After spending a comfortable night at Leo’s Resort, it was time to go for another early morning city exploration expedition. The only place we visited that day was the Uperkot Fort. Why did it receive this dubious honour? Because the Uperkot Fort in Junagadh has been around since 319 BC (probably explains the city’s name too). It was built by King Chandragupta of the Maurya dynasty and legend has it that it withstood a 12-year-long siege at one stage. What it couldn’t withstand, though, was being desecrated by some small minded citizens of the city, who found it fitting to etch their names and those of their lovers in these very walls. Incredible India, not looking so incredible now is it? But I digress. Junagadh and particularly Uperkot and its surroundings are a history buff’s dream.
You have 2,000-year-old Buddhist monastic quarters in the form of caves found in the surrounding area. There’s the Jama Masjid too, an incredible structure with 140 pillars supporting the ceiling. The two cannons, Neelam and Manek, imported from Egypt in 1531, are placed just outside the mosque, and are 15 feet long. Lastly, there are also two dizzyingly deep step wells with spiral staircases leading all the way down, dating back to the 11th century. You almost feel like you’re encroaching on forbidden territory when you think back to the amount of time those walls have remained standing for. Alexander the Great was a wee lad of seven when the fort was built. Maybe that’ll give you some perspective. A physical embodiment for the phrase ‘standing the test of time’ if I ever saw one.
Having seen as much as we could of Uperkot and its many wonders, we got back on the highway, the Rajkot highway this time. Our destination: the village of Dasada at the edge of the little Rann of Kutch. We were used to perfectly good highways throughout this journey, and weren’t disappointed on this, its last leg, either. Apart from a small 30-minute stretch, the road gave us no problems, what could potentially have been a problem was the heat. Dasada was facing 47 degrees of the Sun’s wrath, but the Santa Fe moved on, completely unperturbed.
