Hot Time

April 17, 2002-Whoops!
(photos:camel drive,
Rajistani women,
Sariska Palace Hotel)


Fahtepur Sikri is only twenty-two miles from Agra and is the site of the capital city after it moved away from Agra. It’s a 16th century fort and palace built to honor the holy man from that city who told the king he would indeed have a male child. Although the prophecy was true, they only stayed for seven years. The problem was that there was not enough water. It’s now called the ghost city.

Our short ride of twenty-two miles in 108-degree heat took an hour. We hung newspaper from the car windows for shade. The traffic consisted of trucks overloaded with twice as much cargo as capacity. They looked as if they were ready to pop. There are only speed limits in towns and four lane highways, but it doesn’t matter. We dodged tame bears, monkeys, peacocks, & camel herds crossing the road, but the driver did n’t stop in time to avoid a bus that jammed on its brakes to pick up a passenger. The fender bender just dented the hood of the car and David hit his head on the roof, but he’s ok. The bus we hit just kept on going. The car is still working, which is really good since there’s no way the company could have gotten a replacement to us. Our guide said we’re really giving him an experience to talk about for a long time. I’m ready to stop giving him material for anecdotes.
Rajistan Chic?

We stopped at the state line to pay a tax/toll and refuel. We enjoyed some adorable children making faces at us through the car windows. The car runs on CNG (compressed natural gas) and gasoline. When the CNG runs out, the driver pulls to the side of the road, flips a switch, and gas starts to flow. Once the CNG was used up, we had to stick to regular gas. The road deteriorated and seemed to deconstruct as we entered an arid area and the Arwal mountain range. The women returning from the fields were dressed differently than in other areas we’ve seen. They wear colorful long skirts and scarves here creating a walking rainbow as they move.

We arrived at the Sarista Palace, a 19th century royal hunting lodge. It sounds intriguing in concept, but the reality is very shoddy. I’m sure our photos will be exquisite since the peeling paint and dirt aren’t visible from the distance. It’s an imposing structure with enormous rooms, lots of marble, and twenty-foot high ceilings. Sarista is a tiny village in a remote area. There’s no skilled labor to draw from and all the help has been trained on the job. They’re very service oriented and will do anything to please. The problem is that if anything breaks, they have to send to Delhi for repairmen and it’s a three-hour drive one way.

Our room had antique plumbing, but I was desperate to shower and wash my hair. Since the shower didn’t work, I ended up on my knees in the tub using a plastic pitcher to rinse with. If you must know, some Indians use the Asian way of cleaning themselves with water from a pitcher after using the toilet. At dinner the guide asked us if the room was ok. We mentioned the shower and they moved us to another room. This one came with a complement of moths feasting on an aged wool carpet. We caught some in the handy plastic cup that seems to be a fixture in every room, and killed the others on the run. When I opened the suitcase this morning, a survivor flew out. Fortunately, moths don’t like cotton and synthetics. David had the benefit of a working shower, but when he went to use the shampoo provided by the hotel, he had a start. It was black. He opted for the stuff we brought from home. I may not be in love with India anymore.

The lodge is privately owned and very popular with Indians. It sits near a tiger preserve and is a shadow of its former self. They do have an addition with newer rooms, but for some reason, we were in the old ones. Perhaps they thought we’d prefer the authenticity. In between blackouts and power surges I’ve been writing this email while plugged into the only outlet in the room. Our lamp is spliced into wiring that serves wall fixtures as well. The grounds once were stunning, but now the plantings just look stunned and stunted.

Our better than average buffet dinner was on the terrace under the stars. The sky is clear here. They call it a monsoon sky. During the monsoon,rains wash away the pollution. This is in such a remote area that there is none yet. Kumar joined us for dinner and told us he’s a vegetarian. It’s not a religious issue with him, but he quoted George Bernard Shaw who said that he didn’t want his stomach to be a depository for dead animals. That was pretty graphic. Breakfast today was a weak second to dinner. I was reduced to eating a hard-boiled egg, baked beans, curried potatoes, and Indian bread.

Tiger Tiger

We left a wake-up call for this morning and, sure enough, a porter knocked on our door at 5 AM. That’s really personal service. He might as well have walked right into our room since the door lock didn’t work. We stumbled into our open jeep at 6 AM and began the long, bumpy, and dusty journey in search of the illusive tigers. I was curious about our safety so I checked with the driver who didn’t have a gun. He said that tigers are very shy. He was so very right. The tiger reserve is on land that used to be where sportsmen hunted. Since they did such a good job, there are only some forty-nine tigers left and assorted deer, wild boar, peacocks, parakeets, and monkeys.

