India: Let the insanity begin

March 20th, 15:58

VARANASI, India

"The time has come" Ganesha said, "To talk of many things, of shoes and ships and curry powder, of horrific traffic and smoke rings, and why the sea is perfectly calm, and the multitude of nose rings..."

So Lewis Carroll I am not, however the time is now at hand to write about what, exactly I have been doing in this strange, wonderful place that I have been in for some time.

Boring as it may be, I think that I will start at the beginning.

I flew from Johannesburg to Dubai, and then from Dubai to Mumbai. If anyone should ever ask me for an airline recommendation, should the opportunity arise to actually choose which airline you will be flying, then I would without hesitation, and with a certain sense of haughty indifference reply "Why, Emirates Air, of course." Yes, Emirates Air. During my 8 hour flight, I watched 4 feature length movies, two of which are still in theaters, 2 episodes of the Simpsons and I would have finished 3 episodes of "Scrubs" however the inconvenience of the plane landing and me being bodily forced out of the craft cut that short.

The service and attention to detail on this flight far surpassed anything that I had ever even thought possible on an airplane, including making you feel like you are camping outside as you drift off to sleep...



The big dipper, right above me on the plane




Yes, thats right; a semi-accurate starmap on the ceiling of the plane that they turn on when it's sleepy time, made out of LED lights and fairy dust. Incredible

Upon arriving in Mumbai, I immediately began to follow the instructions of Yeah Yeah (born: Evan St. Clair, my former roommate, erstwhile world traveler and a friend who I have not laid eyes upon in nearly 2 years. Hereafter, he will be referred to as "YY"). Of course, by doing this, I was immediately confused. He had recommended that I take the train down from Mumbai to the state of Goa, then a bus from the main city in Goa to a beach where we would be "chillin'" for the next week. The train ride would have taken 16 hours. The bus rides (as I would later find out) took roughly 8.

Mercifully, as it was my first time in this strange land, I elected to fly into Goa, then take the 8 hours worth of public busing that was to become our main mode of transport. My first experience with driving in India involved the relatively simple, short, and straightforward drive from Mumbai international to the domestic terminal. During this time, I was absolutely certain, on no less than 10 occasions in 15 minutes that I was going to die. This was not "oh no, something bad is going to happen," no, this was more along the lines of tightly gripping my seat in mute acceptance of the inevitable, and trying to position my body in such a way that when the time came, it would be over as quickly as possible. It seemed to me that going headfirst through the windshield might do the job humanely. Indians drive as if all of their houses were on fire simultaneously, and in those houses were their pregnant wives, all of whom were going into labor that very minute, while at the same time there was a ticking bomb under their seat whereby if they drove less than 50mph at any time their car, auto-rickshaw, bus or bicycle would explode.

The previous description is not an exaggeration; it is a gross, horrific understatement.

There are no lanes, and often times, no particular direction of traffic. The rule seems to be that if you can get into a space, then you will.

Actually, scratch that, there is one, iron-clad and all-encompassing rule of driving in India: The bigger car gets right of way. Thats it. If you are on a bicycle, you yield, however briefly, to the three-wheeled hell-borne hybrid that is the auto-rickshaw (three wheels, motorcycle controls, rickety), if you are in an auto-rickshaw, you yield to cars, cars yield to buses, buses occasionally yield to trucks. That's the pecking order and woe be to those who fail to adhere to it.

For an even more metaphor laden description of driving in India, check out YY's thoughts on the matter and his initial impressions of it on his own excellent (if infrequently updated) website here.

I arrived in Goa and proceeded to take 3 separate buses, all boarding from bus stations that seemed only slightly less chaotic than a battlefield hospital, and with far more sick and injured people about. I have never seen so many crippled, infected and generally unhealthy looking people in one place ever. And Goa is generally considered to be one of the wealthier and better off areas of India. Still not deterred, I finally spotted "Cafe Del Mar", the seaside restaurant at which I was supposed to find YY, by looking past the 3 people on the 2 person bench next to me, around a very large woman and her 2 children, over the 5 or so boxes of god-knows-what-but-smelled-like-drowned-dog that someone had brought on to the bus, and finally, by using my x-ray vision to see through the 3 men literally hanging out the door of the bus. I yelled "hey hey hey" which seems to be the signal for the driver to slow down briefly, grabbed my pack and hopped off the bus, running a few steps forward with the momentum. This is an integral technique to bus-riding in India, as the concept of the "full-stop" is practically unheard of. Instead, a driver will grudgingly pull two inches over to the side of the road, apply, ever so gently, his foot to what in the distant past must have been a brake of some kind, and you are expected to get your ass off as fast as possible so he can resume scattering cows and children in his wake.

Finally, a long overdue reunion



Two years and nothings changed





I was at a beach called Pallolem (the place where the last entry is listed as being written) and I can say without any sense of irony or hyperbole, that this was without exception the best beach in the history of all beaches, on this world or any other, as described in any work of fiction or recounted in any work of fact, ever dreamed in the imagination of a poor child or experienced by the richest and most connected of men, no beach has ever, will ever, or could ever be better than this beach. Really.

Okay, so I liked this beach a lot.

Maybe it was the fact that I had been on the road for the past 2 weeks, staying only one night in each place and hardly getting a chance to catch my breath, let alone spend hours doing nothing. Maybe it was the 3 dollar a night thatched roof hut that I had all to myself, complete with balcony, king sized bed, fan and mosquito net. Maybe it was that I woke up every day around noon, ate an enormous stack of chocolate banana pancakes, then read a book for an hour until I could wander down the beach for lunch. Maybe it was that we would get indignant when our beer cost more than a dollar. Maybe all of that, and maybe even more.

Mostly, what was good about my time in Pallolem was that I was with good people, had several good books, and there were not many others about. YY had brought a number of friends with him (Robyn, Bjorn, Carl, Harriet) and together we spent our time eating masala and thali (and pizza), drinking enormous freezing cold Kingfisher beers, and generally being about as astonishingly lazy as humans can get. This is my last indulgence to make someone jealous about the beach, however I simply must give my itinerary for my third day in Pallolem

12PM Wake up
12:01 Fall back asleep
1:15 Mosey out to restaurant area to find everyone already eating banana pancakes
1:45 Eat banana pancakes
2:15 Kick soccer ball
2:17 Take nap
3:32 Walk 1.5km down beach to restaurant that has sunken middle section with pillows, feel exhausted
4:00 Eat lunch
4:30 Everyone falls asleep on the cushions in the restaurant
7:45 Wake up, order beer
7:52 Fall back asleep
8:15 Wake everyone up, order dinner
9:10 Find drum, play drum
Midnight: Trudge back to hut, fall asleep

That my friends, is a good day. (hmmm, whats the deal with all these locusts and boils, oh right...sloth, sorry God).

We stayed in Pallolem for another 4 days, largely trying to equal the utter tranquility of our one day of perfect laziness. Though we never quite achieved that, we certainly reached points that anyone observing us would have rightly described as "slothful."

What fun is a sin if you can't repeat it a few times...?

Next: Norm reluctantly goes shopping, YY's super hearing, and food poisoning is not all it's cracked up to be.