Travelers' Tales India

by James O'Reilly

  I was hungry. I would have to head outside to find some food. But in India things were never that easy. It would take a lot to work myself up for a dive into the scrum of horn-blaring trucks, dust, dirt, filth, scavenging mangy animals, incessant noise, and clamouring crowds which, along with the squads of snarling dogs, would pounce upon me as soon as I emerged from my den. I was exhausted as it was from the cycling, the heat, the lack of peace, the suspect food and water—just from India in general, really—and venturing out on a food-finding mission would exhaust me even more. It was not possible simply to walk out, buy some food and return within moments. To head out into the street-anarchy was a major expedition and needed a lot of willpower.

  It was half an hour before I even mustered enough energy to sit up, and another ten minutes before I succeeded in putting on my shoes, after which I needed a rest and sat for a while, panting, heat-dazed and sweaty, to contemplate my next move. Finally, my stomach willed me to put one foot in front of the other and I hit the town.

  Bijolia was a ramshackle place, the streets and gutters full of rotting rubbish and excrement, the “shops” full of shoddy goods. It was a small but noisy place—one big, blaring nightmare that resounded in nauseating waves round my head. The people, as always, were curious but friendly. I did not have my bike with me but they all knew who I was.

  “Hello English bicycle! Stop! Chapati? Dal? You want very best mealing here?”

  I chose one of the many bench-lined food houses whose fronts were adorned with the usual grease-engrimed cauldrons. I peered into each one, rejecting mixtures which had unidentifiable bones protruding from them, and chose the old tasty and (usually) trustworthy dal before retreating to a rickety bench.

  By our bad habits we spoil our sacred river banks and furnish excellent breeding grounds for flies….A small spade is the means of salvation from a great nuisance. Leaving night-soil, cleaning the nose, or spitting on the road is a sin against God as well as humanity, and betrays a sad want of consideration for others. The man who does not cover his waste deserves a heavy penalty even if he lives in a forest.

  —Mohandas Gandhi, quoted by V. S. Naipaul in An Area of Darkness

  The mustachioed chef, wrapped in a tea-towel, was a nice man. He shooed away the encroaching crowds as if dealing with a pack of pestering dogs and left me to eat and write my diary. A few moments later an old-fashioned chauffeur-driven Ambassador car pulled up outside. An immaculately dressed Western couple stepped out and surveyed the squalid surroundings with disdain. I felt quite excited to see them—I had not spoken to anyone other than an Indian for nearly twelve days. I smiled their way and called a chirpy, “Hello!”

  They looked but did not acknowledge me at all.

  “Edward,” said the woman in peeved tones, “I’m just dying of thirst. Tell Narayan to bring us a cup of tea, but only if it looks safe. The place is so frightfully filthy. We’ll drink it in the car.”

  The chauffeur dutifully obliged and bought the tea, which I noticed cost a lot more rupees than mine had. He did not use one of the tea-house’s cups but a special one the woman had given him, presumably for reasons of hygiene. Edward and the woman drank their tea on the back seat of the car, doors shut, window blinds pulled, insulated from the outside world. They had uttered not a word to any of the curious onlookers. Then they drove away.

  “Why did you charge them three times more per cup of chai than me?” I asked the owner.

  “Tourist,” he said.

  “But I’m a tourist.”

  “No, you are travelling on bicycle. This I think is very good. I also travelling on bicycle but car I have not.”

  When he learnt that I was a cook by trade, he invited me to join in the chapati-making—rolling the dough into putty balls, flattening them with a rapid movement from hand to hand, and slapping them on to the sides of the traditional clay oven, its flames fanned continuously by a skinny boy sitting on his haunches. Making chapatis looked easy but was not. Each time, mine turned out like mottled cow pats, which everyone found very funny—especially when I put one on my head and got on with diary writing. When I left, the owner gave me a going-home present: a day’s supply of chapati and dahi.

