Brian on the Brahmaputra

by David Fletcher

  Brian had to compare notes. What had they thought of Karanambu? Well, as he soon found out, not quite as much as he had. Which was a bit of a disappointment. After all, Karanambu was (and hopefully still is) a little slice of heaven. It is a very basic lodge deep inside Guyana, where the forest melts into more open savannah. It is a working cattle ranch, but a cattle ranch that is so vast that as a visitor one never encounters a single cow; they are all miles away on some distant pastures. Instead one encounters just a beautiful, untouched sliver of South America, simply stuffed with a whole host of the most wonderful birds and animals imaginable. One also encounters the lodge’s matriarch, Dianne, a lady whose life has been devoted to the care and rehabilitation of injured or abandoned giant river-otters. She is often observed swimming with them in the nearby river.

  She is also seen, every evening, doing her duty with the bat droppings.

  Meals at the lodge are taken around a table that is just large enough to take the six guests who can be accommodated in the lodge cabins, together with Dianne and her nephew and niece. This table sits in an open-sided dining room under an enormous thatched roof – in which there are bats. Early in the meal these bats are not a problem. But as the evening wears on, and the bats wake, they tend to do what many others do when they wake – but without the benefit of a flushable lavatory. The inevitable result is the arrival on the table of one or two, or nine or ten bat spraints.

  Now Dianne is very old school. She was born in Guyana, but she was the daughter of the local District Commissioner (when Guyana was British Guiana), and she would not be out of place in Liberty’s – where, in fact, she worked for a while in her youth. She is now over eighty, but still has the cut-crystal voice of a well-brought-up English lady of the early Fifties, and she still has the manners of a well-brought-up English lady of the early Fifties. So much so that she is able to charm you with her engaging conversation at the dinner table, and without pausing for a second in her discourse, brush away the offending poo with an accomplished but discreet sweep of her used napkin and virtually convince you that the poo was never there in the first place. That it was just your imagination and the effect of the heat. How could this elegant woman, chatting to you in her refined tones about her days as a “young gal” in Guyana, also be wiping bat excrement from the dining table? For Brian, this display of old English etiquette in the oddest of surroundings was one of the highlights of his trip to Guyana.

  Apparently though, not for the photographic four – who came away from Karanambu with insect bites and, although laden with a haul of photos and film from the surrounding area, not with the cherished memories of an eccentric but wonderful heroine living out her life with rescued animals.

  But hey… that was Guyana. And, as Brian eventually reminded himself, this was India. This was Assam. And it was late. Time to retire again and get a few hours’ sleep in a bat-proof cabin, in order to be ready for another early morning. Because tomorrow, it was boats. Not boats on the Brahmaputra, but boats on a far away river. And boats full of air.

  As full of air as Brian was full of apprehension.

  6.

  Brian had considered asking for half a fried egg. But when he was faced by the chef behind his hot-plate he bottled out of it and asked for a whole one, a single, fried-on-both-sides one. So here he was at the breakfast table, chomping his way through two rashers of bacon and two fried-on-both-sides fried eggs. Not that he minded much. It was going to be another long day and lunch was hours away. He probably needed the additional sustenance. Furthermore, he’d become distracted as he ate, and he hardly noticed the overabundance of egg matter. And what had distracted him was the word “rasher”. He was quite interested in words, and especially words that had limited use. Words like “clench”. For although “clench” could replace “grip” on occasions, it was generally limited in its use to the act of clenching one’s teeth, clenching one’s fist or clenching one’s buttocks. And that was about it. One could never clench one’s nose or even one’s legs. But with “rasher” it was even more limited. It only ever meant a thin slice of bacon or ham cooked by frying or grilling. And how did a word like that arise? Who, one day, sat down to his breakfast of cooked slices of bacon and said: ‘Mmm… I think I’ll call these slices “rashers”?’ And why “rashers”? Why not “lashers” or “tashers”? Or “sliggers” or “giggers” for that matter? Was it just pot luck, or was there some more rasher-nal explanation?

  This was when he emerged from his distraction. Even Brian couldn’t manage such an appalling play on words this early in the morning. So now he was back in the world around him and intent only on clearing his plate and finishing his coffee. After that it was a quick trip back to his cabin and getting Sandra to check that he had all about him that he needed for the day – including the advised change of clothes…

  They were setting off today for the Nameri National Park and a white-water river ride. Brian could not quite believe that this was a suitable diversion for a group of middle-aged naturalists. But the tour organisers apparently believed otherwise, and Sujan had been very reassuring the previous evening. But then there had been this instruction to bring along a change of clothing, and that seemed to undermine the reassurance completely. Nevertheless, nobody had backed out of the trip, and that meant that neither could Brian and Sandra. So it was out of the cabin with a bag-full of spare shorts, shirts and socks, onto their appointed minibus, waiting for them at the foot of the gang-plank, and off to Nameri.

