Nothing prepares you for it. As you drive down a lonely, long winding road through the tall grass that conceals everything except the clear sky, you may want to give up. It wasn’t blossom time otherwise this entire countryside is flushed in the golden profusion of sunflowers. A short walk down a dust track and you reach a clearing.
It’s a picturesque sight - an old church, half submerged the water.
The Holy Rosary church is believed to have been built by the French missionaries in 1860. For six months in a year it gets submerged in the river Hemvati and remains above it for the rest of the year.
The best time to go there is before sunset – 5- 5.30ish. A coracle took us up to the church and around it. The indigenous basket that sat five people wobbled if we so much as took a deep breath or spoke but the experience could not be relinquished for the fear of toppling over.
As the shadows lengthened, we turned away eager to find safety, to stand on stable ground again.
The church became a silhouette at the horizon, a placid river singing inside its walls – stuff dreams are made of.
