Wild Ways

It's strange how I await my birthday as the the single most important annual event when it's actually on other occasions when I'm totally unprepared, that the grey cells multiply to mark my mental growth. I've finally identified a pattern in this behaviour, and come to the conclusion that it's when I travel that this metamorphosis hits me out of nowhere and transforms me.

It took a recent journey into the wild for me to grow up a notch more. Determined to see Corbett, I set off for a tryst with India's first wildlife park ever. If not from the very beginning, I could feel a wave of difference washing over me the minute we entered the Sal forests. The two-hour drive to Dhikala in the heart of the jungle was so bumpy and so beautiful that it sure shook me.

Early next morning, I mounted on Pawan Pari's back to catch the sunrise by the river side. Riding into the dense thicket of elephant grass and wet greenery, I realised how different it was from my last visit to a tiger reserve. A year back at Ranthambhore, I hadn't learnt my lesson in the ways of the wild and had sulked and sulked till I spotted the big cats. Silently appreciating everything from a jungle fowl to a lone tusker, I heard others whisper murmers of disappointment. I couldn't help but feel a mix of contempt and anger rising in me at the ungrateful attitude that made them oblivious to the sudden start of a barking deer or the flutter of a spotted dove's wings. But then again, I wasn't entitled to feel that way since I had, in many ways, once been there. Gazing at the female elephant carefully nestling her 10 day baby between her legs simultaneously as she walked, it dawned on me that I had new found respect and understanding for the animal kingdom.

A visit to a sanctuary requires an open-mindedness that has finally come to me. I definitely don't expect to see animals the way I did in zoos as a child, but instead where they truly belong, in the wilderness. I'm glad I've grown up.

Karela- God's Own Bitter Gourd

Kerala is one of the strangest places I've been to. I haven't quite decided what I am to make of it. Other matters aside, it's the only place where I've seen reservation for the fairer sex to such an extent that even eating joints have a 'ladies' section with high translucent sliding walls to give them their privacy while they devour rasam rice. Most joints don't have menus either, and you pretty much have to resign yourself to a 'meal'. Where there ARE menus, the only thing actually available are the meals again, more often than not. One of the biggest delights is buses stopping randomly whenever you hail them, a little like the mountains.

I'd been warned that the Lungi bearers like to stare a lot. I don't know why that is any different from a lot of other places. Ok, so instead of thrice, they'd turn around a fourth time. But can it be helped if some people like to satiate their curiosity a little more than the rest? It doesn't quite change the thought behind it. Jaded from the unnecessary attention, heat, queries and fixed meals , I longed for God's Own Country. Whatever happened to the palm-lined beaches, coconut groves and boats on backwaters? Either the entire thing was a hoax, or I was plain in the wrong places.

The day I reached Cliff Land, I realised the latter was true. It was the only time that I was actually smiling through a temperature and a weird rash I'd developed overnight. For it was here that I had my first tryst with the hospitable side of Lungi Land, and menu cards with Puttu and Appams alongside the eaten-to-death meals. Post a Kathakali performance to top the cliche I'd been subconsciously dying for, I knew I'd arrived, finally, to the land of the postcards and the promotion campaign. A trip down to the Cape, and then to the tea hills of Kerala, and I finally like the place somewhat. I'm not sure if it IS God's own country- I've been to places far more beautiful and friendlier- but I can call it God's own backyard that maybe needs a little weeding and pruning.

Of Cars & Camels

Ever since I saw this picture, everything cleared in my head. So this is what I'd been wanting for the longest time and hadn't known known how to put it into words- wanting to leap out of the car right on to the camel's back. Not just a really deadly stunt/stupid move/error, the act holds so much meaning, now that I clearly know what it means. It's a move not from a vehicle to an animal, but a move from the stable to the unstable, from technology to the wild, from a smooth fast ride in a gas-run four wheeler to a slower, bumpier, far more exotic ride on a four-legged moody transporter. It will be a slower ride, but a much more beautiful one for sure. I want to stop and smell the roses each time my camel wants to stop and nibble tree leaves. I want to see every frame and take in the details, not whizz by in a car and watch life flashing by the window or in the rear view mirror.

New Year Resolutions

Today is the beginning of a brand year for me. My brain cells were too sedated yesterday for it to sink in. No no, I havn't taken to crack yet. It was purely the effect of lazing for the last few days in an atmosphere that pretty much has the same effects. Just so you believe, I'll run you through my daily routine:
Wake up whenever the sounds of nature wake you up-stagger to Ajit's for lemon tea, have a long-winded conversation about nothing in particular; Anyways the sum of it is always ' Come to Kasol in summer, now you are my friend'- Go back, take a shower, put on some long, flowing robes and beads- Back to Ajit's, in a grave dilemma over a calorie-laden banana pancake or toast drowned in cheese-Head down the lane to the golden sands and sip the golden brew all day, with of course the perfunctory plate of calamarie, prawn curry and other yummy, sometimes stinky, sea creepies by the side-a dip in the waters if I'm not worn out already with all the binging and the smiling at equally spaced out hippies-walk down to the market to haggle over 'made in kathmandu' felt bags-Head down the lane to the golden sands and sip the golden brew, with the never-faltering perfunctory plate of calamarie and prawn curry by the side- watch fire-eaters under the stars, staff-jugglers, clap after a mind-blowing djembe performance-sleep.

