India Travel

Northern Gujarat abounds in remarkable step-wells - deep, with elaborately carved walls and broad flights of covered steps leading to the shaft - but Dada Harini Vav, in the northeast of the city just outside the old boundaries, is among the very finest. It can be reached by taking bus #111 to Asarwa; ask to be dropped nearby, and either walk or take an auto-rickshaw to the well. While it’s a Muslim construction, built in 1500 for Bai Harir Sultani, superintendent of the royal harem, the craftsmen were Hindu, and their influence is clear in the lavish and sensuous carvings on the walls and pillars. The best time to visit is an hour or so before noon when the sculpted floral patterns and shapely figurines inside are bathed in sunlight. Bai Harir’s lofty mosque and lattice-walled tomb stand west of the well.

A couple of hundred metres north, the neglected Mata Bhavani Vav was probably constructed in the eleventh century, before Ahmedabad was founded. It’s profoundly Hindu in character, and dedicated to Bhavani, an aspect of Shiva s consort Parvati, whose modest shrine is set in the back wall of the well shaft.

South of the railway station, opposite the large gate of Sarangpur Darwaja, Sidl Bashir’s minars are all that remain of the mosque popularly named after one of Ahmed Shah’s favourite slaves. Over 21m high, these are the best existing example of the “shaking minarets"- built on a foundation of flexible sandstone, probably to protect them from earthquake damage - that were once a common sight on Ahmedabad s skyline. At least two European visitors, Robert Grindlay (1826) and Henry Cousens (1905), reported climbing to the top storey of one minaret, shaking it hard, and causing its twin to shake, but as entry is restricted you’ll be lucky to be able to try this yourself, or even to get into the modern mosque beneath the minors.

Near Astodia Darwaja in the south of the city, the small and elegant mosque of Rani Sipri was built in 1514 at the queen’s orders. Her grave lies in front, sheltered by a pillared mausoleum. The stylish mosque shows more Hindu influence than any other in Ahmedabad, with several Hindu carvings and an absence of arches. Its pillared sanctuary has an open facade to the east and fine tracery work on the west wall.

North from Rani-ka-Hazira through Temple Road, a narrow street of fabric shops, and across Relief Road, the Swaminarayan temple stands behind huge gates and brightly painted walls. Forming a delicate contrast to the many hard stone mosques in the city, both the temple and the houses in the courtyard surrounding it are of finely carved wood, with elaborate and intricate patterns typical of the style of the havelis of north and west Gujarat. The temple’s main sanctuary is given over to Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi.

East of the jami Masjid, the jewellery and textiles market, Manek Chowk is a bustling hive of colour where jewellers work in narrow alleys amid newly dyed and tailored cloth. Immediately outside the east entrance of the mosque, the square Tomb of Ahmed Shah I, who died in 1442, stands surrounded by pillared verandas. Women are not permitted to enter the central chamber, where his grave, and those of his son and grandson, lie shrouded in cloth.

Further into the market area, you’ll find the mausoleum of Ahmed Shah’s queens, Rani-ka-Hazira, surrounded by the dyers’ colourful stalls. Its plan is identical to Shah’s own tomb, with pillared verandas clearly inspired by Hindu architectural tastes. Inside, the graves are elaborately decorated with metal inlay and mother-of-pearl, now a little faded and worn.

A short walk from Teen Darwaja along Gandhi Road leads to the spectacular Jami Masjid, or Friday Mosque. Completed in 1424. it srands today in its entirely, except for two minarets destroyed by an earthquake in 1957. Avidly buzzing with people, the mosque is even busier on Fridays, when thousands converge to worship.

A wide flight of steps leads to a vast marble courtyard surrounded on three sides by shady arched cloisters, known as dalans. A meeting place as well as an area for prayer, the courtyard has a water tank used for ablutions in its centre, and at the west end, facing Mecca, is the sandstone qibla, the main prayer hall, crowned with three rows of five domes. The 260 elegant pillars supporting its roof are covered with profuse unmistakeably Hindu carvings, while close to the sanctuary’s principal arch a large black slab is said to be the base of a Jain idol inverted and buried as a sign of Muslim supremacy. The zenana is behind finely perforated stone screens above the main sanctuary.

