Jaisalmer jana hai
Trip Start
Feb 03, 2008
1
4
Trip End
Ongoing
Jaisalmer,
India
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
i can see through the cracked windshield that the aisles are already packed full with bag-laden chattering bodies
01 ganesha
. i wonder how much the seat number written on my ticket is going to be worth. i push my way through the throng crowded about the door and haul myself up the steps, my black backpack clinging dubiously to my shoulders. "'scuse me, 'scuse me," i mutter in english, having thus far not found a suitable equivalent in hindi, as i elbow my way past 2, 4, 10, 16 people standing in the aisle, hovering protectively over their gym sacks, boxes, tin containers, trunks, children stacked along the walkway. my backpack gets into a scuffle with a few people as i squeeze my way through. i squint through the crowd, searching in vain for any sign of my seat number, that little detail that few indian buses deem fit to adorn themselves with. when they do appear, they're on the back of the seat that they match, so out of necessity you have to pass your seat before you know that you've reached it. i eventually arrive at the back of seat 14, the number just barely visible through a winter's cloak of grime, oil, and heavy wear imposed upon the plastic it graces. i take a step back, almost knocking a man over. he seems unperturbed. a man with an impressive shock of heavily oiled wavy hair is reclined in 14, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly ajar as he dozes and dreams of the cozy seat 14 voyage to jaisalmer. i poke his arm. "yeh mera seat hai," i say simply, only slightly apologetically, as i point to the flimsy chickenscratch ticket clutched in my left hand. he blinks twice and stands up, yawning, crabshuffles his way out of the little seat niche, picking up the well-worn duffel bag nestled in the seat beside him as an afterthought. he squeezes his way into the aisle with everyone else, easycomeeasygo, buses weren't made to be comfortable. at least not in india.
chucking my backpack to the floor, i fall into the pre-warmed seat, a bead of sweat scampering like an illicit thought from my neck down into my shirt
02 road to the fort
. not that it matters, because i'm already soaked. i shoo away a trio of tenacious flies that have found a happy focal point since my arrival. as i wrestle with the stubborn sliding glass window, desperate for a breath of air, a smile spreads across my sticky face. i hear the driver's door slam shut, and the engine hacks up a hearty rumble as it turns over. i'm happy to be on this bus. it's 5 o'clock on thursday afternoon and the air is thick with, among other things, the anticipation of my first 3-day weekend in india.
around 4:25 i'd been sitting at my computer in my apartment, finishing up some details for the upcoming september internships, and the thought had hit me like a rogue wave on a peaceful beach. it's a holiday weekend, i have to do something! i'd jumped up, thrown a pair of jeans and a couple shirts in my bag, hairbrush, toothbrush, book, underwear, let's go. slamming shut the waterlogged windows of my poorly planned apartment, throwing the lock on the door, cursing and opening it again to scurry across the kitchen and turn the dial of the battered gas cylinder, turning on my heel and back out the door again, flying down the 3 stories of slippery marble stairs, out the front gate, and down the block to the main traffic-thundering road ahead. i flagged down the first sputtering black-and-yellow autorickshaw that came choking along. "jaisalmer jana hai," i said to the driver, who looked past me as if to say to some sympathetic listener behind me, "this mad white lady thinks i can drive her all the way to jaisalmer." i clarified: "jaisalmer ka bus stand jana hai, kahan hai?" he looked relieved, realizing that i was only interested in the bus stand for jaisalmer, which he informed me was located at bombay motor circle, a 15-rupee ride up the road
03 zenana balcony
. i tossed my backpack in and glanced at my watch. 4:50. "challo, jaldi!" i breathed, and he kicked the podlike little contraption into gear. i'd arrived at the bus stand just in the nick of time to grab my 150-rupee single seat and squirm my way into my present sweaty space. i'm going to jaisalmer. the golden city. land of camels and sandcastles. yeehaw. by the time the bus musters up enough energy to rouse itself from its resting place, the battered walls of the coach seem ready to burst with the teeming mass of bodies inside. each single seat contains at least 2 people, and every sleeper compartment above is packed with no less than 5 crosslegged figures. a standardly bonethin young man inexplicably swathed in longsleeved plaid flannel is perched firmly on my seat's armrest. he leans in closer and closer until i shoot him a glare which sends him retreating back up a couple inches away. i can't really tell how many people are in this bus, since the aisles now resemble a mosh pit and leave not so much as a sliver of space through which to peer, but i estimate that there can be no less than 150 contented jaisalmer-bound souls surrounding me on four sides (above being one of them). whatever, i think, slipping off 50 rupees worth of sandal, propping my left foot up on my backpack, pressing my sweaty back to the sweaty seat behind me, and inhaling deeply from the exhaust-laden jodhpur highway air, i'm going to jaisalmer.
