Update on Tanya Dewhurst Copyright 2002 Tanya Dewhurst Tanya Dewhurst, who regularly wrote for FTH from London and other points, continues to pursue her avocation as a travel writer. I got this dispatch from her, dated 31 Jan 2002: Hey Friends, Firstly, big apologies for not emailing you before setting off on the big India expedition, but too many Christmas parties finally caught up with me and well, you know how it goes... Anyway, I hope ya'll had a fabulous christmas and very merry new year and 2002 has got off to a ripping start. Secondly, I am writing this having not already checked my email (yes, I'm in the middle of bumf**k Australia on some crazy, new adventure and haven't yet met a workable phone jack) so apologies for not having replied to any email for the last month. I will get to it shortly after I send this. My new year certainly started with lots of explosions, mainly el cheapo firecrackers set off by every Indian and his mother....they certainly like things that go bang. Well, at least where we were: a little beach called Palolem in the southern end of Goa. We flew into Bombay (now called Mumbai) after three days in Bangkok (which is a fabulous city and makes LA's traffic look like a Sunday afternoon boat race and our smog look like oxygen) and quickly flew down to Goa (will not recount bad Mumbai experience here...you only want to hear the good stuff, right?) Well, we couldn't have chosen a nicer beach to go to: beautiful sweeping bay lined with palm trees and little beach huts and restaurants. We chose a luxury hotel (blue bamboo beach hut, pigs running around compound extra) for a huge $2 a night, set up the mosquito netting, broke our butts attempting to bounce on the unforgiving bamboo cot, and moved in for the week. It was very peaceful (except aforementioned fireworks going off all week just when you were dozing) and hot weather and coolish Arabian sea and mellow people, i.e., few Indians hassling us to buy stuff, minimal gawking, and not as many tourists as usual (we were assured), presumably because of the war. On new year's eve we actually headed up to North Goa -- with a navy guy who was holidaying in Palolem and insisted we experience the famous Goa raves -- to a place called Anjuna, for, well, the famous Goa raves. Mayhem is the best way to describe the entire night, but suffice to say, we did go to three different raves, danced a lot, and even managed to get a bit drunk despite the warm drinks. We stayed out all night so we felt very satisfyingly party/cool/rave-esque dragging our sorry butts into luxury hotel hut at 11 am new year's day. We met a Scottish guy who gave us a great definition for westerners who had been in India a tad too long and gone native (clothes, hair, hygiene, etc): he called them casualties. So for the rest of the trip we were on casualty alert and had good fun mocking a few and trying hard not to become some ourselves (although the hygiene part got a bit hard). The food was also pretty good in Palolem, lots of yummy southern veggie curries and northern tandoori food, it being in the middle of the country and straddling both kinds of cuisine. One disappointment was that we couldn't get it hot enough, a sure sign of being in over-touristy area. And well, I would've killed, or at least paid many rupees, for a cold beer. But despite the odd cow family threatening to eat your towel while we were swimming, the beach was extremely wonderful and I really didn't realize how good we'd had it until we left. Next stop was a place called Hampi in the middle of the country (sorry, don't have my map handy, so can't tell you exactly in which state). We took an overnight bus which resembled a luxury cattle train with it's grillwork windows and general cow smell, but at least we could lay down in a our sardine this-is-definitely-a-double-even-though-it-only-fits-a-size-challenged- person-with-no-large-protruding-growths sleeper bunk. Anyway, we arrived in Hampi early in the am, marveling at how industrious and mercantile the locals were and awed by the boulder (a la Joshua Tree) come palm tree landscape. Hampi is renowned for its 3000 or so temples, some of which are a thousand years old. That may sound like an abundance of places to worship, but when you learn that India has 330 million gods, you realize that it's not really that many at all, and in fact, I reckon some of those gods are getting a bit short-changed and can probably only occupy a small carving ins some remote corner or something; not nearly enough space to set up a shrine and invite devotees to come and, well, devote. Perhaps the god of ants is happy, but hey, what about the god of cold beer? Obviously s/he was shunted out of the temples because I couldn't find anyone in India who worshipped this deity. The Lonely Planet Guide to India (which we quickly dubbed the brick for its handy travel size and weight) said that Hampi is a real laid-back place that attracts lots of backpacking types for weeks, even months on end. And deservedly so, it says. Well, after just one day, we were right sick of the place and really didn't need to see another stone monument to Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh, Krishna, and the other 229,999,996 other freaking gods (although the carvings are mighty impressive). After a particularly smell-laden climb up what we dubbed poop mountain, we really couldn't see what the months-on-end attraction was all about. Well, we soon learned when we tried to order dinner later that night and could instantly be satisfied with hash, opium, bang lassi, you-name-it-we-got-it, but try to get a channa