Jodhpur – the Bishnoi

Gopal Guest House, 150 Rs

Some 20 kms away from Jodhpur, there are several villages where the Bishnoi community live. This is a special sect of Hinduism, of which the followers have such an incredible love towards animals and plants. They dont burn their body after death, as cremation would require wood from the trees. Instead they bury their body. It doesnt need to mention that all of them are strict vegetarians, and they even wont kill any small insects.

We visited one of the villages today. In 1815 when the maharaj of Jodhpur planned to build a palace, he requested to cut some trees from the village. The people defended the tree by holding hands around the tree. 363 people were killed in the accident, and the maharaj decided not to cut those trees.

Some years ago, Salman Khan, a Bollywood star, came to the village to make a movie, Hamsathsath. One of the shoot was of him doing hunting during night time. He accidentally shot a deer to death, which angered the whole villagers. The whole crew of that movie was forced to leave ASAP and the case was brought to court also. More about the story: http://kompas.com/gayahidup/news/0602/18/140945.htm

We took bus for going and back, which was a rather difficult to find. The Indian passengers always rush to get off before the bus completely stopped. It’s amazing how these people look like not having any single second to spare that they have to fight to get off the bus to be the first person landing on earth. Even some male passengers tried to jump thru the windows. And if the windows of the aeroplanes could be opened, I bet that every passenger would bring their own parachutte so that they could be the first person arrived to claim the baggage.

It seems that really no even a second can be wasted. But if you walk thru the streets you can easily find people sitting around killing time. And nobody is upset also when the bus journey is delayed to dozens of stops, traffic jams, accidents, etc as time can slowly passing and flowing. But when it comes to the matter of getting off the buses, it’s another story.

BTW the city buses in Delhi usually dont stop completely when taking and descending passengers. It was really a circus acrobatic when I had to control the movement of my body when I jumped out a running bus (the bus didnt stop in the supposed station), due to the Fist Newton Law of Innertial Movement.