  I approached Sawai Madhopur on Holi, a religious holiday during which Indians enact a bizarre celebration that involves hurling brightly coloured paint over each other. Roadblocks of stones and wood and bodies were constructed by gangs of boys in an attempt to slow down the traffic. Covered in their war paint, they danced around ecstatically, demanding: “Rupees! Rupees!” Should you refuse, you found yourself a target for a liberal spattering of paint. The same fate awaited you should you oblige. Being bicycle-bound made matters worse and the only hope was to storm the roadblock at speed. A multitude of waving arms, some clutching sticks, would lash out dangerously in a wild attempt to stop me. Usually I managed to fend off the mob—but never the paint. By the time I arrived in Sawai Madhopur I looked like a moving advertisement for Dulux.

  It was in Sawai Madhopur that I was directed, redirected, and finally became lost when searching for the dak bungalow. My last request to three betel-nut-chewing men at a junction had resulted in being pointed in three different directions. I ended up at a five-star hotel which happened to be on the edge of the Ranthambhore wildlife reserve—part of Project Tiger and home to forty-six of these biggest of cats. Half a century ago there were forty thousand tigers in India; now there are only twenty-five hundred.

  Contrary to popular belief, their demise was not entirely due to the unrestrained tiger-hunting sport so eagerly pursued by maharajahs and officers of the British Raj. Agriculture, poaching, deforestation, rising human populations, army stations, tea-growers’ plantations, insecticides, and industrial development have all conspired to reduce tiger numbers.

  I asked the hotel manager for directions to the dak bungalow and he whisked me up into his jeep. We sped to a remote, jungly spot deep into the game reserve and there stood a tent, in a state of severe disrepair: it consisted of a tattered piece of tarpaulin draped breezily over a bough, beneath which lay a string bed which seemed to have been gnawed by tigers.

  “Please,” said the manager, “it is my sincerest pleasure that you come to passing the night here and if you have luck tiger may visit you.”

  Personally, I could not see anything lucky about being stuck at night alone in the middle of the jungle with hungry tigers on the prowl. I politely declined his offer, whereupon he invited me to stay in his hotel free of charge, with meals and tea on the veranda included. This offer I could not refuse.

  There was more in the bargain. At dawn the next morning, he escorted me in his jeep into the reserve in search of the elusive tiger. Hours passed as our eyes continually scoured the thicket. I saw warthogs, mongeese, monkeys, crocodiles, and many strange species of deer—but no tiger. I was on the point of giving up all hope when suddenly, rippling through the long, dry grasses, was a real-life tiger of heart-stopping magnificence. Dagger-toothed and jagged-clawed, it was a perfectly designed, burning-eyed, striped killing machine—a mighty vision of pure grace and power.

  At a tender age, Josie Dew fell out of a fast-moving vehicle and developed a life-long aversion to cars. Then she got her first bicycle and never looked back. She has spent many years cycling throughout the world, telling her stories through the books Slow Coast Home, The Sun in My Eyes, and The Wind in My Wheels: Travel Tales from the Saddle, from which this story was excerpted.

  It had been one of those days—hot and dusty, with trucks and buses honking and a couple of flat tires to top it off. I had stopped on the side of the road to look at my map and get my bearings, when a teenage boy rode up on his scooter and asked, “One minute of your time?” A harmless request—but I have learned in a country of 900 million people, if you give everyone a minute who asks for one—you soon run out of minutes.

  In this particular situation I chose to withhold my sixty seconds of attention and pedaled off. Soon came the whine of a scooter as the boy pulled
up alongside of me. “One minute of your time?” “Ignore him and he’ll go away,” I thought and picked up my pace. He caught up and began repeating,“Sir, I am talking,” over and over and over again. This went on for five minutes and I imagined with my luck, he had a full tank of gas.

  I slammed on my brakes. “OK, you win,” I said, “You’ve got one minute,” pointing to my watch, “Go.”

  He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I am God.” I was speechless. What is the proper response when a thirteen-year-old boy confides in you that he is a deity? I AM GOD!” he repeated more emphatically.What did he want? Did he want me to kneel at his feet? To sing his praises? Did he want my Visa card? “ I AM GOD!” I turned to go. “Sir, I am talking. Sir, I am talking.”

  I snapped. I lost my cool. I became unglued. I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Get out of my face! Leave me alone!”…and several other choice phrases.

  He took one step back, held out his hand and said, “One hundred rupees.”

