How to get there?
It has been weeks that I was trying to write this post and couldn’t even start it. With short days of July in New Zealand and the busy season of our projects, it’s hard to find time to do anything useful. But finally I got myself together and tried to stay positive and motivated and write about our stay in Gujarat which has been always close to my heart. Let’s see beautiful Gujarat and specifically Kutch together.
After spending a week in Rajasthan and getting used to finding our way around India, it is time to get to less visited parts of India.
The next destination on the list is Kutch distinct. A vast desert spanned between India and Pakistan with unique natural features and home to some of the most extra ordinary tribes living in India. To get there, we booked a night bus ticket from Jodhpur in Rajasthan to Bhuj, the biggest city in Kutch distinct. The trip took around 14 hours and cost us 15 USD each. The interesting fact about the night bus is unlike what we imagined, we didn’t get any seat, we got a compartment above the seat rows, with soft mattress to seat and sleep on. It also has a door for privacy. A very comfortable way for spending 14 hours on a bus. Don’t expect to have a perfect sleep though, you might get a comfortable soft mattress with enough space to stretch your legs but don’t forget that you are on a moving bus in India, maneuvering non stop while honking all night long. Leaving Jodhpur around 8:00 pm, we arrived at Bhuj around 10:00 am the next morning.
Where to stay in Kutch?
The main reason for vising Gujarat was the Kutch desert, that’s why we picked Bhuj to stay in for couple of days. From Bhuj, it’s easy to arrange day trips to villages in Kutch and visiting different tribes living close by. Bhuj is not a big city with tourism infrastructure like big cities in Rajasthan but it had what we needed. We walked to city tourism motel and booked a basic room for 5 USD per night with shared bathroom. it was a basic hostel yet spacious and apart from us, few people were around. The staff were super friendly and after spending half an hour explaining what we are looking after in Bhuj, they prepared an itinerary on which villages to visit and arranged a 4WD drive car with a local driver for our next three days to cover as much as we can in three days. After spending pretty much nothing on food and accommodation in Bhuj, having a private car for 3 days was absolutely affordable. There are some accommodations in Runn of Kutch and in Rabari villages, built by sustainable tourism NGOs, it probably give some more in depth information about locals but most of the time they are super expensive and also built for tourists as well so even now after 12 years, if we decide to get back to Kutch, we still prefer to stay in Bhuj and drive where ever we plan for the day. To support locals, we always each lunch in the villages and buy locally made handicrafts to contribute.
The other good thing about staying in Bhuj is that we could walk around markets n town and see some of the tribes and sub groups that we didn’t have a chance to go and find in their villages or tents in the middle of nowhere in the Kutch desert. They all come to buy their essentials and sell some of their products in the market. Like this woman and her child from Jats Tribe.
Kutch Desert:
Bhuj is the center of Kutch desert distinct. To visit local tribes, on the first day we headed north to visit villages of Hodka, Dhordo and Khavda. These villages are the craft centers of the region where clusters of grass roofed mud huts are decorated with traditional clay and white washed pattern. Women across all the tribes in the area, including Rabari, black rabari, Meghwalis and Jats are masters in embroidery. We’ll get into the details soon. Let’s have a look at their mud huts first. Some of these villages are redesigned to look almost perfect for tourists, we haven’t see any other tourist apart from ourselves though. But in general, the whole region didn’t look artificial or built for tourism like some villages that we have visited before in Thailand and Vietnam.
I got attracted to Kutch desert and its people, when I saw a photo of a Meghwali woman in front of her colorful hut. Being obsessed with embroidery, sewing, nomadic tribes and colors, Kutch desert worked like a magnet for us and in few months time we were on the plane to India with Kutch desert on our must see list. Being there was a dream coming true and to be honest it didn’t fail. Even now after 12 years, I tried to update my information about the area and the locals and still there’s not much information or even photos available about these amazing people and the stunning place.
