Intimidation, Part Four: The Jungle
Flying from Jaipur to Kochi was surprisingly pleasant. Since trains are plentiful and affordable, only the extremely wealthy or the extremely rushed fly across India. Since our twenty-four-day vacation would've been somewhat hampered by a three-day train ride, we decided to bite the financial bullet and fly to the south. As we made our way to the airport, memories of the dark and dingy Mumbai airport loomed, and we figured we'd just make the best of the situation.
However, walking into the Jaipur airport was like entering a spa in comparison to what we remembered of Mumbai. Marble floors, plush couches, restaurants... I felt like I'd been transported back to a smaller version of Minneapolis's Mall of America. When we tried to get some food, we found that a meal that would've cost Rs. 40 anywhere else cost Rs. 400 in the airport. So, we decided on Rs. 75 Snickers bars and tried not to fall asleep on the couches.
When we arrived in Mumbai on our way to Kochi, the airport looked nothing like we'd remembered from our first hours in India. Clean and well-lit, it was a perfectly comfortable place to crash for a few hours. I looked around for signs of recent renovations or a new paint job, since the airport looked so dramatically different from what my sleep-deprived brain remembered from July. It took me another few minutes to realize that nothing had been changed or rebuilt since our arrival... well, nothing but my own perception, I suppose. I'm almost nervous to get back to the US with this in mind. I'll probably feel like I'm in an overly-sanitized, blindingly bright hospital when I'm on the streets of Minneapolis.
But anyway... the south! After a brief stay in Ernakulam, we hopped onto a six-hour bus to get to Kumily, home of the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. Surprisingly, all six hours of the bus ride were enjoyable, since we weren't careening down mountain passes at three in the morning. There weren't even any crying babies. Danielle, Sara, and I munched on our kayla (banana) chips and sipped our mango juice as we watched the city buildings give way to endless greenery and shaded lagoons. I could almost feel the air change as we entered the part of Kerala where water dominates the scenery. Ahhhhhh....
We arrived in Kumily in the evening with nothing on our minds but food and lodging. We'd decided to forgo booking a hotel in advance, since advance booking has been a bit of a challenge. Sara had tried bravely to make reservations at a place called the Coffee Inn, but the receptionist didn't speak English. Flustered, Sara valiantly tried Marathi before realizing that this regional dialect wouldn't work in the south. She finally asked, "Hindi?" but the receptionist slammed down the phone. Hindi, India's "national" language, isn't looked upon well in the south.
Stepping off the bus, we were surrounded by hotel managers of all shapes and sizes, each waving a brochure and promising cheap rooms close by. We agreed to look at one room set off of the main drag. The Mountain View Hotel ended up being a quiet, clean homestay right on the edge of the jungle. With our bags deposited and our room registrations complete, we collapsed in a nearby restaurant. Halfway through our entrees, it registered that we were the only women in the establishment. I wasn't really surprised by this, nor when each of the men dining would stand up, mid-meal, to adjust his lungi, or knee-length, wrap-around skirt. In my ten days in Kerala, I would see two men wearing pants. Now I see why I get some funny looks when I don my wrap-around skirt from the US.
After a good night's sleep, we headed off to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. We booked our Rs. 15 boat tickets and sat down to wait in a parking lot-type area. On our way to the booking office, I'd nearly fallen over a family of red-faced monkeys, looking at me as if I were the one with the funny-looking bottom. While we waited, a baby monkey sidled over to me. He tried to take my water bottle, which was fortunately clamped to my bag. He yanked at it a few times before wandering off, sulking. In Kumily, monkeys are like pigeons. People might occasionally toss them a bit of chapatti or a piece of fruit, but by and large they're unexciting pests. My constantly clicking camera and huge grin were bigger sources of amusement for the people working in the park than the monkeys were, I suppose.
