Madhya Pradesh[0] : Ujjain
After having passed through the state plenty of times on train when my South Indian family was living up north, I finally visited it in earnest.
Ujjain has had a unique place in my mind ever since I listened about it from an uncle who had settled down there. Coincidentally, I had applied for and gotten into a scientific project which was to study the greatest gathering of human kind in the world, the Kumbh Mela in April 2016. But as luck would have it, it inconveniently coincided with the nascent months of me starting up and did not come to fruition. Nonetheless, wedding of a close friend opened up the option for me to visit Ujjain.
Friend being in Air Force did not have much time to spare for his wedding preparations, as such the invite just came with a couple of weeks to spare for the wedding. So a quick two day trip is what I could come up with.
I caught a 0605 flight from Bengaluru which reached Indore at 0910, with a brief stop in Nagpur, THE most centrally located city in the country. A convenient taxi ride of about an hour or so got me to this idyllic city of Ujjain into my Uncle’s place. It was a really surreal moment as I had not seen him for some 15 years. It instantly brought back the memories of the social science projects which he helped me build.
After a quick round of catching up and a sumptuous breakfast, I decided to catch up on some sleep. I woke up around 1400 and after that it was a time for a temple run.
Ujjain Temple Run
We set off on uncle’s 1987 model of CD100, which brought back memories of eighth grade when I had learned to drive a motor cycle on this iconic model.
First up was the Mahakaleshwar temple, the iconic temple which has origins in Skanda Purana. I will just let the Google summary box do the explaining for you.
It was pretty crowded when I actually got there, it being a Monday, the day dedicated to Lord Shiva. So I skipped it and visited next morning as I had the friend’s wedding to get to in the evening.
Though Tuesday was supposed to be a *quiet* day at the temple. It still took me a good three hours to get in. I was very impressed with the arrangements for crowd management, once an Operations Research student always an Operations Research student.
While visiting it I noticed one of things which is prohibited from taking into the temple.
If you look at #11, It is an unavoidable item for a South Indian, you can do no work without a coconut, let alone any Godly work!
Moving on from there, quite close to the temple was a water body which is called Rudra Sagar, the tank is dried up to make way to accommodation of the Sadhus during the Kumbh mela. Inside the tank was a giant 30 feet high bronze sculpture of King Vikramaditya. The area is known as Vikramaditya Tila, it also has 32 apsaras and 9 ratnas of the king’s court.
Next up was the Harsiddhi temple, which is just a few hundred meters away from the Rudra sagar lake.
It has an idol of devi Annapurna which is situated between the idols of Mahalaxmi and Mahasaraswati. The idol is painted dark vermillion in color. Shri Yantra, the symbol of power or shakti is also said to be enshrined in the temple, which makes it a part of the Om shakti temples which is associated with godess Parvati. That explains all the bright vermillion colored sarees which I saw women wearing in droves when I was in the temples of Tamil Nadu, as there is a big shakti temple in TN.
There are quite a few legends associated with this place. According to Shiva Purana, when Shiva carried away the burning body of sati from sacrifical fire, her elbow dropped at this place. Another legend in Skanda Purana has it that Harsiddhi is a epithet acquired by goddess Chandi. Once when Lord Shiva and Parvathi were alone on Mount Kailash two demons called Chand and Prachand tried to force their way in. Shiva called upon Chandi to destroy them, and after she had successfully done so bestowed this epithet harsiddhi, which stands for the one who conquers all.
There are two giant stone pillars filled with lamps in the temple courtyard which legend has it that they were lit up by Tansen’s singing. #Lit.
Moving on from there, we went on to the banks of Shipra river, and rode along it for quite some time, until we reached the Ram Ghat [first picture above], any suffix of ghat to describe a river bank means there are steps for access to the river there. There were 20kms of ghats during the Kumbh Mela for devotees to have access to Shipra river. To imagine the scale, about 6 Crore/60 Million people visited the town in a span of few weeks, with a single day said to have had 95 lakh visitors to the Mahakaaleshwar temple.
Next after about a ride of couple of kilometers, we reached the Maa Gadakalika Temple— The temple dedicated to Devi Kaali who gave Kalidasa his powers to become a renowned poet. I vividly remember this incident due to the movie Kaviratna Kalidasa a 1983 movie featuring Dr. Rajkumar, which had my rapt attention as a kid. The dialogue of “heluvudakkU, kEluvudakku, idu samayavalla” (It is not the time to ask or to speak) is one of the most iconic in history of Kannada films.
I got to drive the 1987 CD 100 in this stretch, and it was quite a feel, considering I have been driving 2014 Pulsar 200NS, and 2015 Thunderbird 350 in my recent past. Driving in those small, empty-ish roads was quite a thrill and reminded me how paranoid I used to be as a rookie driver.
Next up after passing through the Central Jail of Ujjain we reached the temple of Kal Bhairav. The uniqueness of this temple can be summed with the offerings which are given to Lord Shiva here.. alcohol!
Let that sink in for a bit.
After that we got to the Mangalnath temple. The Tropic of Cancer is said to pass through the temple. And apparently this temple is the list of ToDo things for the people whose horoscopes have been “manglik” which means that their horoscopes have an ailment of some sort.
Final stop on this temple run was the Sandipani Ashram. It is said that Lord Krishna after killing his evil uncle Kamsa, ends up at this ashram to continue his education. It is one of the only places where Nandi, the transport for Lord Shiva is standing, instead of his usual sitting position.
I headed to the wedding after. It was a blast! Started with the dancing along with all the friends at the Baraat for over an hour, followed by a memorable but sleepless night. We had endless banter and food during the night, and it was quite an experience. This was the first proper North Indian wedding which I have attended and…paid attention to.
At about 6 AM, I headed back to my uncle’s place. I crashed as soon as I reached there and woke up around 11 AM, after which I was introduced to Kamla Bai.
It was an intelligent home cleaning robot, a.k.a Kamla Bai. It detects walls, and steps so does not fall down or crash into anything. After work is done it safely gets back to it’s charging pod. I was impressed with it.
It took whole afternoon to visit the Mahakaaleshwar Temple. I left from Ujjain at about 5 PM and I was back home in Bengaluru that midnight, following an hour’s delay of flight due to the cyclone in the Bay of Bengal.
Here is the Temple Run Map, hope it helps anyone planning a trip to the town.
All in all, sleepless but exhilarating 48 hours.
I cannot believe I had missed Madhya Pradesh all this while, but never a bad a time to start.
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