  This park was north of the river and a long way away. So the minibus and its following twin were now embarking on a two-hour journey along the south bank of the river, over the only bridge that spans the river for miles in either direction, and on and up to where the province of Assam borders that of Arunachal Pradesh. And Arunachal Pradesh is the bit of India that sits by Tibet, and which, at its western end, abuts Bhutan, a country which interestingly contains all the letters required to spell the word “abut”. That, however, was just another glancing thought that went through Brian’s mind as their journey began, and very soon he was more absorbed in the journey itself.

  The roads to start with were not completely manic. There were only a few vehicles around, and the only real challenge that the bus-driver had was to avoid a reduction in India’s goat, dog and bicycle population. As regards the goats and dogs, this was no challenge at all. They all have traffic-avoidance built into their DNA, and there was therefore very little avoidance left to the driver. He just drove and the animals did virtually all the avoiding on their own, even if, on certain occasions, they did seem to be tempting fate. Generally by only a few inches. The bicycles, however, were not quite so evolved, and only through a series of improbable miracles did their riders not discover what the underside of a bus looks like as it was rolling over them. Fortunately miracles around here were not in short supply.

  Ultimately, however, the minibuses emerged from a tangle of country roads onto what was clearly the main thoroughfare leading to the bridge. Here there was more of a real challenge – made even more challenging at the outset for Brian’s minibus by the loss of an atmosphere in one of its tyres. Both buses stopped, their occupants decamped with their binoculars, and the two bus drivers set about replacing the flat tyre. This gave everybody an opportunity to conduct some impromptu bird-watching and an opportunity for the locals to observe at close quarters what white people look like. For it had now become apparent that Assam was essentially white-people-free and that Brian and his companions were as rare in this part of the world as green people were in England. There were simply none, and therefore the Nature-seekers represented no less than a double-fifty-pointer in “The Assamese Eye-Spy Book of Non-Assamese”. ‘Goodness gracious,’ you could imagine an onlooker saying as he watched them with their binoculars. ‘These fellows aren’t from West Bengal or Bangladesh; they’re from somewhere where there isn’t any sun. I mean, look at them; they’re so pale. And look, they all have such poor eyesight as well. See how they have to carry
around those monster pairs of specs and how they need them to see even a tree. Amazing. And how do they ride a bicycle with those things?’

  The tyre was mended and the rarest of rare species rejoined their transport. As it pulled away to become part of the traffic again, the clutch of locals who had gathered to gaze and to ponder looked on in wonder. Would any of their friends ever believe them? Would they even believe it themselves after a few days? It could, after all, have been a dream.

  Brian had this very same thought – about it being a dream – when his minibus failed to make contact with the front of an oncoming lorry. Because it was not possible that it hadn’t met it head on. It was therefore more than possible that the avoidance of the collision was just that: a dream. And that the reality was that Brian was now lying in a crumpled wreck of a bus, so seriously injured that he was hallucinating and imagining that he was still OK – and not about to breathe his last.

  He pinched himself and he felt the pinch. Maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe they had missed that lorry. And then Sandra spoke to him, and he knew they really had.

  ‘Did you see that road-sign back there? I can’t believe it.’

  Brian thought for a moment. ‘How can you notice road-signs,’ he thought, ‘when you don’t notice lorries, lorries bearing down on you and intent on ending your life?’ But he didn’t say this. He just said: ‘Errh… no dear. What road-sign was that?’

  ‘Well, it was a proper one. You know, an official one. And it said: “Don’t gossip, let him drive.” I mean, let him drive. Can you believe it?’

  Well, Brian not only could believe it, but he also thought that the message was commendably pragmatic and admirably free of political correctness. Heck, women drivers here were almost as rare as white people were, and it was never men that gossiped anywhere. But he didn’t say this either. Instead, he just shook his head in mock disbelief and emphasised this with the observation that it was: ‘Incredible. Quite incredible’.

  This seemed to satisfy Sandra, and Brian was able to get back to worrying about the oncoming lorries and trying to calculate whether there was any realistic chance that they’d even get as far as the bridge.

  They did. Brian was in the middle of the minibus with far too good a view of the road ahead, and stretching out before them now were the two miles of the enormous bridge that spanned the Brahmaputra at one of its narrowest points. It was only two lanes wide but it was very impressive. It was also, apparently, quite wide enough to take the largest Chinese tanks – when their armies surged in from Tibet to overrun India. Brian wasn’t sure that this piece of information, which had been provided by Sujan, was meant as a joke or as a rueful comment on what might really happen in the future. He decided it was a joke. But he also decided that the joke might eventually be on India.

  Intriguingly, there was a military presence on the bridge even now. There were armed soldiers and military trucks. However, this was not in anticipation of a Chinese onslaught, but as a deterrent to civil unrest. India’s general election would be taking place in just a couple of weeks and it couldn’t be guaranteed that it would be entirely free of incident, especially up here, in this remote and some might say neglected corner of the country. And so the soldiers and trucks. Brian had a good look at them as the minibus drove past. The soldiers looked “well turned out” and the trucks looked new, and nothing at all like all the other ancient “public carriers” that lumbered around the roads threatening the lives of people in buses. It said a great deal to Brian about how the country was run and how it set its priorities. So did another road-sign a few miles from the bridge. It said “Assamese Rifles Urinals”. Hell, nothing less than a military versus non-military apartheid!

