Thursday, September 03, 2015

Ep 2 Part 3 : To touch the Westernmost Tip of India

Episode 2 : Western India
Ep. 2 Part 3
: To touch the Westernmost Tip of India

After last night's late arrival I was in no mood to wake up early. So decided to sleep till I got a kick from Sid to wake up. We were late and decided to skip the brunch and instead head out first and have food enroute.
Today's main attraction is Koteswar which is supposed to be the western most point of India. I've kinda touched Northern and Southern tips before and now wanted to touch Western and Eastern tips of India. So the plan is to start with the easy one ie the West. I was blabbering all about these when Sid was like, 'salle khane ka soch pehle" (trans: Think about breakfast first dude). He was right, we were hungry.
By the time we reached Nakhatrana, all the rats and cats and whatever in our stomachs were running around. "Fun n Foods" at Nakhatrana did throw a surprise on us with it's menu, it had everything from Punabi, Chinese, South Indian :)O) and even Italian :O. Although we decided to play it safe with Chole Batura. Not sure if it was the empty stomach but it was lip-smacking. We kinda instantly decided to have the dinner there while returning.
Again the same desolate and sunny roads. Sometimes we wondered how hot would these places be during summer time. I surely don't wanna be here during summer. As always the roads were good, even the small state roads. I really wondered if there is any bad stretch of road here in Gujarat. We we will find out soon.

Long Desolate roads of Gujarat,
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Reached Lakhpat around 3.30pm, it was still very sunny, luckily not too hot. We entered the fort and went to one of the watch towers. It was manned by few BSF guys. One could see the vast expanses of the Rann from there. It seems the border is just a couple of kms ahead. In fact we could see a road that leads to the border from the watch tower.

Our black chariot err the Scorpio invading the Lakhpat Fort,
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There used to be a Canon there long time ago,
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A temple in the middle of nowhere,
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Would've been nice to see the fort in fading light of the Sun but we had another destination to cover for the day. Was wondering how it would be to shoot (photographs of course) this fort when the Sun is fading on the horizon. Not sure if it's allowed to go down to the other side ie near the Rann. But may be that's for some other time and now Koteswar awaits us for the Sunset today. So we left the Fort and headed towards the Western-most point of India.

Soon enough we were there, it was around 5.30pm and Sun was slowly into it's decent to take rest for the day. I am not exactly the temple goer kind of guy, so decided to hold my base around the viewpoint area of the promenade. Setup the tripod and oh boy, it was a mistake to do that. Some people were too inquisitive once they saw the tripod and were bugging me like anything. Sid decided to scoot off in another direction and left me fend the barrage of questions. I can't understand why people are so interested to know the price of the gear:p

The view of the Koteswar Temple,
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The Temple, the lighthouse and the moon in the same frame :)
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A closeup of the temple,
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The lighthouse on the beach a bit far,
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We've spent couple of hours there, clicking few pics of the place. As it always happen, the fading lights caste a lovely golden hue to the surroundings and I tried to capture another glorious sunset.

A ship farway in the fading sunset colors,
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A boat marooned because of the tide perhaps,
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Boats at low light,
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Koteswar temple at night,
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Decided to leave the place by 8PM around. The return journey was uneventful, apart from the fact that we couldn't take the route thru Nakhatrana and instead decided to stick to the Highway via Naliya. Food was on a dhaba somewhere near a place called Sanosara. Reached Bhuj a bit late and decided to hit the bed asap. Tomorrow we have long journey and plan is to reach Jaisalmer if we can start early. But we also thought about going to Dholavira as it was part of the original plan. Decided to decide in the morning where to go tomorrow..
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