Bhopal Day 2: How many IBMers can you fit in a rickshaw?

After waking up in a palace style hotel room, we had the option of visiting the Bhimbetka rock shelters. These are an archaeological World Heritage site and exhibit the earliest traces of human life in India. They deliver traces of dance from prehistoric times; a number of analyses suggest that at least some of these shelters were inhabited by hominids like homo erectus more than 100,000 years ago. Some of the Stone Age rock paintings found among the Bhimbetka rock shelters are approximately 30,000 years old (thanks wiki).

Instead, I decided to go on a self-guided tour of Bhopal with the rest of the CSC team who did not visit these rock shelters. Our little tour group thus consisted of Tyler, Maco, Paul, Patrick and me. By this stage, we had spent over a week in Indore with our main mode of transportation being rickshaws. Leaving the hotel to go down to the Bhopal city centre, we organised a rickshaw to come and pick us up. Even writing that sentence now it seems like a bad idea to put 'palace' and 'rickshaw' in the same sentence. Tyler was given the option of having a hotel hire car take us into town for 300 rupees but as we have been paying between 30-60 rupees around Indore we said thanks, but no thanks.

It wasn't until we were standing on the front steps of the hotel, looking down out on to the city did we realise that we just asked a rich swanky hotel to order rickshaws to come 6km up the hill to pick us up because we were too cheap to pay $6. So we sent Tyler back in to reneg on our decision and take up the previous offer. We had quickly realised it was better to wear the shame at that point and not later when the rickshaws arrived.

When the car did arrive, we were pretty excited because it looked like pure luxury. Once we sat in the car, we were ecstatic, as seen by the pictures below:

Tyler in the front, Maco and me in the middle and Paul and Patrick in the back.

We were so happy to be sitting in this car. You have no idea lol.

We made it down to Bhopal city centre in the smoothest ride any of us had experienced to date in India. So much so, we jokingly asked the driver how much it would be for him to drive us all the way to Indore. His response? It worked out to be $40 each. Well well well. From this point on I was trying to convince the boys to scheme with me and come up with a plan whereby we ditch the rest of the team (who were exploring the caves) and let them ride the bumpy bus back home for 4 hours. And we would take this beautiful smooth ride for 2 hours instead. Needless to say, they were not keen on this idea. I kept initiating conversations about the suggestion where ever possible through-out the day but I was not successful. Alas, we took the bumpy bus back home.

So here are some shots of 'old Bhopal':

Old Bhopal

Paul being a part of old Bhopal

Half a crumbling building?

A prize goes to the person who can tell me what these are?

Maybe a video will help:

The correct answer is bats!

Bats mid-flight 

Here are some nice pictures of Bhopal:

Amazing what a bit of water can do

And every now and again, you are surprised by something like a pile of colourful balloons

We did spend most of our time walking on this self-guided tour, hence the need to reflect the sun:

My scarf fell across my face at one point and I decided to leave it there because it was blissfully cool to be protected from the sun. A whole new understanding about why women wear scarves in these hot countries.

Interesting half-finished / fixed sidewalks

We couldn't walk all day as it was just too hot. We decided to get a rickshaw to the markets and thought we would try our lucky with only getting one rickshaw. By way of context; one rickshaw has a seat for 3 in the back (slightly squishy depending on the size of the rickshaw) and the driver sits up front. On occasion, you can get a rickshaw driver to let a man sit up the front with him, getting 4 in a rickshaw.

In Bhopal though, things are a little different. Can you guess how many of us are in the rickshaw?

We have Tyler, Paul and the rickshaw driver in this picture.

Here is me, Patrick, Tyler and on the far left, Maco (well, his arm)

Maco is the most fearless man on this CSC assignment. Here is he hanging out the rickshaw to take a photo of the driver

Who maybe wasn't as impressed by that...

The driver did a good job of fitting 5 IBMers in a rickshaw (6 people in total)! Me, Patrick, Paul, Maco and Tyler all squeezed into one rickshaw. Tyler and Patrick took it in turns to sit on each others lap :)

We made it to our destination; Bhopal Market:

The ability of Indore / Bhopal people to carry interesting objects on their bikes never ceases to amaze me

Our last stop in Bhopal was to go to the National Museum of Mankind (IGRMS):

Here is our ticket into the museum. I don't know what its issue is, as it is rotated the other way on my desktop and it decided to change when I uploaded it here.

This was one side of the museum; talking from a scientific perspective on how humans involved.

The other side of the museum showed the lives of those people who lived in tribes and villages. I took a lot of photos here but I only want to show you a few in this blog. The reason for showing you this picture and the next is because this actually is the same work product / lifestyle that you would have seen in my earlier pictures when we visited villages and tribes only a week earlier.

As described above, here are the bracelets and wedding jewelery you sawa Anika and I wear when we visited the Manpur tribe. I find this very strange / odd / interesting / fascinating to see something in real life, already in a museum.

Even local Australian Indigenous art is featured here in this Indian museum. 

The last stop in Bhopal was the Taj-ul-Masajid. This means "the crown of mosques" and is a mosque situated in Bhopal. The mosque is also used as a madrasah (Islamic school) during the day time. It was really pretty as seen by these photos (Shaquille, I have lots of photos for you to translate from this mosque :) )

Taj-ul-Masajid

Taj-ul-Masajid - I would have loved the lighting of this photo if it wasn't for me ruining the picture with my blurry finger

Taj-ul-Masajid

Inside the building, you can see all of the prayer times. The 3 clocks under the half circle represent the prayer times for Friday which is their main sacred day.

Such pretty architecture inside the mosque

Taj-ul-Masajid

This is where the boys who attend the school during the day sleep at night, 6 boys behind each blue door.

You can see how big the tree is here by the people who are sitting on the left hand side

Taj-ul-Masajid

Taj-ul-Masajid

Taj-ul-Masajid

And that is the end of our first weekend trip away to Bhopal. Stay tuned for a mid-week 2 update and our adventures on the second weekend of our month long assignment :)

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