All photographs copyright Maya Wallach, AliaTerra
No, India is not full of bugs, and no, I'm not obsessed with the ones we're running across, but ... there sure are some amazing ones. But let me tell the story in something closer to chronological order.
Foreigners in India with visas longer than the typical 6 month tourist visa are required to "register" within 2 weeks of their arrival. Ok. Mine is a one year visa, so before we headed out of town for 5 days (and 11 days after my arrival in India) we went to the Police Commissioner's office to register. Ha. Not so fast! They didn't just want me to fill out some paperwork. They wanted xeroxes of my passport (and no, there is no xerox machine there), they wanted forms filled out in quadruplicate, they want 5 passport type photos, and they wanted proof of a negative HIV test. For a moment I thought we were fine -- we'd just done HIV tests a few days prior. But no, we did it at a private hospital. The Police would only accept tests done at one of 3 government hospitals. And since the test takes at least a day to do, there was no way I was going to get registered within the 2 week deadline, unless we cancelled our trip. What was the penalty for not registering on time? $30. Okay, we decided to pay the penalty -- hopefully it is that simple. (They also said I need to give a letter explaining why I am late. Ugh.)
We ended up renting a car (the one we were going to borrow wasn't back yet), so we got a tiny minivan, the kind that is smaller than the smallest American car -- try to lie down in the wall to wall bench of a back seat and there is only room for a torso and scrunched toes. Made me long for a good old American clunker where you can reallly stretch out. Not that it would have mattered: most of the roads are so bumpy that sleeping is next to impossible. In seconds, you are jostled and vibrated out of any comfortable position you may have found.
The car came with a driver who was friendly enough, but didn't have any maps and wanted only to go on the routes he knew. I, of course, had my road atlas, and showed him the way I wanted to go. Sometimes he won, sometimes I did. My final win was quite triumphant: we shaved 2 hours off what would have been an 8 hour journey. But I'm getting ahead of myself again.
The first day we drove to Mysore, just a few hours from Bangalore. It takes forever to get out of B'lore -- it is big, 5 million I think now, and the traffic is horrendous. There is a "fly-over" -- an elevated freeway -- for a glorious 5 miles, but otherwise it is a cow-cloggged and pothole-pitted obstacle course, with rickshaws and busses belching black clouds of sick-making diesel in your face the whole way. I began wishing we had gotten an a/c car, just to avoid the fumes.
Still, a few interminable kilometers out of town, the scenery was lovely. Palm trees and the wheat fields of such an intense green they made me think of Bali and rice paddies. Everywhere people were selling green coconuts, and we drank several. Our driver took a 5 minute detour to the gravesite of a major Muslim ruler here, Tipu Sultan, but I enjoyed the nearby fields and jungle more than the tomb. The air was incredibly humid, like walking underwater, and the temperature was close to 100. Too hot to fight, just enjoy. :-) I did, though Sher was complaining. The man from the desert thought it was too hot? Yes, because he isn't used to humidity!
By the time we got to Mysore, we were both ready to collapse, and after turning down the completely unappealing hotel in the center of town our driver took us to, we found a very comfortable modern place on the edge of town and collapsed in a/c splendor. Barely, we got up and headed out at sunset to see one of Mysore's major sights, the Bharatpur Gardens. It was dark when we got there, and I couldn't figure out what we were going to see. There were tons of cars parked, but the only lights were a simple stretch of white neon heading out into black. (This was some miles out of town.) We set out walking, and soon found ourselves walking along the top of a very long dam. After a few kilometers of pushing our way past hordes of people (all Indian) we headed down the path to a garden on the lower side of the dam. It was a very strange garden. Laid out in geometric paths, the main attraction was not plants, but water. There were pools and fountains everywhere, most empty, but some were working. The working ones were lit with colored spotlights. Water poured down steps, and people posed barefoot in the water for pictures. At the bottom of the garden was a small lake and a boat to the other side. The far side was more of the same, except the fountains were mostly working, and were fancier. More colors, more jets. The highlight was the "dancing music" fountain, which was a light and water show to various Hindi tunes. Pretty silly, really, but fun. The whole place is only lit up for one hour every evening, and we had arrived halfway into the hour. We walked quickly and arrived at the dancing music fountain in time to enjoy the final number and then the gardens closed and the throngs of people headed back to their cars.
