ravine
which is the potential river bed:  a river once flowed
there;  it might yet again, if the monsoon ever
delivers, perhaps next year, perhaps the year after
that;  land empty of man and his beasts and his
agriculture.  And then one arrives suddenly at the
city, situated in a conical depression around a lake
(the sole reason for its existence  water!), or
rather, like some slimy, disgusting algae creeping out
of the lake and oozing its way up the slopes of the
depression.  (This is the second reason why Gulbarga
is like Timbuktu  like Timbuktu it was once a capital
of a great empire of gold and diamonds in the middle
of the desert;  but upon discovery it turns out to be
nothing but a blasted, god-forsaken sh*thole!).  But
the algae of the city does not creep all the way up to
the rim of the depression in which it dwells:    the
rim is sandy, dusty, red, and naked.  And on it stand
the reason why we came here:  the Bahmani Royal Tombs,
these wonderful mysterious objects of perfect geometry
circles upon squares upon octagons, the fantasies of
pure, perfect geometry, icons of another world, world
of the mind, a million miles away from the misery of
the real world which is Gulbarga.

Just check these babes out.

http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~islamarc/WebPage1/htm_eng/index/map_e.htm

Much of Gulbarga is a city lived among the necropolis
of the Bahmani kings:  people and their beasts live in
houses built against or in-between these beautiful
tombs, women hang their laundry, animals defecate, and
naked children play among these wonders of the world,
with their perfect grace, forlorn in their
abandonment, shedding plaster and tile and stone.  In
the middle of a large necropolis, still in town, if a
little to the east of it, stands the Dargha, a tomb of
a 15th century sufi saint, and a place of major
pilgrimage for the Deccan Muslims.  We arrived a day
before the Urs, the annual festibal, and the place was
crawling with pilgrims, grim men in turbans and
shawls, with beards down to their bellies, and bunches
of peacock feathers in their heads, quiet, meditative,
praying silently while the shennai band sitting on top
of a nearby tomb jammed fortissimo.  A friend says
Gulbarga is famous for exporting vicious swordsmen to
all sectarian riots in India.  I dont doubt it, these
guys looked very purposeful.  But on the day of the
Urs they were, as it were, imbued with peaceful
thoughtfulness.  They didnt seem bloodthirsty at all.

The next day we headed another back-breaking 100 km to
Bidar, a later capital of the Bahmanis, in search of
more Bahmani tombs.

Check out
http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~islamarc/WebPage1/htm/bidar.htm

and especially the most beautiful of them all

http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~islamarc/WebPage1/htm/bidar.htm

This astounding, breathtaking beauty, the tomb of Ali
Barid, was once covered in lilac-colored tile.  A lot
has changed since this photo was taken in 1960.  A
park has grown around the monument;  and students in a
local university come here to study in the breezy
quiet of the monument.

Now, neither Gulbarga nor Bidar are the nicest places
on earth, especially given that they do not seem to
have a sanitation department at all.  (Maybe thats
why the capital was moved from one to the other?
Maybe at one point all the accumulated garbage of
Gulbarga just became too much? Or did the kings simply
run out of suitable locations for impressive tombs?).
But I enjoyed this trip nevertheless.  And I think I
may be back for more.  The God, the merciful, the
compassionate, knows -- Ali Bidar is reason enough.