masala any time this decade and you're shit out of luck. But, Hampi did provide us with our most favorite sign (and, oh what hours of fun Indian English signs offer): it was located at a multi-cuisine restaurant and promised to serve us a delicious Tibetan for dinner. We didn't eat one, but I've heard that if you marinate them in the proper spices, they taste just like chicken. So we left Hampi for a small town further north called Badami. Fewer tourists (okay, about seven to be exact), less temples, but impressively carved out of the hillside caves, and a big lake with several hundred dobi wallahs (washer people) slapping the stone steps with wet cloth in firework- esque reverberations all day every day. It was here that I realized how fortunate we are in the way we spend our lives and just five minutes of listening to the Indian equivalent of a Maytag Automatic was enough to make my back ache, let alone a lifetime of actually making my living this way. Badami was also the place where we both lost a small percentage of our hearing thanks to the many honking vehicles -- cars, trucks, bicycles, buses, auto rickshaws, bike rickshaws, cows -- which all, no matter in what state of complete dilapidation they get around in, have shiny, bright, LOUD horns attached within constant reach of said driver who always -- ALWAYS -- beeps it loud and long just as he (and really, I rarely saw women drive) is ear-level with you. In addition, the vehicle horn is viewed by Indians as crucial to living as food, shelter, oxygen, and water combined, and if a driver hasn't used it for at least, oh 30 seconds, he'll begin to suffer a major biological breakdown, so honking occurs as frequently as possible. Well, if you don't prize your eardrums, you can give them this one concession to road rules, seeings as there's no other fear about overtaking when three cars abreast are approaching or cutting off another driver and sending him into the ditch or believing in divine will that you will not be run over or do likewise to someone else. From Badami, we embarked on our 4-day travel odyssey to go, oh about five inches on the map, to Bandhavgarh National Park, still in the middle of the country, but further North in the state of Madhya Pradesh. After a series of buses, trains, auto-rickshaws (death-defying three-wheeler contraptions with lawn mower engines), trains, buses, and auto-ricks we made it. The travelling itself is a whole, three-day story, so I won't go into it, but here were our key learnings: never sit in the back of the bus, especially when your journey promises to be seven hours in the road- maintenance-challenged state of Madhya Pradesh (unless of course you travel with a crash helmet, and come to think of it, this may be someone's India travel accessory goldmine) and it's the middle of winter and the bus windows don't stay shut; DO NOT ever pass through the city of Solapur unless your olfactory senses are permanently inoperable; always remember 30 men standing in a semi-circle staring intently at you as if you are a delicious Tibetan from Mars is better than 60 women or 120 children; don't travel in upper second class on the trains, they don't let the food vendors come through and you starve; never accept anyone's opinion about what time your bus is, if the bus is direct or you must change, or whether or not there really is a bus today because even though you'll get 10 very dissimilar answers (despite the fact that the said information dispensers work for the busline) none of them will help reassure you, so you may as well not ask, not know, and enjoy a state of lesser confusion and anxiety; and finally, make friends with the train bathrooms, they just never get any better. So, to Bandhavgarh National Park. What can I say except tigers. We went out on a jeep three times and saw tigers each time: the first early morning (5 am, ouch and it's cold in this park at night) expedition we met a pair off 22-month olds prancing in the marshes having a merry old morning folic. We climbed onto an elephant to go see them, as they were out of range of the jeep, and that in itself was a lot of fun. But the tigers are beautiful, wild, proud creatures perfectly suited to their environment, you really can't seem in the yellow and orange grasses unless you know how to. They're completely indifferent to the elephants which are too big to eat and too herbivorous and gun-free to pose a threat, so you get to go up real close, 10 feet, if you're lucky. Our mahout (elephant driver) was apparently the chief and an excellent photographer (national geographic, uh huh) so he of course was really good at maneuvering the elephant so we could get good shots. Unfortunately, all my pics are on negatives and I don't have access to a scanner, so you'll just have to wait to see them, but a couple of them are really stunning, even if I say so myself. I actually donate money to India's Project Tiger through the World Wildlife Fund, that's how fanatical about it I am, so this was truly a life ambition and one of my most amazing moments. To see them in their own space, alert, engaged, and alive, doing their thing without fear, free from cages and incarcerated-induced lethargy was so fantastic, I may never be able to visit a zoo again. That afternoon we went out again, and even though it's not generally a good viewing time, we saw a full-grown male and female snoozing after a good shag (which we heard, boy they're loud), and even though they were quite far and hidden and you couldn't really see them without binoculars, it was still great to be in their presence. We saw other wildlife