Back at the hotel, another throng of people was gathering. A wedding was taking place across the street. We were invited to attend, and we watched for a bit. Sher was curious to see how people here did marriages. But mostly it seemed to be a waiting game: people sitting around waiting and waiting. So we left. But the music (by 4 musicians on strange lutes and a drum) went on all night. The wedding was still going on when we drove back through Mysore a few days later.
The next day, we went to the royal palace, a fancy splurge of Victorian era architecture with an Indian flourish for the gaudy. But the best part was just outside: ELEPHANTS! Two of them trundled up and Sher asked if I could ride one. Yes!!! The mahoot wanted me to get up behind him, but it seemed impossibly awkward to clamber up behind him, so he got down and I got to ride by myself!!! :-))))))
It was a quick ride, just around the parking lot, but I could feel the massive shoulderblades sliding beneath me and ... ah it was fun! Then our driver took us to the zoo, which wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. The animals looked healthy (something to do with being in a more hospitable climate than America, perhaps) and it was possible to get quite close to many of them. The white rhinos were only a 10 foot ditch and no fence away. And we got to feed peanuts to the African elephants -- the female took them right out of my hand, half grabbing my palm in the process. And I got to pet a baby african elephant, maybe a year old, soft soft ears....
Then, instead of going to Ooty, we decided to go to Coorg, the place our new landlords are from. It is not a tourist destination, but they said it was beautiful. Well, it was, with lots of jungle and coffee plantations, but unless you want to go trekking (and this was not the right time of year) or you want to stay at the $100/night and still not so fancy hotel for tourists, the attractions are pretty limited. We arrived at night and left the next morning.
The next day we arrived at Bandipur Wildlife Sanctuary. The only way to see the wildlife is by government bus -- 30 minutes late, $.75 for Indians, $4.50 for me. We saw cheetal (small spotted deer) and Indian bison (massive buffalo creatures), and, yes, ELEPHANTS! We saw several baby elephants too, including one set of twins. Sher preferred the zoo though -- and it was true we were much closer to the same animals there -- but ... this was fun too.
That night we stayed in the middle of the jungle in a bamboo hut. A BIG hut, probably 50 feet in diameter, just for us. The water in the bathroom -- a bucket for washing -- was cold, but it was so warm out we didn't mind. We took a stroll through massive thickets of bamboo -- it grows in impentetrable clumps 10-20 feet across and up to 50 feet tall. There was a campfire at night, but the guests mostly stayed to themselves. A group of 8 year old girls danced to the Hindi top 5. (Like the American top 40, but smaller in number. I already know all the songs.)
We were playing ping-pong (with a little girl and boy retrieving stray balls) when we were interrupted by a loud drone. Something was flying around the light above the table. Something big. REALLY big. One of the little girls said it was a bee. No, no way. Too big. Way too big. As big as a small planet, I thought. Ok, a very small planet. But really, this thing was as big as a small bird, at least. It looked kind of like a flying mouse, with big semicirle ears and tiny legs and this round blur of a body. It was too distracting to play ping-pong with, so Sher tried to shoo it away. Suddenly it stopped buzzing and clung silently to the lampshade. Finally we could see it clearly. It was a beetle! A big one, to be sure, but just a beetle. We were all staring at it, hushed, when it plumetted to the table, its wings kicking in just an inch before it hit. The little boy standing beside the table jumped. We all laughed. And then the little girl went in swinging, and knocked it out of commission.
