ASLALI - BAREJA - NAVAGAM -14.5km / 9miles
We’re up too early to eat at the hotel. We skip breakfast and Tahir drops us back at the Gandhi bust where we head into the dawn, the walking easier today with a strip of paved sidewalk adjacent to the main road. We pass fields of rice then taking a right at a fork are fed onto the much quieter old Dandi Path towards the village of Bareja. It looks like a simple roadside rest stop until another young man appears and guides us further into the true village where people of all ages and sizes gather in excitement at the arrival of foreigners. We look each other over with smiles and gestures but can’t communicate much beyond the word “Gandhi”. Ah! We’re led down a lane where we encounter a frightening Gandhi sculpture padlocked behind a glass door in a wall. Erico photographs it for good manners and once done suddenly out come all the cell phones and the selfies begin! As we’re escorted through the village the news of foreigners has spread and an English-speaking local is brought to assist, Sonia, a Punjabi Sikh just back from schooling in Singapore. Erico wants to know if there are any living village elders who might remember meeting or seeing Gandhi. She takes us to meet a woman of 100 years of age, blind and still living independently. She tells us she was 15 when Gandhi passed through, near accurate as the Salt March took place in 1930. Sonia invites us to her home for lunch. We’re very grateful as there are no restaurants in the village and we have yet to eat. We meet her family of sisters and mother and assorted neighbours and are brought indoors into the cool dark room and seated on charpoys, the Indian style beds of metal or wood frames strung with woven rope. We’re served plates of dal and yoghurt and slices of watermelon and pineapple and once fed are told we must stay and rest until the heat passes. Initially this feels too generous until we realize it is exactly what we must do as it is far too hot to be out on the road walking. Giving in to their hospitality, we lie down on our charpoys and fall asleep.
While the Photographer Sleeps - Virginia Dixon, oil on canvas, 32”x28”
I wake first when I sense the flock of sisters tiptoeing about the room clicking photos of the sleeping Erico! They had changed their clothes and done their hair while we were resting and are very lovely. Once Erico wakens everyone gathers round for more conversation and I’m presented with a parrot. I’m bewildered by how sentimental I feel parting from a family I’ve only just met but I’d never experienced such open arms.
Back on the Dandi Path, abundant with turtles and parrots, mango trees and long tailed monkeys, we make our way to Navagam. We call Tahir from the Kalambandi School yard and tell him he’ll find us next to the gazebo with the statue of Gandhi.