Tour Diary - Sasan Gir, Somnath

Here I am trying to give a brief account of my experiences during the tour of Sasan-Gir and Somnath. The tour was arranged by my company (http://www.krishtechnologies.net) for its employees and their families. The tour comprised of two nights and two days. We, the bunch of less than 25 people started on June 6 late night from the company location in a mini bus. We all chatted for around an hour or so, before falling asleep. We reached a farm house at Bhojde village (Talala-Gir) in the morning around 9. The farm house had a big mango grove with some coconut trees, a HOZ (હોઝ – a swimming pool like water-body which when overflows provides water to the farm trees), a playing ground, a shed, and some tents. Boys were given their beds under shade, a common tent was provided for all 4 girls, and families were given a tent each. The shade was the place for all our indoor activities.

Boys took bath and played volleyball inside the HOZ with all clothes on for almost 3 hours. We took a breakfast break during the hoz session. I took my first swimming lesson there. I learned cycling and wanted to learn full swimming but we were short of time. After hoz-volleyball we played cricket before going to lunch. Meanwhile girls were also enjoying themselves with outdoor activities and gossips.

After lunch we left the farm house for jungles of Sasan-Gir in our bus. Before entering the jungle we reached SINH-SADAN from where we got required permit, guides, jeeps and drivers . We hired 4 jeeps in all and parked our bus there only.

We travelled the jungle in a route specified in our permit. Seeing the jungle from so close and that too in an open jeep is altogether different experience. For most part of the route the trees on the roadside were burned by so-called safety fire. I have heard about tree plantation along road-side, but never before heard about burning them, that too by forest-authorities.

In the jungle we saw everything but lions. We saw lot of deer (spotted deer – ચિતલ) and peacocks. Among other animals we saw black deer, nilgaay (નીલગાય), mongoose, monkeys and few more. We saw peacocks from all angles and in all actions. Also there was a river, name Hiran and a dam Kamaleshwar. In the jungle we were not supposed to get out of our jeeps but we did it twice, once near the dam and once at the endpoint of our route. One more interesting thing is that there was a village (named Shirvan – શિરવાણ) right inside the prohibited jungle area.

While returning our jeeps turned into racing cars, drivers were in a hurry to get out of the jungle as we already overstayed in the evening. They provided us little chance to see lion while returning.

We got out of the jeeps, got into our bus at sinh-sadan and we returned to our farm house, had dinner before the action begins. We played dumb sherad followed by antakshari. In dumb sherad my team answered correctly to some out-of-the-world film names. I wanted to skip antakshari and have a nice sleep, but ended up being a spectator. Antakshari brought out energy and enthusiasm unseen before from some of us. It was 12:30 in the night, but the energy in the environment was same. However we had to stop because we ran out of songs by that time.

Next day we had time to enjoy ourselves till lunch. We played volleyball, ubhi-kho, musical chair and tug-of-war before going to lunch (I skipped cricket). This time it wasn’t hoz volleyball. Immediately after lunch (around 2 in the noon) we left for Somnath in our mini-bus.

It took around an hour to reach us to Somnath. I saw the sea for the first time and simply gone mad at the site. It was period of high tide and the sea was furious. We visited the temple, one of the twelve jyotirlingas, and famous for its renovation again and again. We didn’t spent much time there and left for ahmedabad at around 5 in the evening.

On the way back we played dumb sherad and tapali-daav (one has to predict who hit his/her head). We took a halt and some Ice-cream at home of Jayesh, our beloved friend, and one of us. It was Jetpur town. After that we took only a dinner halt before reaching ahmedabad. I reached home by 3 in the night and the odyssey was over.