That night we kept an oil lantern burning, because the generator only worked from 7 to 11pm, and otherwise it was BLACK. We were miles off the electric grid, miles from the road. So were were lying in our bamboo hut listening to the sounds of the night jungle, when we realized that the loudest sounds were coming from very close. Right above our heads, in fact. Something was rustling in the bamboo roof. Several somethings. A shower of dirt landed on Sher's legs. We moved the bed to the middle of the hut where the roof looked it had less dirt to shed. And then the roof erupted: screeches and scratches and scurrying -- it was mice! Big mice. We caught glimpses of two of them fighting through the bamboo fronds. Happily they didn't fall. We joked about one of us staying up, standing watch through the night, but what good would that do? We fell asleep, and woke to another pile of dirt on Sher's legs in the morning, but no harm done.
The next day we headed 4000 feet up into the mountains (we were already at 3000') to Ooty, which the British called Ootacamund, and the Indians call Udhagamandalam. Well, actually they call it Ooty too. I only saw it spelled out once. The road up is all switchbacks and we passed one overturned truck. But once you hit the plateau at the top it is lovely. Rolling green fields, long groves of eucalyptis trees, many bigger than most sequoiahs, certainly big enough to drive Indian sized cars through, if one was hollowed appropriately.
The town itself is a mess, horrible air, trash everywhere, very crowded and unpleasant. We stayed just outside of town in a British era inn owned by the ex-maharaja of the area. We heard the staff talking to him on the phone: "Yes, your excellency, of course, your highness." Our room was bigger than my house in Seattle, and had a working fireplace that they lit for us, and two hot water bottles. (There was no other heat, and filling the bath from the tap was impossible. I was told I should have asked them to bring me buckets of water, but too late.)
We went horseback riding in the afternoon, right after a brief thunderstorm. Sher's second time on a horse, and he did very well. We trotted through the streets, and cantered through the golf course, until someone told us not to, as we knew they would, but wow, golf courses are perfect for riding! ;-) It was quite boggling, to ride through the abject poverty of the village and then into the posh greens.... I caught a cold that day, too much diesel fumes I think, so Sher prescribed hot water with honey (which is sold in medicine stores in India) and a shot of brandy. Then he filled both hot water bottles for me and had me put my feet in a bucket of steaming hot water and gave me a foot massage. Not the way I've ever dealt with a cold before, but it was impossible to feel bad with that kind of treatment!
The next day we slept in as long as we could and then headed back to Bangalore. I tried to sleep more in the car, with minimal success. In all, we drove 1200 kilometers in 5 days, which felt more like 2000 miles, given the speed (or lack thereof) and conditions of Indian roads. Perhaps the most amazing part is that my laptop (which I took with us even though Sher said I was being silly -- and he was right -- I only opened it for a few minutes) survived all the bouncing and jouncing.
So we arrived back in Bangalore Sunday evening and then couldn't get any money out of the ATM to pay the driver because the ATM said I had insufficent funds. When I checked for my balance, there was enough, but ... oh well. It took a while to convince him that we'd pay tomorrow. (This was after we'd run out of money two days before, because the jungle hotel wouldn't take credit cards, and we had to borrow $10 from the driver to get through the last 2 days!)
In our new home, our landlords still aren't moved out. They have to "shift" (the word Indians use instead of "move") from the 2nd floor (except, European style, they call it the first floor) to the ground floor, but first the ground floor floor needs polishing, and that is taking a long time. So they have installed us in what they call the annex, a small apartment above the garage that is rented out separately. Tomorrow we can move into part of the first floor, and in a week or so we'll get the rest of it. Now we're arranging for their servants to do our cleaning, laundry and cooking...for something like $10/month. Yikes!
Today we bought a mattress ($15), got my blood drawn at the official gov't hospital, hit the bank for money (whew -- we were down to our last $2), then (after 3 hours riding around in 100 degree heat on the back of a motorcycle) I took a nap while Sher went out to get us sheets and towels and arranged to get a desktop computer built for us. Ok, dinner time here. Gotta go.