Ranchi, Netarhat, Ajodhya Hills

Having avoided the Christmas-New Year tourist rush, I set off on another road trip on Monday the 3rd January. As usual, young Firoz was at the wheel, and this time both Swarnava and Koushik gave me company. This is the evening of Friday the 7th, and we have just come back home after a most satisfactory, 1100-plus km journey.

We had planned out the trip only vaguely, not being sure when and where we would be stopped and turned back during this freshly-rising Covid wave. In fact, our CM had announced on Sunday afternoon that tighter restrictions would come into force from the 3rd itself, including closure of schools (not that they had every properly opened!) and tourist hotspots. The only given was – seeing that the interstate border was open – that we would eventually drop off Swarnava at his BIT Mesra campus. We had a smooth and leisurely trip to Ranchi, stopping off to lunch at Hotel Rajdhani – the same place where we had eaten back in February 2019 – and visit the Jonha Falls, a picturesque spot from where we had to hurry away, no thanks to a picnic party which was playing raucous music at ear-splitting volume (typical Indians ‘enjoying’ themselves, all health- and environmental concerns be damned). The road via Purulia is in excellent condition though spattered with speedbreaker bumps till Jhalda, and then fine again after a while. We reached Ranchi in the afternoon and checked into the ‘International Guest House’ at BIT, which offers excellent lodgings for the price. Swarnava showed us proudly around the huge and lush green campus. That first night was pretty cold, but we managed to sleep well.

The next morning we headed for Netarhat. Again, the road was good to excellent except for a longish stretch before and after Lohardaga. Shortly after Bishunpur we started climbing up a hill road through dense forest. It was my car’s first ever hill trip, and it went beautifully. We checked into Jharkhand Tourism’s Hotel Prabhat Vihar, where a friend had booked me the best rooms a week beforehand. It was fine, though I found it a tad overpriced: you can get everything you want in the same hotel much more cheaply, or in one of the numerous hotels/guest houses/homestays nearby. They only checked my vaccination certificate, considering that enough to cover all four! We spent the afternoon seeing the local sights, including the most remarkable feature of a sal forest within two km of the pine woods at Koyel View Point, and rounding it off with a lovely view at Sunset Point, which, alas, gradually became too crowded and noisy for my liking. At dawn next day we had a glorious view of the sunrise, which is the hotel’s USP. It got too crowded again for about forty minutes, because scores of tourists came over from all the other accommodations – I wish our hotel charged non boarders for the privilege…

Everybody agreed that the Netarhat trip was perfect, and for me it was the culmination of a nearly fifty-year wait. Wednesday’s leisurely drive was to Mccluskiegunj, about which I had heard some good reviews, but though the drive itself was most enjoyable, we all found the sleepy little town devoid of interest and no good place to stay either – Gulmohur Lodge could only offer very cold rooms and no food because the cook had run away, while Rana’s Country Cottage behaved most strangely, turning us away because ‘they were not taking in boarders owing to the Covid scourge’, though only the previous day they had offered accommodation over the phone. Don’t be taken in by the reviews you read online. So we decided, after seeing the ribbon-thin Degadegi river (whose sand, according to some dubious looking locals, had magical healing properties) we decided to drive back to Ranchi. There we finally left Swarnava after coffee and snacks and a little photo session, then checked into a room at a very ordinary but adequate Oyo certified hotel off the highway a furlong from the BIT junction. End of Wednesday’s travels. That night I took a sleeping pill to fight off both Koushik and Firoz snoring sonorously around me.

We had earlier planned to visit Bodh Gaya next, but that would be risking another border crossing, and in any case all ‘religious places’ had been closed, so there was no point going to a place where the monasteries were the only real attractions. So we headed back towards West Bengal on Thursday morning, and drove up Ajodhya Hill. Having taken a room at a guest house of one of our state government departments which Koushik’s father had booked for us, we drove around the locale, visiting the Upper and Lower Dam and notably the ‘Marble Lake’(a miniature version of the famed Marble Rocks at Jabbalpur) before calling it a day.

We turned in early on Thursday night and got up lateish on Friday morning, because the strain of early mornings had begun to tell on all three of us. Then we drove down to Mukutmanipur, where, strangely, they told us at the Sonajhuri government resort that every cottage and room was booked, though the place looked deserted, with not a car in sight except ours. There was no boat ride, because Koushik is scared of open water, and the park as well as the dam were off limits, so after a hearty lunch we headed back for home.

The highlights of this trip were a) the several lovely drives through forested roads, b) the good eating, sometimes at expensive joints and sometimes at roadside inns, and c) the delightful no-holds-barred, hours-long addas. And for me the best reward was being repeatedly reassured that everybody had enjoyed himself to his heart’s content. I know this much about myself by now: nothing pleases me more than pleasing people whom I like!

God willing, I shall go on travelling like this for as long as I live.

[Come back for some photos in a day or two]

See the previous post in connection with Covid:

A month ago, the daily new infection rate in India was around 5,000; today it has soared to 117,000. Yet the death rate remains stuck at exactly the same level – between 200 and 400 (today’s count is 302, and I am sure if you probe a little deeper, you will find that a large proportion of those were elderly people with high co-morbidities). Children are not seriously affected in any significant numbers. Only deliberately blind or stupid people can help drawing the only obvious conclusion – namely that this latest ‘Omicron’ scare is a load of hogwash; the infection rate seems to have skyrocketed only because the government encouraged, media-hyped scare has sent vast numbers (mostly ‘educated’ people, alas!), who would never have bothered otherwise, with no symptoms or malaise whatsoever, scurrying to get themselves tested. By now it should be quite, quite clear to all but the brainwashed that the whole thing is politically motivated, and driven by all those who have hugely benefited from the nearly-two year old panic, from the billionaires who run online communication platforms and edtech and pharma and IT companies to the millions who have been drawing salaries from home without doing any work worth the name. It was most telling that though I saw thousands and interacted with scores of people during this five-day trip, the only two who sounded ‘deeply concerned’ about the wildfire spread of the virus were people with assured salaries…

As for school closures, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the World Health Organization, said only two days ago that 'schools should be the last to close and first to open'. Obviously we don't pay any attention to 'experts' unless their advice suits our pet prejudices. And in India, at least, just about everybody seems to be happy to see the schools stay closed.