and go we did. flew, we did. thanks to the driver's predictably homicidal road tactics, within three hours we had reached the pit stop. three boyish men clutching little rectangular paper boxes swarmed around the windows. "icecreamicecreamicecream." it took no more than the flicker of a glance to bring them to my window
04 insert hilarious caption here
. i plucked a chocosicle box from one of their outstretched hands and examined the picture. i knew better than to be fooled by the alluring photograph of the creamy fudge-centered chocolate-almond-coated treat thereupon, but ice cream did sound pretty good in the evening heat. "kitna?" i asked, feeling in the pocket of my bag for a 10-rupee note. "thees rupiyee," the bold entrepreneur ventured. "are' baia!" i exclaimed, shoving the ice cream back into his hand. thirty rupees, what do i look like? "thik hai thik hai, bees!" twenty, his competitor, still hovering alongside, offered. i continued to stare disinterestedly ahead. "dus!" the first guy came down to ten. i was just about to turn my head slowly their way when he finally arrived at the real price, "panch!" i handed him a 5-rupee coin and took back the ice cream box, popping open the end to reveal an ashen brownish brick perched on a stick, huddled forlornly inside its little box home, self-conscious of its nakedness and not having enough confidence in its own deliciousness to even brave an attempt at seduction. 5 rupees, what did i expect? i pulled it out by the cracked stick, barely having time to take a first tentative bite before the entire hunk, melting like a polar ice cap, began sliding down towards my vulnerable fingers, awakening my sticky phobia. i started taking giant bites off the top, the sides, desperately trying in my panic to inhale the impending stickiness rocketing towards my hand. the chocosicle appeared, by taste, to be composed of a block of frozen tap water cut with a sprinkle of milk powder and dolled up with a paperthin layer of brown candle wax. but i was constrained to eat it as quickly as was humanly possible for fear that any hesitation would result in a chernobyl-style meltdown onto my grimy, but otherwise sticky-free hands. just as i slurped up the last tasteless bit, though, the bus engine cut off
05 camel's eye view
. so we're stopping here after all. i tossed the stick back in the box, got up and joined the river of people streaming out into the dusty evening air. i looked around for something to wash down the flavor of candle, which turned out to be a doughy little disk that was frying in a shallow woklike pan by the side of the road. as i approached, the man behind the pool of bubbling oil picked up a piece that had been sufficiently cooled in a neighboring pan and courted by flirtatious flies, wrapping it in a square of old newspaper, handing it over to me wordlessly and accepting my 10 rupees with his other hand. seeing nothing better to do with the 10-minute bus break, i climbed back in the coach and sat looking out the window, nibbling away at my greasy roadside dinner and pondering the irritable-looking brahma bull making the rounds through the vendor carts down below.two bump-riddled hours later, dozing to the snareheavy sounds of okkervil river, i felt the bus screech to a halt. a guy waving a hotel flyer materialized outside my window, "madam, madam!", to which i gave my standard tout response, "nahi thank you." i closed my eyes again just as the image of the flyer clutched in his hand registered in my brain. hotel golden city...hey! that's where i'm going! "oh baia! actually, yeh mera hotel hai," i called after him. he produced a crumpled piece of folded-up notebook paper which he held upside down a few inches in front of my eyes, MANOR written in large blockprintblueballpoint letters thereupon. "yeh aapka naam hai?" he asked hopefully. nope, not my name. "nahi hai, lekin anyway mein aa rahi hu," i said, scooping up my backpack and tumbling my way down the aisle of the bus which by now had begun chortling its way slowly forward. "ekminutekminutekminut!" i trilled out to the driver, who slammed on the brakes, bringing my whole body hurtling forward almost into the windshield, and out onto the dark roadside i spilled, grinning broadly at the bewildered representative of hotel golden city who still clutched the upside-down MANOR sign as if it would explain the presence of this dusty, smiling, decidedly non-MANOR girl standing in front of him
06 cameling
. "dusra tourist bus me tha?" he asked wearily. i shook my head, no, i'm the only tourist you're going to get tonight. i tossed my bag into the back of the open jeep, hoisted myself inside, and off we went. ------------
two days later i'm squinting against the pungent odor of the massive heaving animal sneering me down and gritting its gnarly teeth a few feet away, wondering if this was such a good idea after all. i'm eyeing another camel standing a bit down the rocky scrub-streaked hill, and noticing that his bugspeckled belly doesn't reach any lower than the top of my head. those spindly legs are deceptively long. i turn to the narrow young man beside me, grunting as he tightens the strap holding a filthy woolen blanket against the back of the camel that in theory i should be boarding in a moment. "toooooh...kabi-kabi log fall karte hain?", i ask with an air of forced casualness, forgetting the hindi word for "fall." "oh yes!", he grins back at me in english, "people are sometimes falling." he pauses and raises his voice slightly. "and korean people, all the time they are falling." the dainty south korean girl a stone's throw away looks duly nervous as she examines the snarling beast beside her. i like this guy already. "mein lillian hu," i say, extending my hand
07 desert
. "i'm sunny," he says, taking it in his with a vigorous shake.a few hours along the path we're bounding, bouncing, bumbling our way across the desert, the sun collapsing down onto our heads, our guides laughing and cajoling one another along the path, occasionally turning back around to my scarf-wrapped head to pose another bemused hindi question, "kitna bhai hai?" "do," i say, jiggling along, i have two brothers. "kahaan se hain?" "me amerika se hu." "kya umr hai?" "pachees." i'm twenty-five. "shaadi ho gaya?" "nahi," i say, i'm not married, though i realize later that i probably shouldn't have, since the next two days will be riddled with hints and anecdotes from our guides about their friends and brothers who have married foreign chicks to get visas for western countries.