  He must have seen the look of homicide in my eyes, for he quickly hopped on his scooter and scooted off, before I could begin to holler again. Thank Krishna that was over.

  A mile down the dusty highway I began to laugh. I laughed until tears came to my eyes as I realized what the poor kid had meant to say was, “I am guide,” and his fee was one hundred rupees.

  —Willie Weir, “Cycling India: Letters from the Road”

  Love Has Teeth

  DAVID YEADON

  In the proper context, there’s nothing quite like a simple meal.

  IT WAS A MODEST BEACHSIDE PLACE, NOTHING FANCY AND NOT FAR from the Charles Correa’s Cubist Cidade-de-Goa resort, one of a handful of such enclaves on Goa’s eighty-mile coastline.

  We were the only customers and sat at a window table overlooking the ocean. I’d eaten nothing of any interest since my farewell bacchanal at Bombay’s Taj Hotel luncheon buffet (one of India’s most extravagant culinary displays) and expected the worst in this empty restaurant.

  My fears were utterly unfounded.

  Two little palate-cleansing bowls of spicy seafood broth known as tomyupkung and a plate of steamed mussels in a garlic, cumin, and wine sauce appeared within minutes of our arrival, along with two loaves of crusty Portuguese bread, hot and smelling of San Francisco sourdough.We obviously didn’t eat fast enough. Another appetizer followed in a couple of minutes—this time delicate slices of home-smoked mackerel wrapped in little pouches of palm leaves. Then, with hardly a pause, came slivers of perfectly cooked suckling pig, crisp-skinned and juicy.

  Even Angelo, my hired driver, seemed surprised by the speed of delivery. We considered asking them to slow things down a little, but whoever was creating these magnificent degustation dishes back in the kitchen was well and truly on a roll. We decided to let him be and just enjoy his handiwork.

  The chef was tireless. Tiny crisp-crusted vegetable samosas redolent with familiar Indian spices were followed by slices of apa de camarao , a sort of pie with a golden rice crust over a succulent mix of whole prawns cooked in coconut milk. Then a slight pause before the main dish, Pomfret Recheiado, a whole fish filled with a rich pungent stuffing of sour red masala and grilled until the skin crackled like cornflakes when you cut it.

  This was too much. But whoever it was cooking back there hadn’t finished with us. Small bowls of vindaloo were accompanied by tiny crushed rice and lentil pancakes and, before we could raise our hands in defeat, out came a masala of miniature pink crabs in a sauce brimming with coriander, flecks of chili peppers, cumin, and garam masala. All this washed down with capitos of heavy Goan red wine, a little like young port but far more pungent. Angelo staggered to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later.

  “Oh—she’s so beautiful!”

  “Who?”

  “The cook—it’s a girl who is cooking all these things. She is…” he sought the most complimentary adjectives but failed.“You must see her. I will ask.”

  He vanished into the kitchen again and seemed to be gone a long time.

  And then she emerged.

  She couldn’t have been much more than a teenager. A dark-eyed, golden-skinned Goan madonna, blushing a little, and carrying a round dish of something resembling crème caramel. Angelo was grinning like a gibbon.

  “You know what this is?”

  “No, but it looks good.”

  “This is bebinca. She can make bebinca! This takes hours of work. It’s eggs, coconut milk, sugar…what else?”

  The girl whispered something in a voice that sounded like a spring breeze.

  “I don’t know how to say in English. Special spices—a special mix. Every cook makes a different mix. This is a very traditional Goan dish—but very, very difficult to make.”

  He looked at his love with adoring eyes.

  “Isn’t she…?”

  The girl blushed even more, placed the dish on the table, and scampered back to the kitchen.

  And that was the last we saw of her. The bebinca was superb—light as a cloud, a melt-in-the-mouth creation that left the palate sweetened and refreshed. But Angelo’s only thought was for the girl, and he set off for the kitchen again.

  This time he was unlucky.

  A large man with a thick black mustache, large by Goan standards at least, stood by the door. Angelo made some complimentary remarks about the food, the man nodded but seemed aloof and wary. My friend returned with the bill. It was for a ridiculously small amount, hardly more than you’d pay at a roadside hamburger joint back home. He looked utterly forlorn and defeated. Love has teeth behind a pair of pretty lips, and he’d been bitten. His plate of bebinca sat untouched; his romantic urges had been crushed. The man was obviously guarding the door. Protocols had been infringed, and it was clear there’d be no more dallying with the pretty cook today.

