Ranthambore Notes

Before I went to Ranthambore, I don’t think I had ever heard so much silence before. The ride from Jaipur to Ranthambore was blissful. While my driver Dinesh played B-grade Hindi film songs in the background, I was immersed in F Scott Fitzgerald’s creation of rise and fall of passion between Rosemary and Dick Diver for about an hour of the three hour journey. The drive took me through some interesting places. Green fields, mud huts, cattle, dung, cycles, women sitting on the side of the road as if they were born to do that, colors, yellow, orange, dark pink, turbans. I had been to Rajasthan so many times before but there was some new vibe to all this, as if someone had just increased the contrast of all the imagery.

The silence on the terrace of my hotel ‘Castle Jhoomar Baori’ introduced me to a version of silence that I never knew before. This silence was really overwhelming. It screamed. It spoke to me. It even said sweet nothings to me. It took us about five minutes to become friends. Wind accompanied the silence. At the cost of sounding like a narcissist, if I have ever secretly felt like a royal queen, it was the moment I stepped onto this terrace. This was created for me, I thought. The wild animals made music. The jungle, which surrounded me as my hotel was almost in the middle of it, gave me the privilege to see it in all its abundance, in all its glory.

The hotel itself was full of all kinds of crawlies. You name it. Lizards, spiders, leeches, snails, ants, big ants et al. They all crawl so proudly like they belong there. And somehow I did not feel scared of them. You know how it is. You always admire things which have this sense of belonging, which we encounter so rarely. If at all, I felt like an intruder in their cosy lives.

The hotel was this sort of an old haveli turned into a commercial place. It had a very rustic feel to it. Sometimes, an eerie feel too. The nights can be tough if you are all alone in a suite called ‘Tiger Suite’ and they put a bedsheet in your room which looks like this!!!! Yes, I removed it within two minutes after I clicked this picture.

It had some interesting paintings too. This is my favourite. Check out the woman sitting by the window. What a beautiful image of melancholy and longing. An ignored queen. It even prompted me to ask an important question to a friend. “Is mutual love really important in life?”  He told me that it is not, but I will forever feel it is and this space in between is where all the literature will come from.I still am not sure if I believe him, which ironically proves what he said!

Anyhow, Ranthambore Fort was another lovely place. It is a spectacular collage of ruins. Each and every part more mesmerizing than the other. It was a stairway to a lot of lovely pictures, portraits and also a lot of friendly apes.