Lothal

After my successful visit to Gir National Park, I headed back to Ahmedabad the next morning. Arriving at around 4:30, I then spent an hour and a half trying to find a place to stay. I don't know what it is about big cities in this country, but it is difficult to find a hotel that will take me. Once again, I would go into places and be getting the feeling that they were turning me down because I am not an Indian rather than because they didn't have rooms. I had a rickshaw driver taking me around to different spots around town, even though I really wanted to be near the bus station, and finally he found one that would take me. Luckily it was not overly expensive.

Then I set about trying to figure out how to get to Lothal. There was a civilization that existed in the Pakistan/India region 4000-5000 years ago. There is very little documentation on them. Although they had a writing system and there are surviving texts from the civilization, there is no translation that yet exists. There are lots of artifacts, however and numerous settlement sites that exist throughout the region belonging to the people of that civilization. They are known to us as the Harappan people, named after the first settlement that was discovered, Harappa. Another settlement is located near Ahmedabad, and it is named Lothal.

Knowing nothing more than that, I asked at the hotel how to get there. It actually sounded complicated when they told me. I was planning to simply go to the bus station and find a bus that would take me there. My hotel told me there was no direct bus and that I would have to go to one place and then get on another bus and then walk a ways to get to the site. I ended up doing a bit of both plans. I went to the bus station and got on a bus that said it was going to Lothal. They let me off at an intersection that pointed the way, but was still 7 kilometers away. I took a rickshaw the rest of the way for likely an outrageous amount of money. The driver actually wanted to take on more people, but I decided to be a dickhead and I wouldn't let him. In retrospect, I should have allowed him to take on more passengers, but not allow him to take any money from them. That might have fixed him. Gujarat is supposed to have this slogan about the guest being God. But although I have met many people that do treat guests as very important, there are just so many others that treat me as a guest like crap.

I reached the Lothal archaeological site eventually and bought my ticket and went in. There was a small museum there and I went to see it first. There was a lot of interesting information inside about the site and I even saw a couple of spots where they admitted the fact that they are making guesses about what happened on the site and there were conflicting theories as to how the site worked. I like it when archaeologists admit that they weren't there and so they don't really know and that they are making the best guesses possible. It was quite an interesting museum actually and the stuff they found along with what they think the Harappan civilization was capable of is quite amazing.

Using a balance for measurement, the Harappans could measure out amounts that were fractions of a gram. They could measure lengths accurately enough to make standards that applied across the the whole of the civilization. And they had sophisticated building techniques and materials.

Lothal started as a town of another civilization. The Harappans came to town, supposedly as merchants or traders. They lived peacefully with the original inhabitants. Gradually they became more powerful amongst the townspeople and convinced the leader of their methods and techniques. Over time the town was transformed to the grid structure and set up of the Harappan town plans in other cities.

One of the reasons the town of Lothal was so advantageous for the previous inhabitants as well as the Harappans was that there was a river that flowed beside the town. The river led to the sea, some 20 kilometers away. It was a navigable river and allowed trade or that natural materials and resources from the interior of the area to the sea and beyond to other countries. The importance of the location was assumed by those who excavated the town because of the presence of a large tank that was built and had access to the river. The archaeologists have decided on the theory that the tank was a dock for ships that would travel up the river to the town for loading and unloading. This theory is more likely because the tank had access to the river, and it had vertical instead of sloped sides with no stairs down into the tank. In addition, the town's sophisticated system of drains and gutters emptied into the tank. This suggests that it wasn't used for irrigation or for fresh water.

Up the hill from the tank is a large area that served as a loading and storage area for goods that were being shipped in and out.

There was an acropolis where the leader lived.

Down on the far side of the town was the living quarters of the regular people of the town. The gutters and urban designs are still clearly visible today (although it is very likely things were restored somewhat when the archaeological excavations were carried out).

Farther than that there was a bead factory, decided on the basis of the number of beads found in and around the structure, and the kiln that was inside.

There was further set of living quarters for the regular people.

Finally there was a cemetery set off and apart from the rest of the town.

It was a very sophisticated design and showed a great deal of understanding of the principles we now take for granted about hygiene and disease.

And it was much smaller than I thought it would be. I had been expecting some sort of mini-metropolis, but it was only about 300 meters square. It seemed to be too small to really be such an important port of the Harappans, or anyone else. It was still interesting to see how advanced it was in so many ways.

After I finished looking around the site it was time to figure out how to get back to town. My rickshaw driver had left, as I had wanted. But that left me with a bit of a dilemma. I wanted to walk back to the spot where I had gotten off the bus and more or less reverse my steps to get back to Ahmedabad. But it was midday and quite hot. I wasn't sure I was really up for the long walk back. But I really had no choice, unless I wanted to sit at the entrance road to Lothal and wait for someone to come by and offer me a ride back to the bus stop, and possibly at an outrageous price. So I started walking. Along the way, I saw a number of birds just hanging out.

I also got a good photo of a long line of electrical towers.

Eventually I reached the secondary, main-ish sort of road and started heading for the highway where I had been dropped off originally. As I was walking along, some boys on a motorbike stopped and started talking to me. By talking, I mean chatting in the way that people who don't speak each other's languages can chat, with half sentences, and lots and lots of gestures. They asked me where I was going. I told them I was headed to catch the bus to Ahmedabad. They told me there was no bus that way. That confused me a bit because I figured that I could catch a bus back in the same place as where I got off the bus. But they were adamant that there was no bus. Then they told me that at the turn-off to the Lothal site, there was a bus stop and I could catch a bus there at 3, which was an hour and a half away. I took their word for it, even though I thought I could catch the bus at the highway. It would be nicer to sit in the shade than walk all that way to maybe find out they were right. So I went back and sat down.

And I became the focus of attention, as only a stranger from another country who sits down on a country bus stop bench can. Soon I had lots of young boys hanging around and talking to me. We talked for a long time. I should have gotten their photo, but as we talked more and more of the adults around came to know where I was going. And also as only a stranger can do in an area with lots of friendly locals who look out for people, they began to take me on as a project. There were various sorts of transports that came by. At times, I caught them sizing up the transports and talking amongst themselves about whether I should get on them. They rejected most of the ideas. Then suddenly a bus came along. An old man tapped me on the shoulder and told me it was going where I wanted to go. I wasn't so sure because it was going in the opposite direction, but he convinced me to get on (by pretty much forcibly shoving me into the bus), and the bus proceeded to the intersection at the main highway, the place I had thought to go in the first place. He got off with me (I guess he had one of the two kiosks at that intersection), and told me to catch a bus for Ahmedabad there. Sigh! I could have been on my way a couple of hours sooner. Of course, it had been fun talking with all those people at the country bus stop, and I had no other plans, so I wasn't too worried. At first.

It took a long while for a bus to come along. And then, when it did, it blew right past me. So did the next one and the one after that. I was suddenly worried about how I would be returning to Ahmedabad. And I was a bit annoyed with myself because the kids at the bus stop had told me I could go to a train station that was a kilometer away and catch a train back at 4. But I declined because that was going to take a lot longer. Now it looked like it might have been faster.

But the old man came back across and helped me flag down a bus, the next one that came along. In fact it had the same crew on it that, and must have been the same bus, as I had ridden out in the morning. On a bus at last, I headed into Ahmedabad.

I'm not sure that the site was worth the whole trip in itself. It's pretty small and somewhat difficult to get back from, although it's easy enough to reach. But the rest of what happened, with all the people I met and who helped me, it was a nice day.