Rohtak
— — a city the road keeps coming back to.
Not only on a wall.
“An old market town on the flat country between the Aravallis and the Yamuna, where the trunk road from Delhi to Hisar has carried traffic for centuries. Tilyar Lake sits on the eastern edge, ringed by a low park. The Asthal Bohar math, a few kilometres out, holds the older quiet. In the late afternoon the light comes in long and yellow across the wheat, and the city reads the way a working place reads when the day is winding down. from the studio
Rohtak, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Rohtak sits on the alluvial plains of southern Haryana, about 70 kilometres northwest of Delhi along National Highway 9. The district is administrative headquarters for one of the most agriculturally productive belts in northern India, and the city itself counted roughly 374,000 residents in the 2011 Census. Maharshi Dayanand University, founded in 1976, anchors the eastern side of town and brings a steady current of students through the bazaars. The Asthal Bohar math, a Nath-tradition monastery a few kilometres east, predates the modern city by centuries. The land is flat in every direction and the horizon stays low.
Rohtak's air carries the cycle of the wheat-and-mustard plains. Winter mornings bring a thick low fog that holds until mid-morning, with January temperatures dropping near 4°C; the May and June afternoons run hot and dry, regularly above 42°C, before the monsoon arrives in early July. The dust of the plough season hangs gold in the late light. Local farmers still mark the year by the rabi harvest in April and the sowing that follows the first heavy rain. The dry winter sky over the Tilyar Lake park is one of the cleanest skies the city gets.
Most visitors come overland from Delhi, either by car on NH-9 (about 90 minutes outside rush hour) or on the Delhi-Rohtak commuter rail, which runs frequent service through Rohtak Junction. Tilyar Lake and its small zoo sit on the eastern edge of town and stay open through the day. The Asthal Bohar math, about 6 kilometres east on the Delhi road, welcomes pilgrims around the year and fills during the Guru Purnima observance in July. The cleanest months for an unhurried walk are November through February, when the heat has gone and the fog burns off by ten.