we siesta in the heat of the day. a couple of generously-leaved squat green trees shield us from the rioting sunlight as we munch on fried onion pakoras and boiled vegetables with thick sandy rotis. my lower back, which i managed to throw out somewhere between waking up this morning and hoisting myself atop my camel, is screaming a sharded solo. ouch, i lower myself down onto the plastic tarp in the sand. a dung beetle scuttles industriously by, having noticed the troop of highly efficient dung factories grazing behind us in the scrub
08 desert...
. i close my eyes for a moment, then open them again. something is strange. i close them again. wow. i open them to the leaves above. it's silence. actual, pure white, deafening gorgeous silence. the first i've heard in 6 months. i can almost feel tears coming to my eyes as i doze off. ------------
by late afternoon we've reached the dunes, great sweeping stretches of sunsoaked sand and little else. the sun sets, a full moon rises, and i meander off alone into the desert.
the moonlight is slathered, decadent and creamy, across the soaring dunes all around. padding my way along a solitary ridge, rising gently towards that miraculously reflective disc above. craving the light it gives. i feel suddenly satisfied, and let my body tumble heavily down against the crest, my feet dangling over the plunging edge. selfishly solitary, haloed by a slick silvery melancholy. a peaceful blue.
i lift my eyes to the icy dune ahead, immortalized in moonlight. light a cigarette. sigh the pregnant sigh of over-introspection. lake, like, look, lock. these silly english words all sound the same. lick, lack, luck. luca. i sink my fingers into the velvety soft sand, the warmth just below the surface betraying the memory of day. the thar desert, such a harsh place cushioned by such soft, delicate carpeting. the finest sand in the world. i scoop up a huge peppery handful, pushing my fingers together with all my strength to retain it. it slips away like a glance, the familiar cliche about the sands of time irresistibly invoked.
09 ...and more desert
i roll the dying ember of my cigarette between my sand specked fingertips, releasing a tiny orange star into the dark dull space between my bare feet. i sigh again and wonder where three years have gone. a breeze comes skirting along the dunes to my right, breathing a delicate arc of granules up and over the ridge, a shower of sparks under the moon's glow. i follow its trajectory out over the valley, my eye falling on the face of the massive dune opposite me. a slithering ridge dissects it along the right side, casting an elusive ribbony shadow which clings to its flank. this place where absolute dissolves into all these slippery shades of in between.
to the left of the ridge someone has left a trail of footprints ascending in a zigzag pattern that resembles the snout of some massive prehistoric fish, the shadow of each individual depression brought out by the moon's presumptuous glare. my mind flutters, capriciously following a vein of imagination that pulls me to prehistoric times, this desert underwater, these powdery parched dunes skirted along by shrimp and snails in place of scarabs, cowering under great lithe reptilian beasts slipping by in the murk, casting heartstopping shadows of what will be, what could be, what if...
a melody drifts through the sandsparked air, the vibration of meandering voices, a child and a man harmonizing together. the thumping of some dull cavernous drum. i snap back to reality, the dull luminescence of all this limitless sand beneath me. i turn my head slightly away from the wind in order to hear the music better. laughing, drumming, singing, casual voices intertwined in chips of conversation scattered through the darkness
10 dinam, leelu, leela
. another indifferent gust of wind sweeps up the soft slope behind me, feathering pieces of dirty hair out in neutral squiggles about my head as four lumbering silhouettes pierce the bright peak of the dune ahead. patches of italian come clattering across the blank space between us. why am i being so anti-social?
i rouse myself from my sandy reverie and slip my way back down the ridge. there's a fire, and faces, and voices, and tinkling deserty laughter. i squeeze my way into the uncircular circle, digging my toes into the sand and stretching a smile across my face. "che, siete italiani? piacere...sono lillian..."
