Around Incredible India in 90 days

On a three-month trip to India’s Unesco world heritage sites, two friends connect to their country’s past while doing future travellers a good turn too

Two months back, Aniketh and Sulesh were just a couple of 24-year-olds, working in steel and glass corporate offices, hanging out with friends, and travelling occasionally over the weekend. Today, if you Google them, you reach the Unesco website which describes them as the “two young Indian men who gave up their jobs to tour India’s 28 heritage sites”.

The duo will also be hard at work, rating these sites according to how tourist friendly they are. The UN body plans to compile this information in a handy and up-to-date travel guide to India’s Unesco heritage sites.

DO AS OTHER INDIANS DO
Midway through their three-month journey that started at Karnataka’s Pattadakal monuments in March, Aniketh and Sulesh have just wrapped up a visit to Jaipur and Delhi and are now headed to the Bharatpur bird sanctuary and then onwards to Mumbai and Goa. It helps that they are not flying in style but are travelling like most of India does: on crowded trains, overcrowded buses and sometimes, on bicycles. Hotels are chosen on the spot with friends and well wishers also opening up homes to them. This means that besides memories, their journeys have given them much to write home about.

For example, while travelling to Madhya Pradesh, they hitched a ride in a truck that later caught fire. Other memories include one in Khajuraho on World Heritage Day of the sight of relief on the faces of foreigners who were told that entry was free that day; at Jantar Mantar, where they learned to read the time using a sun dial; and in Bhopal, where they met families of the victims of the 1984 gas tragedy.

LOCAL LEGENDS
As the boys learned, locals always have the most entertaining information. Curious as to who conceived the erotic sculptures at Konark, and why, the duo asked locals what they thought. “We were told that the population at that time was dwindling. Tired of fighting wars, many men in the region wanted to become sadhus. This worried the king who decided to commission erotic sculptures in the hope of enticing them to return to familyhood.” Did it work? Maybe a little too well.

The boys have already visited the Sunderbans during which time they went on meandering quest for the elusive Royal Bengal Tiger. They didn’t find the tiger but they found a brave and resilient people including bee keepers and fishermen, some of whom wear masks at the back of their heads while at ‘work’, to scare away tigers contemplating attack. “Their ingenuity coupled with faith in the deity Bombibi is what keeps them safe most of the time,” says Sulesh. In Madhya Pradesh, the rock shelters at Bhimbetka provide a well-preserved glimpse into the earliest traces of human life in India. “The rock paintings there left us wondering how exactly our ancestors lived at that time,” says Sulesh. Aniketh felt that way in Hampi. “The place is so in sync with its past that just by sitting around and observing the roads, the pathways, the markets and the temples, you can imagine the lives of the people back then.”

WORK AND PLAY
At each tourist site, the duo fill in forms that ask whether the sites have facilities for the disabled, clean toilet facilities, clean drinking water, a travel information centre and a police station. Besides this, they interact with locals and conservationists and architects working at each place, who provide them with nuggets of information you won’t get in a book. “Khajuraho has 85 temples of which only 22 have been unearthed. When we went there, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was in the process of unearthing another temple supposed to have the largest foundation of any temple there,” says Sulesh. The boys are happy to have taken up this chance to explore India and learn about its vast history at the same time. “Our trip is a chance to connect to our heritage and learn a little bit about the country on the side,” says Aniketh.