The beach was nice, and we certainly got our fill of luxury. We were staying, free of charge, at a beach resort whose owners are friends of the family who are our hosts here. The resort boasts unobstructed beach access along a stretch of shore untainted by village sewage, yoga classes, massages, and any number of sweet and savory treats. We happened to be the only ones staying at the resort (it was a Monday and Tuesday night), and had a cozy little cabana right along the beach to ourselves. When we pulled up at 6 pm Monday evening, we dumped our bags in the room, ordered sweet lassis, and took a stroll in the evening tide.
Sand crabs the size of your fist scuttled across the receding lines of water, and ducked down into their holes as we approached. A few jellyfish slithered along with the tide, weightlessly washing in and out of the sea. To our left a gaggle of fishing boats waited ready on the sand, and we watched a group of 20 or 30 men pull the last of the evening skiffs out of the water. They sang a song as they did it, and though they were far away, the highs and lows of it floated across the coast to us. We had fried seer fish and pomfret for dinner, and two beers, and went to sleep basking in the sounds of the sea, just meters from our door.
In the morning, there was a walk on the beach, aloo parathas for breakfast, and hammocks to lie in. We spent the day reading, swimming, and snoozing, rousing ourselves just in time for our Ayurvedic massages. By the end of the day, we were relaxed and cleansed, and ready to return to our somewhat stress-free life on the farm.
I said the beach was ‘nice’ earlier because it wasn’t exactly my favorite part of the trip. We rose early on the third day to get a good start on the trip home. A local rickshaw driver picked us up, and a kilometer down the road I asked him to take us to the fish market so I could buy dried fish for the staff here on the farm. We rattled along the main road for a while and then turned into a side street in Kundapura. Immediately we were greeted by the fresh smell of the sea, and by dozens of women filleting the morning catch. They squatted over freshly sharpened machetes screwed right into the cement floor, and expertly wove the large and small fish along the blade. First the scales came off in five or six grinding sideways motions. Then the fins and tail, and finally in one smooth motion the fish bit down hard on the blade and lost their jaw and guts. Noticing the foreigners, the women looked up at us and smiled, following us with their eyes even while they kept pace with their pile of fish. Cats, house crows, and black kites kept watch from the rafters and walls of the market. They dipped in unobstructed to grab at errant entrails, no doubt helping to keep the place clean.
Afterward we began the hopscotch of public and private buses, from Kundapura to Udupi, Udupi to Mangalore, and Mangalore to Madikeri. Each ride was a little different, from the weaving, honking madness of the first stretch, to the slow climb of the final leg up into the hills. I found myself laughing at India’s idiosyncrasies. Karnataka was attempting to pave what seemed like the full 200 kilometers of the highway from the mountains to the sea, all at the same time. Patches of dusty, rocky roadwork were just as frequent as rectangles of smooth asphalt. Along every kilometer of road there were at least two or three road crews raking fresh gravel or pouring piecemeal buckets of tar onto a freshly flattened stretch. It seemed grossly inefficient at first, but then made more and more sense as we drove along. It may have been employment for every village that we passed (or at least I hoped that was the case), and in a way it seemed to be an act of a village exercising ownership over their space.
Halfway through the journey to Mangalore, the bus pulled over along an empty stretch of road and picked up not a person, but three 10 kg tubs of Cashew Kernels – Product of India. A few hundred rupees exchanged hands with the conductor, and the bus became a makeshift postal unit. Moments like that wear at my heart and make me love India. I can’t quite explain why, but it’s something about people figuring out ways to get by, and ways to help each other out.
Buses in India are by definition uncomfortable things. They’re crowded and dirty, and the roads are generally terrible. But buses are also units of connection, shared spaces where foreigners and Indians of all class and creed come together and meditate. Because that’s what a bus ride is in India, a meditative experience, where all you can do is sit and stare out the window, calm your breath and clear your mind, and wait for the five or nine or fifteen hours to be over. And so, the bus ride was as much a part of the vacation as the beach, in my mind, and it brought me home feeling refreshed and engaged with the country I’ll be living in for the next many months.
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