Getting onto the small boat, I grabbed a seat by the window and prepped my camera. The boat was full of middle-aged couples and one group of teenaged boys at the back. Three yuppie families ended up hopping onto the boat just as we were leaving, but being on the water was still a wonderful pocket of calm in a otherwise crowded and noisy trip. Watching the families interact was something of a sociology project in itself. I mentally placed the families' hometown as Mumbai, since the wives' spike heels and professionally streaked hair didn't exactly scream Rajasthan. Their Western clothing-clad children munched on potato chips and drank illicit Pepsi, which has been outlawed in Kerala. We didn't see any wildlife for most of the trip, which may have had something to do with the children screaming "TIGER! TIGER!" as they waited for one to emerge from the forest.
When I glanced back at the families, I noticed the teenage boys taking pictures of me with their cell phone cameras. I'd mostly grown used to this, but at the moment, it drove me crazy. One of the brave ones walked over and sat down about four inches from me, still taking pictures with his phone even as I turned to glare. He gave me a slow, cocky wink, ignoring my discomfort.
However, just as my blood pressure started to rise, we rounded a bend in the lake/river and a herd of elephants came into focus. Five or six of them had wandered down to the river, and they splashed each other as they bathed. Donald Miller, one of my favorite authors, talks about the calming effect that elephants have on him, and I've found that I agree. There's just something about seeing a being so large and so graceful at the same time. I've heard about clans of elephants that care for each other and mourn their dead. My mom told me about a baby elephant that was killed by villagers in Africa. The other elephants mourned the baby for a day and then destroyed the village in revenge. I hadn't really thought about elephants in that way, but seeing them now, even from this distance, I could tell it was true.
As we stepped off the boat, I saw the same boy hop down and start taking pictures from the shore. There must be a peaceful way to deal with this, I thought. As most of my close friends know, I'm a pretty happy person, and it takes quite a bit to make me mad. I knew that yelling at the guy wouldn't accomplish much, but my patience had run out. So instead, I decided to try a different approach. I sauntered up, all smiles, saying, "Hi! What's your name?" I asked if I could see his phone, which looked soooo cool. I mean, golly, we didn't have anything like this back in the USA! Cockily, he handed the phone over, looking at his friends as if to say, "You see? She loves me." I navigated my way through his menu and to his photo gallery. Pulling up one of the dozen or so photos of me onto the screen, I pushed the picture in his face. "This is unacceptable. You will never again take pictures of a woman without asking her permission. Do you understand?" He turned pale and said yes, yes, of course, and then sheepishly ran off. Darn right, buddy. If only there were elephants around every time I get frustrated, right?
Back at the homestay, the girls and I joined the family for dinner. The homestay owner's wife prepared a dinner for us with subji, rice, chapatti, and egg. I spied a green bean on my plate and popped it into my mouth. It took a few seconds for me to realize that it had been a mirchi, not a green bean. Mirchi is the spicy green pepper that flavors nearly every dish in Indian cooking. In one pot of vegetables or dahl, the cook adds one mirchi for flavoring. Everybody knows you're supposed to push it off to the side while you eat. Back at my host family's house, my host mother always chops up the mirchi into little pieces. I hadn't seen a whole cooked one before, especially not one this big.
Needless to say, I started sweating as the heat hit my empty stomach. I started hiccuping as I tried to remain perfectly still. The quickest way to recover from excess spice is to relax the body and take deep, slow breaths. I'd had spicy food before, but never a plain pepper. Right then, the hotel owner's wife came in to see how the food was tasting. "Great!" I squeaked as I tried to breathe. My plate of untouched food sat in front of me. If I had been anywhere else, I would've left the room to go lie down. But here, in a relative stranger's house, I knew that there was absolutely no excuse to exempt me from dinner. I started mentally talking myself through eating the rest, since my stomach was now rebelling against anything else going in it. Sara and Danielle tried to help me out the best they could, but then dessert came.
Long story short, Danielle has wheat and milk allergies, Sara's allergic to milk, and I had just eaten death in vegetable form. The dessert was sweetened, pure ghee, which is a derivative of milk. The hotel owner's wife smiled as she set the bowls down and then returned to the kitchen. The three of us exchanged nervous looks across the table. "You (hic) guys," I said, "I (hic) can try to (hic) eat some of (hic) that if you need (hic) me to..."
This is getting really long, so I'm going to break it up into a few entries.
