Kota calling

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Apparently, there was going to be a small festival in Bundi today. We just were not sure exactly when ...

The alarm went off at 7am and we immediately left and headed to the small lake. Someone mentioned a morning procession may start from there.

A large number of men started to congregate. All dressed in white shirts and brown trousers carrying long sticks. They took over a large stadium and performed exercises and fighting manouvers with their sticks They were the Bundi RSS - Hindu nationalists defending cultural erosion. We believed this would be the procession. We watched for a while before returning for breakfast of aloo paratha.


We then walked to the bus station to catch the bus to Kota ......along with many other people.  When the bus arrived there was a mad dash and soon the bus was full, with standing room only.  Luckily, the trip was quite short, at just under an hour! 

We arrived in Kota and were met at the bus station and immediately taken on a quick tour of town.  First stop was a little park up on a hill with great views of the river and an old temple complex. We could even see the Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Pyramids ... There is a 'Seven Wonders' park on the opposite side of the river.


We passed many beautiful monuments, including a new one just being built of the space rocket India has just landed on the moon.

Next stop was masala chai and katori before heading to our accommodation to rest.


We then met with some friends to head to the tiger reserve.  We were not looking for tigers as this is almost impossible but the national park was beautiful...we saw monkey, deer and peacocks.  The park is set along a small canyon with a river running through with stunning views. 


It was then time to head to the Dussehra festival (celebrating the victory of Rama over the 10 headed demon Ravana).  This is a very big festival in Kota.  There was taffic and people everywhere!   We got as close as we could to the festival site and parked the car.  We walked through the crowds to where the procession was starting.


Our friends had a plan to help us beat the crushing crowds and volume of people. We would join a small tour group of tourists who had a police escort. It was a good plan indeed and we were protected from the crowds by the police! It was still totally crazy and we saw so many interesting things enroute to a small fenced off area. We had prime views of the 3 huge demons that were about to be burned. Whilst we waited a National TV channel - News 21 interviewed Darryl and we took photos with all some of the unusual characters that were part of the procession. Suddenly, loud laughing could be heard from Ravana and he spoke!
The demons were burnt one by one and they were filled with fire crackers and fireworks. The flames roared and the temperature rose because we were close! It was a pretty awesome spectacle!


Fireworks followed and this is probably the first time we have been directly underneath a firework display. A little apprension joined us!


As soon as the show was over, the police pulled us through the crowds to a safe government building. Once things had quietened down a little we were released back into the wild. With our friends help we piled into an auto and he took us to the car. The traffic was so bad and we even had a small knock from an auto. Busy, busy, busy!

An interesting experience. It appeared that some of the time the gigantic demon drew the attention of the crowd, the rest of the time it was us ... the white faced tourists. Many photos, many smiles. What a night!




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