too, including lots of spotted deer, monkeys, sambar deer, birds (including some huge eagles), a turtle (which we couldn't identify but had an orange neck), and wild boar. It's a small, but beautiful park with big sal forests and hills and several caves and a temple or two. It was also the only place in India that I saw that wasn't overcome with rubbish and people and poverty, so it was a refreshing respite from all that too. At our hotel, we also met a fun straight couple who had been living in Japan for six years and were on a 12-month trek before moving to Mexico to build ecologically minded housing, and liked to drink rum (even if it's warm) so we enjoyed several drunken evenings, lots of star gazing (northern sky, but with lots of southern stars), and mutually hysterical travel stories. They weren't particularly interested in the tigers, but were thrilled with our next sighting. Our final morning expedition we went by elephant to see a huge, full-grown male try and recover from eating half a sambar (which we also saw) for breakfast, boy did he have food belly. He was panting away behind a big rock up a very steep hill, and the elephant ride alone was worth it. Note to self, elephants can climb vertical surfaces AND eat half the forest along the way. Then, later that morning, after we'd driven around half the park idly following pug marks and spotting birds, we came across a female tiger in the road. She was about five years old and on the prowl looking for a mate (It being mating season). She dashed into the bush, but the driver knew she was wanting to get to the other side of the road, so by cleverly driving back and forth in fits and starts, he effectively kept her close at hand for about 40 minutes. She wasn't that frightened by us, just a bit perturbed that she couldn't cross the road and we watched her sniff around smelling other tigers' scents, chase deer, prowl close to the jeep sometimes as close as five feet. He then let her cross into the waterhole and we watched her drink, swim in the water, and catch a fish before finally disappearing on the other side where a male could be heard growling (probably all the way to Kolkata). Almost an hour and four roles of film later, both the driver and guide agreed that it was one of the best sightings they'd had or heard about, made all the sweeter by the fact that no other jeeps came across us and we had her all to ourselves the entire time. Needless to say, we gave our driver a phat tip and the photos will hopefully convey the experience better than I. So, our next stop was Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) which was a mere 24-hour journey where we spent the day buying plane tickets to Bangkok (oops, we'd been remiss in getting a return flight from India, but luckily we could get a flight the day before we needed to be there) and sizing up the shopping opportunities (ooh, bangles, ooh, spices, ooh camel blankets). We headed out that night for an overnight train to Darjeeling. Yes, we were travelling up north to look at the Himalayas in the middle of winter. "Oh what fun it is to ride in a minus-20 degree train." Clinging to sides of steep precipices, Darjeeling is filled with mostly Nepalese and delicious Tibetan refugees, so there's less staring and hustle. To say it was cold would be a mild understatement, to say our room was heated would convey a blind optimism in Indians' ability to understand air conditioning, and to say we were prepared clothes-wise would just be an outright lie, but despite all that, the Himalayas looked magnificent in the mostly foggy distance. But I have to say, getting up at 4 am to watch the sunrise over them IS worth it, even if the clouds do get in the way of seeing the third largest mountain in the world (Kotcha-something-or other, 28,000+ feet) and if anyone happens to find the last two digits of my left hand please send them on, I'm sure they'll be perfectly preserved and ready to reattach. We did eat some delicious Tibetan in Darjeeling -- steamed vegetable dumplings, mostly -- and also tried a local brew which they optimistically call beer: fermented millet that you put into a wooden barrel-like mug, pour hot water over, allow to stand for two minutes, and drink through a bamboo straw. Bizarrely, the drink is cold and tastes a little like sour sake. Needles to say, I liked it a lot and managed to not get too wasted even though I did drink my five refills worth. We also visited the snow leopard breeding center, the only one in the world which is quite remarkable given how endangered they are and admired a lovely pair of horny buggers hopefully about to make a few more. It was very cool, despite the zoo thing. After a rather fraught journey back to the nearest train station (a two and half hour jeep ride down the mountain or five hour bus ride, depending on how you travel, where we got separated, lost each other for several hours in a million + sized city, and almost missed our overnight train) we traveled back to Kolkata and spent the day shopping, eating our favorite curries, and finally finding a bar that served cold beer. So, a fun, challenging, interesting, annoying, magical, terrible, hot, cold, dirty, smelly, intriguing, wonderful trip was had by all. However, I must inform you that Barbara and I did split up and not because of India. You'll be pleased to know that no blunt instruments, firearms, or sharp obstacles were used in the divorce process. I will be extending my trip in Australia indefinitely, but will hold a formal end-of-relationship party upon my return. Love to you all in the new year. Tanya xxxx