  “You can always come back,” I said.

  Angelo seemed not to hear me and we drove away in silence.

  David Yeadon also contributed “A Bath for Fifteen Million People” to Part I and “The Mirage of Life” to Part III. These stories were excerpted from his book The Back of Beyond: Travels to the Wild Places of the Earth.

  I sat in the Delhi airport and watched the big electric clock in the departure hall that tells passengers when to board. I thought I imagined that time was moving in fits and starts: 1:12 a.m. for fifteen minutes, then 1:27 for another twenty, 1:47…. Closer inspection revealed that the clock was not plugged in, and its digits were being flipped manually by a little man in gray overalls whenever the mood took him.

  —Jonah Blank, Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana through India

  Remnants of the Raj

  ANTHONY WELLER

  Ghosts of the British past still hover in the hill stations of the north.

  IN JULY, WHEN THE REST OF INDIA WAS BAKING IN TERRIBLE HEAT, cursing and hoping for the monsoon that would bring floods with its blessing, I decided to go up above it all, to the cool air and heights of Simla.

  Delhi, Old and New, was unbearable. At over 120˚ Fahrenheit the mind and spirit stop working properly at the body’s urging; the air is a recipe of equal parts dust and sweat. This is the curse of the Indian subcontinent and is in part an explanation for the philosophical asceticism so prevalent for centuries. One must simply withdraw into nothingness and accept it all. The monsoon, which beggars all description with its force—I saw it dent the roofs of cars—can be as awful as the heat. No wonder the British in India, early in the nineteenth century, created these oases in the lower reaches of the Himalayas—Darjeeling, Simla, Mussoorie—where the mind could still operate, tiny nirvanas for a master class, with elaborate support systems of numerous bearers from below. They were called, inadequately, “hill stations,” and Simla was and is queen of them all.

  To get to Simla I took the toy train that begins at Kalka, in the Punjab, and carries one slowly and precipitously up. India has one of the greatest railway systems in the world: it is the efficient bloodstream that keeps t
he country alive. The toy train, on its narrow-gauge toy track, crept audaciously up through mists and around mountains. Below us lay folded valleys and terraced fields of an extreme green. We passed through forests of pine and cedar and paused at small stations with melodious names like Koti and Sonwara that looked like blue-and-white retirement cottages surrounded by careful gardens. We burrowed through stone tunnels cut in the hillsides, 103 in all, some only twenty yards long. Cows and water buffalo shambled away at the nearness of our train, and the air became fragrantly cool.

  We left the wrinkled valleys behind, crossing arched stone bridges; dark hawks heard us coming and swung out over wastrel gorges. And then, after Summer Hill, we came up out of the clouds to the majesty of sunlight burning on Simla.

  Furiously packed onto a series of steep, connecting ridges, all Simla looked precarious, a jigsaw-puzzle town. It seemed to tumble across the Himalayan spines, and from afar, set in tall trees, it resembled a British country town that had gone a-wandering, far from home. But for nearly a century, during the summer months, Simla was transformed into one of the most important and powerful places on earth, for it was the summer capital of the British Raj, the play-paradise of those ruling gods, with their idle wives and spoiled children, all outnumbered by servants. I wondered what remained of the Raj now, here on Olympus.

  So the British loaded their families and belongings onto horses, carriages, and jampans, and climbed into the Himalayas. Here they found the cool breezes, the wild roses, the streams, waterfalls, firs, and ferns of distant England. True, the mountains towered thousands of feet into the clouds, monsoon rains drenched the hillsides, and the forests were impassable, but with Queen Victoria’s name upon their lips, they dealt with all that. Within a century, roads had been built, with the necessary bridges, tunnels, and aqueducts, and in the cleared forests little English resort towns arose with timbered cottages, rose arbors, tea shops, theaters, churches, and cemeteries. In that farthest and remotest region, the pillars of the Raj constructed surrealistic replicas of the little coastal towns of Devon and Dorset. The hill station became a part of the Indian experience.