On January 14, when Gujarat celebrates Makar Sankrati to mark the last harvest ofwmter.Ahmedabad hosts the International Kite Festival.the largest ofits kind in the world. For weeks in advance shops brim with a splendid assortment of kites of strange and original designs, many painted with animals or the faces of gods andheroes.

India has a long tradition of kite-flying, and during the festival the city conies alive with diving and darting kites flitting through the clear blue skies as families join with enthusiasts from all over Asia and as far afield as America and Japan. On the first day of the festival, crowds of kite-flyers gather in Patang Nagar, a “kite town"- usually in the police stadium - to display models of all sizes, made of paper, cloth, bamboo and fibreglass.

There’s a carnival atmosphere, with food and crafts stalls and performances of dance and music late into the night. On the second day you can follow the experts to the city’s roof terraces and learn to fly kites, and after dark the night sky is ablaze with tukal kites strung with coloured lights.The climax of the festival comes on the third day, when kite strings are coated with a lethal mixture of ground glass, egg yolk and boiled rice, and kites are played off against one another in fierce combat. Cries of “kata!” (I’ve cut) fill the air as slashed kites fall stricken from the skies and come to rest limply on telegraph wires and trees.

Central one carved in white and black marble. Hidden behind pierced stone screens above the sanctuary in the northeast corner, the zenana, or women’s chamber, is entered by steps from outside the main wall.

West of Bhadra citadel, not far from Victoria Gardens, Ahmed Shah’s small and attractively simple mosque was the private place of worship for the royal household. Sections an old Hindu temple, perhaps dating back to 1250 AD, were used in its construction — hence the incongruous Sanskrit inscriptions on some of the pillars in the sanctuary. The mihrabs are particularly ornate.

The solid fortified citadel, Bhadra, built of deep red stone in 1411 as Ahmedabad’s first Muslim structure, is relatively plain in comparison to later mosques. The palace inside is now occupied by offices and off-limits to tourists, but you can climb to its roof via a winding staircase just inside the main gateway and survey the streets below from behind its weathered bastions. In front of the citadel is a small public garden and Alif Shah’s mosque, gaily painted in green and white. Further east, beyond the odoriferous meat market 111 Khas Bazaar, is Teen Darwaja, a thick-set triple gateway built during Ahmed Shah’s reign that once led to the outer court of the royal citadel. A trio of pointed arches engraved with Islamic inscriptions and detailed carving spans the busy road below and shelters cobblers and pedlars.

A prominent feature on the front of glossy city brochures, Sidi Sayyid’s mosque (1573), famed for the ten magnificent jali (lattice-work) screens lining its upper walls, sits in the centre of a busy traffic circle in the northwest corner of Bhadra. The two semicircular screens high on the western wall are the most spectacular, with floral designs exquisitely carved ou: of the yellow stone so common in Ahmedabad’s mosques. The eastern face is open, revealing a host of pillars that divide the lull into fifteen areas, each with skilfully sculpted domed ceilings. Stonework within depicts heroes and animals from popular Hindu myths - one effect of Hindu and Jain craftsmanship on an Islamic tradition that rarely allowed the depiction of living beings in its mosques. Women cannot enter this mosque, but the gardens around it afford good views of the screens.

The historic heart of Ahmedabad is the old city, an area of about three square kilometres on the east bank of the river, dissected by the main thoroughfares Relief Road and Gandhi Road and reaching its northern limits at Delhi Gate. It’s the best place to start any exploration, taking in the squat buildings of the original citadel. Bhadra. the mosques and tombs of Ahmedabad s Muslim rulers, vibrant bazaars and pok - labyrinths of high wooden havelis and narrow cul-de-sacs that still house families all belonging to the same caste or trade.