Bombay, India
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2005
1
40
72
Trip End
Ongoing
Bombay,
India
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
We arranged a taxi from inside the airport and stepped out through a row of glass double doors into the Indian night. A fleet of black and yellow taxis occupied a large parking lot which was surrounded by palms. It was half an hour past midnight. A dozen people were asleep on the sidewalk beside us, but the row of thrown together food stalls at the lot's exit was active.
All of the taxis are of the same vintage- late fifties rounded car with four small doors, spring cushioned bench seats with dying upholstery. The body is painted black and the roof, yellow. Our driver was waiting, as were many others, snoozing on the trunk of his car with both legs dangling over the fender.
We slid into the back seat, rolled down the windows and exited the lot bound for Mumbai. Out side the airport, the hazed continued through the dimly lit avenues, around the low wattage lights and amongst the people. It carried through the ones sleeping in the streets, on their cars, their carts or their emptied sacks and through the many others that were out wandering, wandering or standing still staring beyond the passing traffic. Like the nights in Aswan, same sex, platonic, couples walk hand in hand along the outermost traffic lane, just beside a wide sidewalk. One in the morning and people looked like they were out for strolls. That is a good sign. Shelters ranged from patchwork material lean-to's, to elegant facades of interlocking arches and columns. Nearly all were shaded with sooty gray grime. The air was warm and pungent. It burns your eyes when you put your head near an open window.
I'll tell you now that we aren't really prepared. In Cape Town we bought a 2002 India guide for three dollars, and we have a slight notion of there we may like to go, but for the past 150 days or so, our sights have normally only been set for two, three, maybe ten days in advance, at most. The hotel that we singled out was booked. So were its three neighbors where the night guard took us. Another guesthouse around the block was booked. Bodiless whispers came in annoyed reply over the sleeping bodies that were scattered on the lobby floor, "Full."
The rats that scurry across the roads at night are large and covered with the same grime as the buildings.
Just before three we find a place that had an open room. It was cheap relative to the other backpacker echelon hotels. What we gained in discounts we paid for in cleanliness and space. It was so similar to leaving the cruise and getting back into the reality of Aswan. Flying from five star living in South Africa, back to the one star lifestyle that we are accustomed to.
Some how, India is 12 ½ hours ahead of Colorado. Nepal is 15 minutes ahead of India. It was as though the time lines divide around the Himalayas leaving a severed half an hour to fall on India. And then break again on Everest into another fifteen minutes. Or maybe, India is telling the Raj in Greenwich to adjust their lines. Time seems to have been running from us. Everywhere we stop my head is split between where we are, and where we just were. The memory of everywhere we stay races away from us. Right now it has been eleven days since we left Cape Town. Two weeks ago we were on the road trip, perhaps leaving Nature's Valley. South Africa was a wonderful experience, yet newer, fresher images, grand in their own right, layer on top of that picturesque road along the coast.
We traveled from Mumbai 28 hours overnight to Bangalore, two nights later caught the overnight train again and landed in a small town a few miles north and west of the southern point of India. That was almost a week in itself. What stand out first are the smells from spices, to flora essence, to incense, to urine, garbage and excrement. Each morning in the cities I woke with a filmy glaze on my eyes.
In a spatial jetlag we walked the streets and tried to picture ourselves in India. Our heads were still split, spending time in Africa and some in Europe. The sights, Ill refrain now from indulging. The first visit to the train station was a learning experience. In the main building people, thousands of people scurry from taxi to platform to train, or vice versa. To purchase a ticket there are 40 windows, each with duty specific signage. Next to the main platform area there is a large two-story building where one must make a reservation, before they can purchase a ticket. On the ground floor there is a line snaking through the large room, nearly the length of the room, it makes at least five bends before hitting the entry door. At the front of this line you get a numbered token. This you carry up stairs and wait with 150 other people blankly staring at a large electronic message board, looking for a match to your token telling you which window to go to, where you can then hope to make a reservation.
Very thankfully, a person with a foreign passport and a valid visa can skip the hundreds of patiently waiting oblivion and go to the tourist window, as long as there is one, and if you can find it. For us, it took 30-40 minutes, but for those nationals with high enough token numbers, some may still be waiting today.
We booked the first overnight to Bangalore and showed up a half hour early with our bags. Leaving at 9am from Bombay, we should reach Bangalore by 1PM the next day. Flights are frequent and relatively inexpensive, but how many chances will we get to train through Southern India, compared to the chance of flying over something at 30,000 feet?
Finding our seats we both admitted that we were not ready for such a severe reintroduction to uncomfortable third world travel. Though I wouldn't call India a third world country, the bottom two classes of train car (where we were booked) looked to rival any pain that I have felt on the road. We found the conductor and pleaded for an upgrade to the tow tiered air-conditioned sleeper car. He found two spots for us and calculated the difference to be 2,600 rupees. That is about 60 USD. We had seventy on us and smiled as we gave 6/7ths of it to the railways.
The two-tiered A/C sleeper was like a time capsule. The engine car pulled us slowly through Mumbai. Looking through the tinted windows we felt invisible. Slinking into the outskirts we came to medieval living in modern times. At best, walls are tied together, and at best the floors have hay covering them. It looked like the shelters could fall over and be built upon, the same way that they were built over the ruins of another makeshift dwelling. It all adds weight in sedimentary layers so that one day a team of archeologists can grid it off and dust their way down, finding out details of these peoples lives. A deep gutter runs along side of the tracks, which serves as a public latrine. We rode past lines of men and boys carrying small pails of water to clean themselves after doing their morning duties. The women must have an area of their won. They squatted on their haunches with their rear ends in the ditch. People walk by on the way to work. The train carries faces by. People still squat lined up like park benches in the open at the latrines. Modesty like vanity is a luxury that not everyone knows.
From our A/C capsule we float through mountains and slips through cities. It is still hard for our brains to accept that we are in India. On arrival we decided to book a ticket on the overnight train two days later. We visit five windows and fill in two forms before we are assured a reservation. This time we book in the 3-tier A/C sleeper, a step down from the 2 tier, only because that one was full.
Like India's anachronistic half hour, something else stands out here in a peculiar way. Neither a shake nor a nod, for lack of better words, I'll call it a bobble, and we are still trying to chart all of its meaning. The shake and the nod have always seemed pretty universal (with some exceptions) for negative and positive replies, respectively. Here I have seen neither one. Instead, people quickly tilt their heads like an off kilter arm of a metronome. But it can be hard to discern its implication, so still we are trying to interpret just what it can mean and how to use it.
Rickshaws line up at the train station, waiting for fares. They edge through traffic and weave through intersections. The three-wheeled motorbikes with a carriage on back fill any crack in the lanes of traffic. At a stoplight in Bangalore, I counted 16 people facing us in 4 oncoming lanes. Characteristically haphazard driving transports us through the streets and lands us searching for accommodation. Same song, third verse of this trip.
The air carries with it a heat that leaves sweat marks on our backs and pollution that turns our mucous gray. From Cape Town we shipped 7.3 kg back to the states which, when it comes directly off one's back, makes a noticeable difference. With three days in Bangalore we took to the streets finding botanical gardens, parliaments houses and plates of spicy vegetarian dishes accompanied by naan. No poisonings yet, no desire punch anyone yet. Transportation on the 2 tier A/C feels lavish like a safari in Africa.
12 ½ hours in front of Mountain Standard Time now puts us just past half way from Colorado, signifying that it is now shorter to continue eastwards on our route forward. We've rounded the globe.
