#1: [07-Nov-08]

25-Nov-2008 --

My husband, Dinesh, daughter, Emma, and I were traveling with five friends (Joanne, Les, Marilyn, Paula, and John), two cars, and a mountain of luggage from the town of Deogarh to the city of Udaipur when we took a detour to visit this confluence. The confluence hunt wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision but something I’d been planning obsessively for several weeks. We came to it armed with maps printed from Google Earth, showing lat/long coordinates for more than 20 waypoints between the turn-off from National Highway 8 and the confluence point, about 18 kilometers (11 miles) to the east.

The excessive planning was due largely to the fact that we had very little time for this adventure. We were headed to Udaipur for Dinesh’s cousin’s wedding. With festivities beginning that evening, there was no time for trial-and-error wandering around in the countryside. If we were to be successful, we had to get it right pretty quickly.

Before reaching our turn-off from the main highway, we had solved one pre-trip mystery. On Google Earth we’d noticed white patches lining National Highway 8 for about 15 kilometers (10 miles) both north and south of the turn-off for Rajsamand and even larger white swaths set back from the road. The latter turned out to be quarries for white marble. And lining the road were dozens and dozens of marble dealers with open air displays of slabs, sheets, boulders, and statues.

Turning east off National Highway 8, we drove through the vibrant, congested towns of Rajsamand and Kankroli. Our paved road eventually dwindled to one lane, as we passed farms and villages. With the help of the lat/long coordinates on our Google Earth map, we easily found the next turn-off, onto an even smaller road, which we were to follow for about 3 kilometers (2 miles). Along this country track we spotted a mongoose, and then another one; and we hoped this was an auspicious sign, particularly concerning the local snake population.

We knew we were close to the confluence point by the time our driver announced that the cars could go no further on what was by this time a rutted dirt path. So eight of us proceeded on foot through the tiny farming settlement of Tejpura, attracting no small amount of attention, as well as kind invitations to eat and drink in several homes.

The confluence point lies at the edge of a field, just south of Tejpura.