  They were now in a built-up area that could have been a town or just an agglomeration of dwellings and shops around the nucleus of a military camp, a garrison of the Assamese Rifles. But whatever it was, it came with more than its fair share of goats, dogs, cyclists, rickshaws, lorries, and fortunately more than enough of that other dimension, that new dimension in space that Brian had first observed five days previously on their way to the gibbon sanctuary. It was needed. Maybe it was the build up of election fever. Or maybe there were rumours of an invasion. But in any event the locals this side of the river used the road as though there was nobody else on it. Vehicles turned in front of other vehicles without warning (and clearly without enough space). Cyclists went about ignoring everything including other cyclists. And pedestrians just strolled – often in the middle of the road and often in defiance of either sanity or common sense.

  Brian was now becoming tired. All this lunatic behaviour was proving wearing, as was the bus-ride itself. They had now been travelling for over two hours, the tyre change having put back their schedule by at least twenty minutes. So he was very pleased indeed to see that they were now turning off the main road and onto a much smaller road that led to the park. Sujan then confirmed that they were no more than a quarter of an hour away, a time that was then devoted to spotting “their river”, the body of water that would soon be carrying their bodies – in inflatables. They did see quite a few streams, but nothing that looked quite the right job for a squadron of dinghies. Then the spotting stopped. They were at their destination. This, of course, wasn’t the river. It was a toilet. Or more precisely, two toilets – at the rear of two tents within a tented eco-lodge. Males had one and females had the other. And relief was enjoyed by all.

  Sufficiently drained, the Nature-seekers then re-boarded their buses and set off once again, this time for the real destination, the river itself. On the way, the game of “spot my river” was resumed with the sort of gusto only ever observed as a manifestation of nervousness. The white-water river experience was now very close, and clearly for most of the Nature-seekers, the prospect of the experience was all rather alarming. It certainly was for Brian. So why not join in and take some reassurance from all that gusto? Why not indeed? After all, it did seem to help. But then the buses pulled off the road, which had now become a track, and before them was the river. It was called the Jia Bhoreli River and it was enormous. The inflatable dinghies, which were lined up on its bank, were, in contrast, miniscule. Brian relapsed into nervousness which almost immediately translated itself into a sort of whimpering panic.

  Matters were not improved when he then noticed that not all the Nature-seekers were here. He soon established by talking to Sujan that six of their number had decided to stay at the eco-lodge to conduct some leisurely and, more particularly, some safer bird-spotting. This was not good. Neither were the life-jackets. They were not of the permanently buoyant variety, but more of the too-tight-for-comfort variety – and of questionable worth. That river was not only enormous, but it was also flowing down its course like a horizontal waterfall. Life-jackets would serve no purpose whatsoever. Brian really could not believe that they were all going to be launched onto what was nothing less than a raging flood – with or without these useless life-jackets.

  But they were. He and Sandra, now bound into their chest-hugging life-savers, were summoned to the shore and encouraged to step over some slippery stones and into their vessel. “Into”, however, is not really the appropriate word. Their vessel was a very tiny inflatable dinghy, across which had been laid two short planks. These planks were simply resting on the dinghy’s inflated sides. And Brian quickly realised that they were supposed to be interpreted as the dinghy’s seats. His panic rose further. But before he really knew what was going on he was sitting on one of these “seats” with Sandra sitting on the other in front of him. He was immediately aware of the hardness of its unpadded wooden surface, but more disconcertingly, of the wobbliness of the dinghy’s un-inflated bottom beneath his feet. He and his wife were separated from the water of the river by a millimetre or so of plasticised rubber. Or who knows? It might have been a millimetre or so of reconstituted plastic shopping bags. But whatever it was, it didn’t feel too reassuring; it just felt immensely unsettling.

  Brian then turned hi
s mind to the matter of dinghy propulsion and navigation. How the hell were they supposed to get this thing down this raging torrent without drowning within yards? The answer was a pair of paddlers, the two local lads who had helped them into… no, onto the dinghy, and who had now joined them on their miniature craft, and were sitting, paddles in hand, on the inflated bit at the back. They were even less in the dinghy than were their passengers.

  Brian was about to ask for a recount, to demand a further debate on the wisdom of the entire project. But too late. The paddlers had now pushed the vessel away from the shelter of the bank and their little rubber toy was already in the maelstrom. They were off down the river whether they liked it or not, and at a pace that made Brian wonder what he’d done to deserve it.

  The river was very broad. There was an awful lot of water in it, and this water was in a terrible hurry. It swept down the river like a true torrent, and, of course, it swept down with it any small vessel that was foolish enough to join it. Brian and Sandra’s dinghy was now racing down the flow in the company of eight other dinghies, and, as Brian quickly established in his mind, all of these vessels were now completely at its mercy.