There’s just something about site visits. A chance to bond with your fellow peers, a chance to travel to places you probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise, a chance to learn how life works outside of the glass bubble you were raised in, and perhaps most importantly (well, for me at least), the chance to make memories that will last a lifetime.
Over the past six semesters, I’ve been on many, many such site visits, all of them bursting with memories that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget. But if you were to ask me to pick just one, just one out of all of them, well, I’d be at a loss. Or so I would pretend.
You see, I can single out my favorite site visit, yet I will be slightly reluctant, for reasons that may seem inconsequential, or rather bluntly, silly to an outsider. But if for a moment, I were to put it all aside, I would tell you that the most memorable site visit I have ever had, would be to Mandu, Madhya Pradesh, all the way back in July 2019, when I had just begun my third semester.
Mandu: A Site Visit to Remember
Like I said, site visits are quite possibly the best way to kickstart a bond. I remember sixteen of us, all young, eager faces sloshing around the mud, trying to stay dry under the heavy ambush of the rains. I remember our professors, standing tall and bright, teaching us during the day and hanging out with us, reminiscing their college days under the cover of night.
It was during one such ‘campfire – gossip’ session when one of our professors recounted his favorite site visit. The antics they got up to, let me tell you, we were so inspired. I think this is the moment when I realized why everyone says ‘Your college years will be the best years of your life’, these professors weren’t so much faculty as they were friends. After listening to stories of their juries, their professors, their projects, it was almost impossible to go to sleep. We were too keyed up. And that’s when we remembered, Gadashah.
Gadashah: The Tomb of the Undead
Gada Shah (quite literally ‘the Beggar King’) was a Rajput merchant – noble who lived in Mandav, Madhya Pradesh. Often referred to as Gada Shah Shop, it could be seen as a medieval mall or shopping complex.
Legend has it, however, that one night, while the monument was still being built, the gates of the complex suddenly, mysteriously latched shut. They say the wind howled, and the stars flickered brighter than ever before. They say twelve men lost their lives that night, gone without a trace. It is said that their souls still wander the complex, haunting it for their misfortune, chasing away all who dare to venture through.
And so naturally, eight of us incredibly young, incredibly foolish budding architects decided to venture out in the dead of the night, to explore the supposedly haunted Gada Shah. In hindsight, probably not the best decision. But at the time, it seemed like the perfect end to a week-long sight visit. So off we went, into the night, on a lonely road towards Gada Shah’s Shop.
The Dead of the Night
Now, when you have eight young adults, with questionable intelligence (at least when it comes to haunted mansions and the like), walking on a lonely road, you know things are going to get interesting. The road was narrow, with perhaps one light every 200 meters. I remember us walking down the road, talking quietly because it felt wrong to raise our voices. The dead of the night carried our voices much farther than they had any right to.
At last, after almost ten minutes, we arrived at the Shop. To our dismay (and secret glee), the gate was padlocked shut. Not knowing what to do, we decided to walk a little further ahead. After perhaps five minutes, all of a sudden, the silence we were treasuring, broke. The winds howled. The sound of mental clunking and creaking rang out through the air.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of my friends look as spooked as they did in that instant. ‘Site visit gone bad’ was constantly playing on a loop in my head as I looked around at the others, wondering what to make of this unexpected occurrence.
With a shared look of apprehension, we began making our way back to the hotel, and if our steps were just that little more frenzied, well, no one said anything about it. As we made our way, the lights began to flicker. I could feel the tension in the air, almost palpable as our steps turned into strides.
When I think back to this time now, I honestly wonder what foolishness could have prompted my friend to test our fates, by whispering, “I wonder what would happen if the lights went out.” Now, all of us felt slightly jittered by that one single statement, but of course, we weren’t going to let anyone else see how nervous we were getting. And so, we persisted.
Fate apparently decided to not be kind to us that night, for not a minute after she whispered those dreadful words did the lights flicker one last time, before dying completely. We were now completely entrenched in darkness, the sole glimmer of light a couple of hundred meters ahead. As our feet pounded against the ground, on our way towards what we assumed was safety, we discovered that the source of light that had been our life raft was in fact a solitary billboard.
Now, if the girl who first uttered those words did so in an act of foolishness, I can only imagine what was going through another friend’s head when he spoke the words that turned our whole night upside down, “If the billboard lights also go out now, that’d be insane.” Even Fate has a limit, she has to play the odds. Just as we crossed the billboard, the lights began to flicker, until eventually, they too went out.
We ran.
We forgot all pretense of not being scared and made a frantic dash towards the safety of the hotel. As soon as we made it to the hotel, which we immediately dubbed ‘Sanctuary’, we dissolved into fits of nervous laughter, clutching our sides, holding onto each other for dear life. I can’t really say much else about that night, we never did find out whether Gada Shah’s Shop actually was haunted or not, nor did we ever find out why the lights went out at those exact moments.
I can say this, however, that week-long site visit in Mandu did wonders for us. Closer than ever, we came back to college with the brightest of smiles and happiest of memories (even if some of them did make us keep the lights on at night).