The monkeys served as our escorts for a time, but very soon we were on our own. We watched a park worker make a plaster of Paris mold of tiger paw prints for the tiger census. Each animal has a unique print like our fingerprints. We stopped often to check for tracks and to listen to animal calls. The driver explained that he was waiting to hear distress calls from the deer and antelope. We began to hear bellowing from a large antelope called a samber (sp). It sounded really close and very alarmed. Suddenly, there was crashing in the brush and a huge beast was charging towards us. At first I thought it was a tiger, but then realized it was a terrified female samber bearing down on us. She careened down the hillside wide-eyed with terror. I thought she’d either run into our jeep or leap over it. She did neither. She veered around it, fled across the road, and bolted down another hill. It was clear there was a tiger in the area. We listened, watched, and waited for about thirty minutes before trying a different location. We came upon a cow that had been recently killed by a tiger. A man on a bike told us he’d seen the tiger carrying the kill across the road, but that the tiger had become startled by him, dropped the kill, and ran away. We knew the tiger wouldn’t go far, so we hung around trying to be inconspicuous. I’m sure he was watching us. He might have even gone to get his friends so they could watch. God did a very good job when designing the protective coloration of tigers. We never saw him. We left the park with the scorecard reading: Tigers-1, Humans-0.

On To Jaipur

Jaipur, a city of 2.5 million, beckoned. It was only a two-hour drive with most of it on a four-lane toll road of sorts. Toll highways were privatized and the owners can collect tolls for twenty years. After that time, the government will collect the tolls and use them for maintenance. David said he thought the Greeks were reckless but skilled drivers. He thinks the Indians are equally reckless but poor drivers. When we asked Kumar about driver-training schools, he said there were none. People learned by trial and error. He said that a license was needed to drive, but tests were only necessary if you were too poor to bribe the official. We asked if there were helmet laws for the many motorbikes. His answer was not simple. The government wanted the driver and passenger to be required to wear helmets. The problem was that Sikhs couldn’t fit a helmet over their turbans. The Sikhs were exempted from the helmet requirement. Their wives rebelled and said that if their husbands were not going to wear helmets they wouldn’t either. They Sikh women were exempted. With those two exceptions on the books there was no way that Muslims or Hindus were going to be singled out to wear helmets so the whole idea fell apart.

During the long drive we had time to learn more about Kumar. When the tour business is slow, he works as a translator of French books into Hindi. He packs his dictionaries and goes into the hills for a month or more to work. He can earn $1,000 a month at that. He’s a very gentle soul and loves to talk to the children we pass, tease them, and pay them some attention. He has a soft spot for cripples and has some wild birds that fly into his apartment and eat from his hand. He’s young (thirties) and single. He spoke very frankly about living with the close threat of nuclear war in his backyard. He sounded like we did in the 50’s when people in the U.S. were building bomb shelters in their homes.

He’s well read and loves to talk philosophy. David asked him one question and Kumar was happy to tell us about life as he sees it. We cannot get a handle on his religion. He may have been born a Hindu, but talks about the Buddha with great feeling. He doesn’t think the basis of a religion should be the founder of that religion but that it should be the teachings and philosophy. He said that followers are the ones who cause all of the problems and that the founders had no idea they were creating a new religion. David said that India seemed to be such a powerful nation centuries ago and wondered how it let itself be plundered. Kumar said it could be understood by knowing one Hindu rule of hospitality. To this day, Indians will never turn anyone away from their door no matter the hour. No advance notice is needed for friends or relatives from far away to come to a house in the middle of the night expecting to be housed and fed. The host wouldn’t do otherwise. When invaders came to India, they were invited in as guests. Indian states may have fought among themselves but the concept of invading another nation was alien to them. They saw the conquests as God’s punishment for wrongs committed in a previous life. They’re more concerned with the individual journey to self-awareness and peace of mind than they are with convincing others of the right way to live. They think that if each person takes care of himself or herself, the world will automatically be better. Our philosophy differs in that we work to perfect the world by helping society to improve and leaving the world a better place than when we entered it.

Toby