The Rabari, also called the Rewari or Desai, are an indigenous tribal cast of nomadic cattle and camel herders and shepherds that live throughout northwest India, primarily in the states of Gujarat, Punjab and Rajasthan. Other Rabari groups also live in Pakistan, especially in the region of the Sindh Desert. There are other tribes in these area like Meghwals living around Ludia village and also jats but I’m not sure about which one is the subgroup of the others and how different branches of these tribes are located but it is easy to distinguish them based on their outfits especially women outfits after spending some time with each tribe. What is unique among all these tribes is their stunning embroidery skills and other arts and crafts. Like other Indians, they are not shy or conservative when it comes to colors, patterns and bold jewelries and it made their life in plain and dry desert vivid, joyful and adventurous like the spirit of most of the women and kids that we have seen in all the villages we’ve visited during our stay.
Here I found good information about the arts and crafts in Gujarat and each region’s expertise. as mentioned earlier we had a car with a driver for three days and the cost was pretty affordable. Unfortunately I don’t have the details of the costs for all the bookings but I have some and at the end of the India trip posts, I’ll add a summery of the total cost and how much we’ve spent on different activities but the good thing about having a car is using each day efficiently and cover as much as possible especially in the areas where public transportation is not available or it’s not effective and we need to visit few places each day. The other good thing is you can stop when ever you want and you won’t miss anything. There’s no way to stop a shared taxi or a bus in the middle of nowhere right? So sometimes spending more on transportation and saving on food and accommodation is going the long way.
Before visiting Kutch, I’ve read somewhere that in some villages in northern Kutch which tourism is thriving, there’s more commercial attitude toward tourists but we didn’t feel it at all. In certain villages kids were trying to sell us their handmade goods but they weren’t pushy. It’s good for the kids to stay motivated and learn about their art and crafts knowing they can make money from it as long as it won’t affect their education and it won’t gets to the point that they expect visitors to pay them money no matter what and being aggressive toward visitors not paying them money like lots of other amazing places in the world. Luckily the general attitude toward outsiders was amazing. We had friendly chats with locals and managed to capture amazing shots. We did buy small items from the kids in each village that we visited and give them as souvenirs.
We’ve spent most of our first day in Ludia with Meghwal people. We loved the atmosphere, the people and their gorgeous houses. Let’s have a look together at few photos from Ludia and some smaller villages close to Ludia settlement.
Before leaving Ludia behind, I remembered something interesting about these villages. We haven’t seen even a single man in any of the villages. They leave early in the morning and come back before sunset and villages are ran by women. From redoing huts walls, baking bread, bringing water to village,doing lots of embroidery and raising kids, all being done with women while dressed up in beautiful amazing outfit. Good on them!
Day 2: Visiting Anjar
Anjar is a town of historic importance, located in Southern Kutch, around 40 km away from one of the biggest ports in India – Kandla Port. With nearly 1,400 years of history, founded around 650 AD, Anjar is claimed to be the oldest town in Kutch.
It’s an easy drive fron Bhuj and we decided to visit Anjar to see more Rabari people and get the feeling of another town in Kutch.
As always, headed to Anjar market first and like all the fresh produce markets, it was busy and live. The best part of Anjar was friendly people. We’ve met so many amazing people and spend hours to talk to locals and laugh at silly things.
After spending the whole day at Anjar and visiting interesting people from different tribes that we didn’t got a chance to visit anywhere else in Kutch, we headed back to Bhuj. On the last day we hang around Bhuj, ate local Gujarati food and arranged our flight tickets for the next two legs of our trip. We’ll talk them in the next post.
Gujarat and especially Kutch is one of those places that we will definitely comeback to. It is an amazing part of India with unique features and lots of potential. What we missed in the last tip was visiting the ports close to Arabian sea and small fishing villages by the coast as well as Runn of Kutch and camel herders in real life. Till then let’s pray for Covid-19 to leave us alone to travel again.