My new year resolution is to do be able to do absolutely nothing and feel as free as I did, this year, or ever. I hope I don't have to break this one.

The Trans Indian

This is an account of a journey I'll never, ever forget and want to blog down to, if nothing else, purely laud the fortitude of my travelling companion and myself. Probably the longest, most torturous of train journeys from which I emerged my grimiest, tanned -nay, blackened- best. Before I start, let me make it clear that this is from my college days. i.e. that golden era when your pocket money woes would shame the chana seller at your college gate. That probably is the best reason I can give for foolishly buying non-ac train tickets from Bangalore to Delhi in the month of May. That translated to 36 hours of sweating it out at insanely high temperatures. But who cares if you've stood in line three days in advance to get a 50% discount on your ticket? Gloating that we would cross almost the length of the country in 300 bucks, we awaited our nemesis. Plus I didn't know until afterwards that I had magnetic properties. So what if they exclusively attract The Worst Luck Ever. If Lindsay Lohan knew, she'd probably have offered me her role in Just My Luck. As we boarded the fateful train, we made a last-minute supposedly thoughtful purchase. Grapes. Like some KILOS of them, as if they were an endangered fruit on the verge of extinction that we would never eat again. So we got on our train on time, prim and proper that we were, and promptly climbed on to the upper berths that we had specially asked for since we wanted no disturbance in our sleep on the first day of summer break. All smiles, grape juice, chug-chug, all well. Just a lil hot, thats all. The night went fine, and so did the following morning. But as the day started progressing, the roof right on our heads started getting warmer, together with the air being circulated by the fan right on our reddened faces. Desperately fanning ourselves and munching the now-disgusting grapes, we only prayed for the day to end soon so we could be in Delhi the next day. Night fell, and the sun rose the next day with some more plotting against our fate. Just as the day became unbearable and we resembled baked turkeys with a film of gleaming filth, we heard THE news. A train on the same track had been derailed and we would have to spend an extra day circling in Madhya Pradesh, waiting for the tracks to be cleared. May + Madhya Pradesh= Deep regret. For not buying ac tickets. For choosing upper berths. For not wearing something lighter than oversized tees that weren't thin enough. For stuffing enough grapes to bloat our bellies simply for want of a deck of cards that would have been a sport better than chewing saccharine sweet citrus. Two days later, we finally made it to Delhi. A sour expression on our faces and heavy bags on our backs, we took a bus for the last leg of our journey. We had been travelling close to 40 hours, and sort of had a seizure when the tyre got punctured in the middle of nowhere. Hailing every vehicle that crossed the damn bus, we scowled at each one that didn't stop. After some desperate prayers to the cosmos, we got another bus, and finally reached our destination in merely 50 hours. The one decision I made that actually turned out to be a smart one was the one that I took as I reached home. I decided to make a lesser conspicuous back door entry.

Any questions?

One thing that's always baffled me is the constant questioning I get by strangers everytime I travel. By now, I'm such an expert at predicting the volley of queries that will shoot off from my fellow passenger's mouth any minute, that I feel like an amateur clairvoyant. I even know the order, by heart:
1. You are travelling alone?
2. Why?
3. Buy why?
4. Are you married?
5. So are you travelling with your parents?
6. No friends either? Tsk Tsk!
5. So then you are going there to meet someone?
6. So are you a student in that case?
7. So you don't have any work there?
8. Absolutely nothing?
9. You are travelling ALONE? ( pupils dilate, lower jaw drops)
10. Back to question number 2

And the viscious cycle continues, each time with different expressions and exaggerated gesticulation. Suspicious looks, disapproving nudges, she's-not-a-morally-upright-good-Indian-girl looks, and sometimes safety tips. A young gentleman even asked me once if I had run away from home. I had to reassure myself in my head that I indeed WAS a harmless backpacker bumming around peacefully, and didn't have the look of a street urchin or a juvenile child on the run. Constant travel across India has mellowed me down though. I no longer look shocked/surprised if people don't understand that I'm just trying to explore a superb country which others are either not privileged to do or travel half the globe to do. I guess my flaw lies in being an Indian trying to holiday in her own country rather than buying a 4 nights/5 days package to Phuket.