XXIX. Travel to the Kutch

In antiquity there were two main trade routes from the Middle East and Africa to India and beyond. Caravans traveled the more northerly of these through Persia, Afghanistan, over the Khyber Pass, into the Indian subcontinent, and often then on to points further north, east and south. Essentially, this was the itinerary I followed on my first trip to India.

The more southerly route went over water, from Indian Ocean ports on Africa’s East Coast such as Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Mombasa, and Lamu, tracking a course southeast of the Arabian Peninsula and into the Arabian Sea. The ancient dhow trade from Africa and Arabia relied on persistent “trade winds” that move in a cyclonic pattern from south-southwest to northeast towards more northerly latitudes and from northeast to west-southwest toward more southerly ones; thus ensuring return passage from India and other places in the Orient. In the week that I have been here the wind has blown persistently, and at times strongly, from the west-southwest.

Located above the Arabian Sea and just south and east of the Sind (in what is now Pakistan), the Kutch is a place I have wanted to visit for a long time. Primarily through its port at Mandvi, the Kutch was a center of the dhow trade and therefore had more or less direct contact with Africa for millennia. One can see this in the facial features of some of the people in this region (these are pictures of Rashida and Raju, who work at the place that I am staying).

Because it is separated from areas further north by great salt deserts known as the Great Rann (of the Kutch), on its northwestern frontier, and the Small Rann, on its northeast, it remained in relative isolation from land passage from the north through most of its history. In more ancient geologic time the Ranns (indeed the entire region) was under a larger and more extensive sea than what currently exists.


Although the Kutch looks quiet geologically, it isn’t. The region was the site of a major earthquake in 2002 that leveled much of the built environment, including many villages and most of the medieval city of Bhuj. I am sad that I did not visit the place before that happened. Such is the price of procrastination and dalliance.


I had the privilege to visit the Great Rann on the second to last evening I was in the Kutch. As far as the eye could see there was a vast expanse of salt-crusted earth. When taking these photos with some new friends from the Ananddhan Nature Cure Center I was reminded of times spent around the Arctic Circle – in the summer when the sun has crested the horizon. In the far north, with the sun so low in the sky, there is the constant threat of impending cold (even with global warming it can get very cold). Here, though, that persistent west-southwesterly wind blows warm, almost hot, air across these timeless plains.