CHAPTER IV
AHMEDABAD TO AJMIR
The railway station at Ahmedabad has the unusual distinction of two striking minarets of brick-work, richly cut and moulded in successive circular tiers, which rise to a considerable height from amid the palms and plantains of a small well-watered Eastern garden, with many straight-cut paths between the thickly planted trees. These are the remains of a Mohammedan mosque which once stood there. It is an unusually interesting and pleasant place to wander in while waiting for a train.
Our bearer secured a comfortable coupé for our journey to Ajmir, which was to be our next halting-place. We had originally intended to visit Mount Abu to see the wonderful Jain temples of Delwara, but before we reached the Abu road heavy rain came on, and as it would have meant a pony ride of sixteen miles from the station to Mount Abu, we decided to go on to Ajmir without a break.
Leaving Ahmedabad at 8.15 we breakfasted in the train, there being a restaurant car put on. The trains not being corridor trains it is necessary to get out at the stopping stations and find one’s way to the car and back to one’s carriage again.
The country at first was very flat and generally cultivated, but with occasional belts of jungle, where monkeys and peacocks were seen. Fine banyan and acacia trees here and there. Ploughing with oxen was going on, and the yoke of oxen drawing at the irrigation wells was a frequent sight.
About the middle of the day dark clouds rolled up and we had a heavy shower with promise of more to come. Mountains came into view at the same time as the change in the weather, and it was not long before we reached Abu Road Station. The fine mountain range on the left of the line amid which Mount Abu was situated was veiled in cloud and rain, but as we left the mountains the sky cleared again, and we entered a flat, desert-like region covered with stunted trees or dry scrub bush, stretching for miles. A strange-looking country was afterwards traversed, where huge granite boulders lay on the earth like mounds and partly overgrown, others might have been imagined to be the shells of gigantic tortoises. At a station called Mori this characteristic was the most striking. The stations on this line through Rajpootana were built after the Moslem fashion and had a superficial resemblance to mosques, being domed, the smaller buildings and wayside signal huts being treated in the same manner.
After a rainy sunset of orange and grey, darkness soon fell, and it was not long before we reached Ajmir after about twelve hours’ travel—a distance of over three hundred miles. We found fairly comfortable quarters at the station refreshment-rooms, the bedrooms being above and opening on to spacious terraces from which interesting views of the town and country could be had. The only drawbacks were the noises. What with the shrieks of the engines, and the perpetual conversazione carried on on the platforms, which were generally thronged with most picturesque crowds of natives, sleep was very broken.
Ajmir is very beautifully situated, with a fine background of hills, the town itself being on a slope with an old fort crowning a height immediately above it. There is a large military station, the cantonments with the residency and the English bungalows lying on a plain quite away from the native town.
We hired a carriage and drove around the town the morning after our arrival, visiting the old palace and massive fortress built by the Emperor Akbar, who has left so many noble buildings in the north-west of India to testify to his power and influence in the past. We entered through a noble gateway into a large quadrangle surrounded by tremendously high, thick walls and having octagonal bastions at four corners. A pavilion rose in the centre of the court, raised upon a platform led up to by steps of marble. Extensive restorations were being carried on under the Indian Government, so much so that one had fears they were in danger of going too far in the direction of renewal, and did not draw the line with sufficient decision at the limits of preservation and repair. Certainly new work was being put in freely. It was interesting, however, to see that most beautiful and characteristic Indian craft of piercing patterns in marble being carried on. The native carver, turbaned and grey-bearded, was squatting on the ground busy with a small marble grill or screen. He was drilling a geometric diaper pattern through a panel of marble which had a worked moulding for frame. The slab was bedded in clay to keep it from under the worker’s hands, and to prevent splitting. When the holes were drilled he finished the work with chisels and mallet, working out the different bevels and facets of the quatre-foils, and putting in the work that which gave all the richness and the effect of the pattern. He seemed pleased to have his work noticed, and anxious that we should see it in its finished state he went to where a group of native women were at work on other similar grills which had left the carver’s hands, cleaning the pierced patterns from the clay, and showed the completed panels clear cut in the white marble. It was noticeable that the women only did the cleaning and polishing up, but not the carving.