Senji Hill Fort
December 10th 1995
That morning we'd decided we were going to climb up to Rajagiri fort, the highest of the three hills, which was eight hundred feet up from ground level. It took us over an hour to climb up the path to the fort, which stood on a massive boulder probably about four hundred feet high, perched on top of a pile of gigantic granite rocks. The track up to the top was part steps and part path and climbing it was hard work in the late morning sun.
When we got up there there wasn't anything very exciting to see in the fort itself, but the view from that height was incredible though. You could see clearly the layout of the fortifications down below and the line of the twenty metre thick walls which connected the three hills. And you could see a long way across the countryside all around.
One of the weirdest things up there was a massive iron canon, which was about four metres long and two feet in diameter. I don't know who put it there or how they got it up that path, but the must have either been desperate or had a large amount of expendable slave labour. Probably both.
One of the best buildings at the top was a granary. This was great because it was really cool inside and made a pleasant change from being on the side of the bare rocky hill in the baking midday sun. We stayed up the top for an hour or more and then headed back down for a couple of lemonades from the drink stall at the bottom.
The stall was under one of the two or three banyan trees inside the inner fortifications. The tree was heavily populated with monkeys and a couple of them sat and watched us as we drank our drinks and cooled off in the shade of its wide, spreading branches and large roundish leaves.
That evening in the bar at the Shivasand, a very drunk local started talking to me and telling me where we should go and what we should see around Senji. His English wasn't too bad, but, like most drunks, it was quite hard to follow what he was saying. He showed me a keyring tag with a photo on it of some guru he follows, who lives in a nearby town. He tried to get the tag off the keyring to give it to me, but he couldn't manage it. After he'd told me three or four times in a slurred voice that god had sent him to talk to me, i gave up and went back to the table i'd been sitting at with Jenny . After a while, he came over and insisted on giving me the guru's photo, which he'd finally managed to get off the keyring.
People in that state of drunkeness are quite hard work when their first language is the same as yours, but it's even harder when you have language problems anyway. However, i was quite used to people like that - half my friends were like it, after all! - and i tried very hard to be patient. He was genuine and friendly, although he wasn't perhaps expressing himself in the way he would have liked. I had no idea what i was going to do with the guru's photo though. I felt some kind of responsibility to look after it. Perhaps i'd find it a good home, somewhere it would be appreciated one day!