Love,
Sarah!
iPod: "We Both Go Down Together," The Decemberists
However, walking into the Jaipur airport was like entering a spa in comparison to what we remembered of Mumbai. Marble floors, plush couches, restaurants... I felt like I'd been transported back to a smaller version of Minneapolis's Mall of America. When we tried to get some food, we found that a meal that would've cost Rs. 40 anywhere else cost Rs. 400 in the airport. So, we decided on Rs. 75 Snickers bars and tried not to fall asleep on the couches.
When we arrived in Mumbai on our way to Kochi, the airport looked nothing like we'd remembered from our first hours in India. Clean and well-lit, it was a perfectly comfortable place to crash for a few hours. I looked around for signs of recent renovations or a new paint job, since the airport looked so dramatically different from what my sleep-deprived brain remembered from July. It took me another few minutes to realize that nothing had been changed or rebuilt since our arrival... well, nothing but my own perception, I suppose. I'm almost nervous to get back to the US with this in mind. I'll probably feel like I'm in an overly-sanitized, blindingly bright hospital when I'm on the streets of Minneapolis.
But anyway... the south! After a brief stay in Ernakulam, we hopped onto a six-hour bus to get to Kumily, home of the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. Surprisingly, all six hours of the bus ride were enjoyable, since we weren't careening down mountain passes at three in the morning. There weren't even any crying babies. Danielle, Sara, and I munched on our kayla (banana) chips and sipped our mango juice as we watched the city buildings give way to endless greenery and shaded lagoons. I could almost feel the air change as we entered the part of Kerala where water dominates the scenery. Ahhhhhh....
We arrived in Kumily in the evening with nothing on our minds but food and lodging. We'd decided to forgo booking a hotel in advance, since advance booking has been a bit of a challenge. Sara had tried bravely to make reservations at a place called the Coffee Inn, but the receptionist didn't speak English. Flustered, Sara valiantly tried Marathi before realizing that this regional dialect wouldn't work in the south. She finally asked, "Hindi?" but the receptionist slammed down the phone. Hindi, India's "national" language, isn't looked upon well in the south.
Stepping off the bus, we were surrounded by hotel managers of all shapes and sizes, each waving a brochure and promising cheap rooms close by. We agreed to look at one room set off of the main drag. The Mountain View Hotel ended up being a quiet, clean homestay right on the edge of the jungle. With our bags deposited and our room registrations complete, we collapsed in a nearby restaurant. Halfway through our entrees, it registered that we were the only women in the establishment. I wasn't really surprised by this, nor when each of the men dining would stand up, mid-meal, to adjust his lungi, or knee-length, wrap-around skirt. In my ten days in Kerala, I would see two men wearing pants. Now I see why I get some funny looks when I don my wrap-around skirt from the US.
After a good night's sleep, we headed off to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. We booked our Rs. 15 boat tickets and sat down to wait in a parking lot-type area. On our way to the booking office, I'd nearly fallen over a family of red-faced monkeys, looking at me as if I were the one with the funny-looking bottom. While we waited, a baby monkey sidled over to me. He tried to take my water bottle, which was fortunately clamped to my bag. He yanked at it a few times before wandering off, sulking. In Kumily, monkeys are like pigeons. People might occasionally toss them a bit of chapatti or a piece of fruit, but by and large they're unexciting pests. My constantly clicking camera and huge grin were bigger sources of amusement for the people working in the park than the monkeys were, I suppose.
Getting onto the small boat, I grabbed a seat by the window and prepped my camera. The boat was full of middle-aged couples and one group of teenaged boys at the back. Three yuppie families ended up hopping onto the boat just as we were leaving, but being on the water was still a wonderful pocket of calm in a otherwise crowded and noisy trip. Watching the families interact was something of a sociology project in itself. I mentally placed the families' hometown as Mumbai, since the wives' spike heels and professionally streaked hair didn't exactly scream Rajasthan. Their Western clothing-clad children munched on potato chips and drank illicit Pepsi, which has been outlawed in Kerala. We didn't see any wildlife for most of the trip, which may have had something to do with the children screaming "TIGER! TIGER!" as they waited for one to emerge from the forest.
