the British Raj @ Jhansi
So my buddy Ed, who is my travel guru for India. He first went to India in 1971 and was one of those hippies who wandered the subcontinent growing longer hair and doing lots of drugs. He backpacked around India for three years before returning to the states. Then for the next three decades he has traveled back and forth between India and the USA. Eventually he earned a degree in history, Indian history to be exact. He specialized in the British Raj period, and what is known as The Mutiny of 1857 to be specific (now we call it the Indian rebellion of 1857, or the events of 1857). Which was the uprising that began the fall of British colonialism in India and the rise of the Independence movement.
ed mockingly giving the British salute
Actually this history is all pretty timely stuff. One just needs to study the last days of British colonialism in the Middle East and India, to see the tragic parallels whooshing around us today.
So when Ed invited me to travel with him to India I jumped on it. He taught me how to travel like an old India Hand, as seasoned India travelers are affectionately called. I learned how to "do" the subcontinent and go off the beaten track, Ed giving me priceless know how. I'm an off the beaten track kind of guy, so I fit right into this type of traveling. We stayed in Government hotels and hostels, rode the trains, busses, and pedicabs, haggled over what should be haggled 5 rupees over, and left to the given price for other things. Pretty much I just tagged along and soaked in all I could learn.
One of the places we went was the city of Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, where major events of the 1857 insurrection occurred. Ed had heard that there was a British graveyard on the cantonment at Jhansi. It just so happened that when we were eating dinner, the manager of the restaurant overhead us talking and he said that he grew up on the military cantonment, and as a kid he used to play in this British graveyard. His father and mother were Army people and lived on the military base. Well could he take us there, we asked? Gladly, he answered. I mean it was incredible, what are the chances of this connection happening, right out of the blue? I think we were meant to go to this place. So later that day, this man who had a pass to the no longer British but now Indian cantonment at Jhansi (the Indian Military base), which is off limits to civilians, let alone foreigners. Rode with us through numerous armed check points to an isolated spot deep within the military base to the old deserted British cemetery.
The place taking up about 3 acres, was deserted and sadly being taken over by nature and the elements. Possibly we were the only people to visit this place in years. It seemed the entrance was the only part that showed upkeep. Inside there were markers from the 1860s commemorating the many British who were killed in the fighting of 1857, soldiers, woman, and children. We wandered the graveyard. There were markers for British and Anglo Indians all through the period of the British Raj. And not just Army men, but their families too. And I imagined what it would have been like to be a young girl from Somerset, married to an officer stationed in Jhansi India an isolated outpost 8000 miles from home in the 1850s.
More pictures on my flickr site.
ed mockingly giving the British salute
Actually this history is all pretty timely stuff. One just needs to study the last days of British colonialism in the Middle East and India, to see the tragic parallels whooshing around us today.
So when Ed invited me to travel with him to India I jumped on it. He taught me how to travel like an old India Hand, as seasoned India travelers are affectionately called. I learned how to "do" the subcontinent and go off the beaten track, Ed giving me priceless know how. I'm an off the beaten track kind of guy, so I fit right into this type of traveling. We stayed in Government hotels and hostels, rode the trains, busses, and pedicabs, haggled over what should be haggled 5 rupees over, and left to the given price for other things. Pretty much I just tagged along and soaked in all I could learn.
One of the places we went was the city of Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, where major events of the 1857 insurrection occurred. Ed had heard that there was a British graveyard on the cantonment at Jhansi. It just so happened that when we were eating dinner, the manager of the restaurant overhead us talking and he said that he grew up on the military cantonment, and as a kid he used to play in this British graveyard. His father and mother were Army people and lived on the military base. Well could he take us there, we asked? Gladly, he answered. I mean it was incredible, what are the chances of this connection happening, right out of the blue? I think we were meant to go to this place. So later that day, this man who had a pass to the no longer British but now Indian cantonment at Jhansi (the Indian Military base), which is off limits to civilians, let alone foreigners. Rode with us through numerous armed check points to an isolated spot deep within the military base to the old deserted British cemetery.
The place taking up about 3 acres, was deserted and sadly being taken over by nature and the elements. Possibly we were the only people to visit this place in years. It seemed the entrance was the only part that showed upkeep. Inside there were markers from the 1860s commemorating the many British who were killed in the fighting of 1857, soldiers, woman, and children. We wandered the graveyard. There were markers for British and Anglo Indians all through the period of the British Raj. And not just Army men, but their families too. And I imagined what it would have been like to be a young girl from Somerset, married to an officer stationed in Jhansi India an isolated outpost 8000 miles from home in the 1850s.
More pictures on my flickr site.