WHETHER OR NOT YOU CARE MUCH FOR ART OR ARCHITECTURE, A VISIT TO THE 15TH CENTURY RANAKPUR JAIN TEMPLE IN RAJASTHAN CAN MAKE A FAN OUT OF YOU.
It did make one out of me. Me, who signed up for the Rajasthan Cycling Tour not so much for the love of art as for the thrills and spills of the road. Truth be said, the road beckons me. It stirs up my adrenaline and makes me want to pedal down many a dusty trail to discover what is round the corner. More often than not, the discovery is rewarding. That is because what comes along with the road has as much to say for it.
Much has come along for me and others in our multinational group of bikers on Indian cycling holiday doing this terrific guided biking tour of Rajasthan. We started off in Udaipur, and explored its lakes and palaces. We have cycled our way to the uphill fortress of Kumbhalgarh and felt the exultation of our biking feat. We have been waylaid by cows and mules, ambushed by herds of sheep, welcomed by villagers, snubbed by their cattle. Among ourselves, we have joked and laughed, argued and made up. We have become a small bickering family on the Most interesting cycling holiday in Rajasthan.
All this has come to pass in just the first few days of this Rajasthan holiday biking tour. Every step of the way, Rajasthan has kept on throwing up surprises.
More surprises seem in store on this India cycling vacation as we leave Kumbhalgarh for the 50-km-long cycling trip to Ranakpur, famous for its Jain temples. The distances on this Rural Rajasthan biking trip have been getting longer with each successive day and for good reason. The more we cycle, the more sturdy and greedy our legs get, and the more milestones we put behind us. There is also some healthy competition brewing among us cyclists. Often, while coming upon an uphill gradient, we spontaneously break into a contest to see who gets to the top first. The winner, it goes without saying, gets no brownie points.
The uneven road to Ranakpur winds through just such a hilly terrain. Up and down, straight and round we go. The day is hot, the vegetation is straggly, at times even sparse, though a green field or a shady grove does pop out of the horizon once in a while. This is rural Rajasthan, baked for millennia by the unrelenting sun. The villages we come upon are no more than a bunch of mud houses with thatched roofs. The people here are hardened by the elements and poverty. They have stern faces, but friendly manners. They smile and wave at us as we pass by. The children scamper after our cycles and see us to the edge of the village. Scenes like these have been a staple of our India cycling tour.
We are bent upon making it to Ranakpur in good time. The culprit of this haste is the tour guide of our Rajasthan cycling holiday. He has revealed something intriguing. Like a true-blue son of the soil who takes secret pride in his motherland’s heritage, the tour guide has told us of the pillars of Ranakpur temple that are impossible to count. As if that wasn’t enough to get us going, he has also gushed about a marble carving of 1008 snakes with their bodies intertwined in such a way that it is impossible to find the ends of their tails.
WELL, FROM THE TOUR GUIDE’S ACCOUNT, THE JAIN TEMPLE OF RANAKPUR DOES SOUND LIKE A HOUSE OF INTRIGUE.
But then, what is impossible for a bunch of doughty cyclists out on Indian biking adventure. Keeping our expectations within the biosphere, we press on for our destination and stop only for a lunch break in a grove of trees where, lying in the cool grass after the fulfilling meal, we are seriously tempted to doze off.
From a distance, the Ranakpur Jain Temple looks like a glimmering pearl in the surrounding greenery. The slanting rays of the sun light up its marble domes, turrets and cupolas as we approach. There is a small crowd gathered at the foot of the stairs leading up into the temple. Clearly, it is Indian holiday tourist season.
We no sooner file into the temple than we are taken in by its prodigious marble carvings. Everywhere we look, we see artworks of intricate and painstaking stonemasonry. On the ceilings, walls, doorways, apses, cornices and friezes, there is hardly an inch where the stone hasn’t been caressed by the sculptor’s chisel.
The pillars, we all concede, are just too many to count. And no two are carved alike. More than their number, it is the carvings on them that draw us in. Little bas-reliefs of deities, animals, danseuses strike animated poses. A ceiling close to the entrance has the sculpted figure of a five-bodied man representing fire, water, air, earth and heaven. Another ceiling features concentric geometric patterns depicting the complex Jain cosmology. In the sanctum sanctorum sits the idol of the presiding deity Lord Adinatha in a meditation pose.
The marble carving of 1008 snakes turns out to be different from what we had imagined. It shows Lord Parshwanath under the canopy of 1008 snake heads. The tails are intertwined so that their ends merge into one another. So there are no tail-ends to trace.
The time we spend in Ranakpur Jain Temple stokes up the art buffs in us. It adds a little touch of the spiritual to the Rajasthan cycling holiday adventure.
Before leaving, all of us in our India biking trip group take turns to stand under the carving of the Kalpavriksha, the wish-granting tree, to make a wish. When my turn comes, I simply go blank. There is nothing I can think of to wish for.