When I glanced back at the families, I noticed the teenage boys taking pictures of me with their cell phone cameras. I'd mostly grown used to this, but at the moment, it drove me crazy. One of the brave ones walked over and sat down about four inches from me, still taking pictures with his phone even as I turned to glare. He gave me a slow, cocky wink, ignoring my discomfort.
However, just as my blood pressure started to rise, we rounded a bend in the lake/river and a herd of elephants came into focus. Five or six of them had wandered down to the river, and they splashed each other as they bathed. Donald Miller, one of my favorite authors, talks about the calming effect that elephants have on him, and I've found that I agree. There's just something about seeing a being so large and so graceful at the same time. I've heard about clans of elephants that care for each other and mourn their dead. My mom told me about a baby elephant that was killed by villagers in Africa. The other elephants mourned the baby for a day and then destroyed the village in revenge. I hadn't really thought about elephants in that way, but seeing them now, even from this distance, I could tell it was true.
As we stepped off the boat, I saw the same boy hop down and start taking pictures from the shore. There must be a peaceful way to deal with this, I thought. As most of my close friends know, I'm a pretty happy person, and it takes quite a bit to make me mad. I knew that yelling at the guy wouldn't accomplish much, but my patience had run out. So instead, I decided to try a different approach. I sauntered up, all smiles, saying, "Hi! What's your name?" I asked if I could see his phone, which looked soooo cool. I mean, golly, we didn't have anything like this back in the USA! Cockily, he handed the phone over, looking at his friends as if to say, "You see? She loves me." I navigated my way through his menu and to his photo gallery. Pulling up one of the dozen or so photos of me onto the screen, I pushed the picture in his face. "This is unacceptable. You will never again take pictures of a woman without asking her permission. Do you understand?" He turned pale and said yes, yes, of course, and then sheepishly ran off. Darn right, buddy. If only there were elephants around every time I get frustrated, right?
Back at the homestay, the girls and I joined the family for dinner. The homestay owner's wife prepared a dinner for us with subji, rice, chapatti, and egg. I spied a green bean on my plate and popped it into my mouth. It took a few seconds for me to realize that it had been a mirchi, not a green bean. Mirchi is the spicy green pepper that flavors nearly every dish in Indian cooking. In one pot of vegetables or dahl, the cook adds one mirchi for flavoring. Everybody knows you're supposed to push it off to the side while you eat. Back at my host family's house, my host mother always chops up the mirchi into little pieces. I hadn't seen a whole cooked one before, especially not one this big.
Needless to say, I started sweating as the heat hit my empty stomach. I started hiccuping as I tried to remain perfectly still. The quickest way to recover from excess spice is to relax the body and take deep, slow breaths. I'd had spicy food before, but never a plain pepper. Right then, the hotel owner's wife came in to see how the food was tasting. "Great!" I squeaked as I tried to breathe. My plate of untouched food sat in front of me. If I had been anywhere else, I would've left the room to go lie down. But here, in a relative stranger's house, I knew that there was absolutely no excuse to exempt me from dinner. I started mentally talking myself through eating the rest, since my stomach was now rebelling against anything else going in it. Sara and Danielle tried to help me out the best they could, but then dessert came.
Long story short, Danielle has wheat and milk allergies, Sara's allergic to milk, and I had just eaten death in vegetable form. The dessert was sweetened, pure ghee, which is a derivative of milk. The hotel owner's wife smiled as she set the bowls down and then returned to the kitchen. The three of us exchanged nervous looks across the table. "You (hic) guys," I said, "I (hic) can try to (hic) eat some of (hic) that if you need (hic) me to..."
This is getting really long, so I'm going to break it up into a few entries.
Love,
Sarah!
iPod: "We Both Go Down Together," The Decemberists
posted by Sarah! at 8:25 PM
1 Comments:
Ahh, Chivalry. In which women aren't people, but they are sacred objects, so at least they get some respect. And the right to slap anyone who transgresses a boundary.
I wish more women slapped. It would make so much more sense.
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