Learning to drive has been a boon.
As a kid, I had been entranced by the pictures of sand dunes and forts in school textbooks and children’s magazines. One particular image from a Tinkle issue – a coloured sketch of the Vijaya Stambh at Chittorgarh fort had stuck in my mind, and in 2013, on one of my solo trips, I finally set foot on the Chittorgarh fort, and was absolutely spellbound by the location atop a table-top hill and the scale of the area bounded by its imposing walls. I have explored Rajasthan further, making it a point to explore at least one new place every year. Until before the pandemic struck, I had visited almost every major city of Rajasthan and then some.
However, it has never been about the destination as far as Rajasthan is concerned. Looking through the State Roadways bus windows, or craning the neck out from cabs and fancily decked-up auto-rickshaws, I have often marvelled at the intriguing shifts in landscapes – straddled by the Aravallis intercepting you shortly after you have entered from the East, with its table-top ranges swishing across like stripes of a tiger, some covered in a rich green cloak, yet others balding with their denuding rocky surfaces exposed, flanked now by swathes of lush green agricultural land, now turning light brown or pink or yellow with short lean trees strewn around as if social-distancing since time immemorial, then slowly turning golden as the ground surface mutates into waves of sandy dunes of the Thar. Abandoned forts and fortress walls crown hill tops every few scores of kilometres. Further south near Mount Abu, the Aravallis look nothing short of a slice from the Western or Eastern Ghats.
There is also a vast Salt Lake (Sambhar) somewhere at the edge of the desert in the heart of Rajasthan. Villages only turn up after long sprees of nothingness, and even then they are a collation of a handful of houses. Dried river channels cross your path occasionally, their sandy beds hinting at an older time of more abundance. Camels trundle along serenaded by their handlers, their upturned mouths betraying an indifference towards their dreary lives. Nomadic herders appear out of nowhere with flocks of little sheep and goats. Deeper in the desert, if you’re lucky, you may spot a monitor lizard or a hyena lurking amidst the shrubs.
In all of my trips prior to the pandemic, I have often been constrained by the mode of transport. There have been points or locations on the routes, which I have earmarked to return to later at my own leisure, since stopping by then was not an option. There have been roads emanating from the main roads that have often left me wondering as to where they led to. Now at 35, after learning to drive, I finally have the wherewithal to indulge in the fantasies that I harboured while travelling in my erstwhile cloistered fashion. This is an album to celebrate the many facets of the Rajasthan landscape that I have chanced upon on my most recent and some of my very first ever self-driving trips, which will hopefully be enriched with future trips.
The Timber Trawler 