A TOUR TO THE RAJPUTANA Chapter-2

Chapter 2

Chawand

At around 8'o clock we reached our hotel in Udaipur city. Now we are heading towards Chawand. It had been the home to Maharana Pratap for the last 12 years of his life. Chawand is 2 hours from here, till then I choose to sit back and dream. 

Earlier while reading about Mewar, I came to know that the Mewar dynasty still continues and the present Rana is Maharana Arvind Singh. His son is Lakshara Singh and is married to a princess of a still continuing dynasty from Orissa.

Looking through the window, a signboard catches my attention, it reads  "Banswara" with an arrow marked in other direction and "165 km" written in white.

"Which place is Banswara?" I ask, out of curiosity.

 "Bheels, the tribe which helped the Rana in the battle still continues to live in Banswara", says the taxi driver, who is patient enough to my intricate questions, I believe, as he replies calmly. 

After a pause, pointing towards a distant place, he says "There, it is the Kewra village, it has mines of zinc, copper, silver surrounding it, and is also famous for its white marble."

In about half an hour, the cab begins to climb a hill. I roll down the cab window, scan the open desert-scape below with scattered greens and golden rocky terrain. 

The roller-coaster ride ends and the sound of brakes being pulled breaks off my focus. 

From years 1585-1597 Rana Pratap stayed at this place with his family and breathed his last. A memorial is built here on white marble. The statue is carved beautifully, also having the carvings of warriors who attained martyrdom while playing their part in the battle against Akbar, the powerful Mughal Emperor.

Even though it is November, here in Rajasthan, as the sun starts aligning itself straight above the head, sweat starts dripping down like melting ice cream. Still, I start investigating the area up and down, at once. There are ruins of the Fort, nearby and we, thus, decide to walk up to it. 

But I get an instinct to walk up a little more further than where my parents have just stopped, and yes, I find myself doing that. Not to my amazement, Dad calls for me from behind, to get back. Anyways, I am not one to listen when I have already decided upon finding out every stone lying in each corner there. 

"See, a small flight of stairs!" I exclaim as if I just found a treasure box lying. But it is a treasure for me indeed. 

We climb up the stairs just discovered by me and reach onto some kind of terrace but it is all in ruins. Some stumps, which perhaps used to be walls or pillars, are visible, but nothing more than that. 

"There isn't any way to go inside" I frown and in the next moment, we leave the place, shutting ourselves back into the car.

I am still feeling incomplete as I don't even know whether I went inside the palace which once had walls surrounding it or there was some way to go inside, which had escaped my vision. 

Immersed in a small amount of overthinking, I lift my gaze, to find a Chamunda (Kali) temple as, by now, the car has reached a little down the hill, following another route. This temple was built by Pratap, and hence, this place got its name as Chawand after Chamunda. 

Geographically chosen, this place was hidden from the sight of enemies as the Rana wanted to spend the last years of his life in harmony, after winning backrest of the parts of his motherland captured by the Mughals. Reaching the foot of the hill, the car runs again, only to stop at the next destination.

...

-D.P.