Meandering Through Literary and Literal Kerala

Kerala, Part 2

Flash back to November, when Matt and I were exploring Kerala, getting bitten by leeches and sneaking up on wild elephants.  After the adventure in Wayanad, we took a bus on beautifully paved roads, in the twilight, to the coast, where we stayed at Kannur Beach House, a cozy little place right on the water.  Our hosts there, Rosie and Nasir, cooked up lovely meals of seafood and vegetables, always with fresh fruit for dessert.  And then they packed us up and sent us down to Kochi by train.

I mentioned before that what had pulled me toward Kochi was the setting of one my favorite books, The God of Small Things.  Re-reading the book now, after visiting the story’s landscape, is a pleasure.  In her opening chapter, Arundhati Roy describes a small town near Kochi:

“May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month.  The days are long and humid.  The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees.  Red bananas ripen.  Jackfruits burst.  Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air.  They they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.

The nights are clear but suffused with sloth and sullen expectation.

But by early June the south-west monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water with short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine that thrilled children snatch to play with.  The countryside turns an immodest green…”

We were there in November, after the monsoon had dried up, and before people start longing again for the rain to quench their crops’ thirst.  But the region, halfway between Karnataka and the tip of the subcontinent, still had that mysterious, swollen sense to it.  Palm trees hung heavy with coconuts; coffee trees burst forth with green berries turning the slightest shades of red; paddy fields yawned across the landscape on both sides of the train we were riding, their wild green browning slightly in the dryness. 

A hint of revolution carried on, in stenciled red sickles marking each small town a dozen times.  In Kerala, socialism meets globalization on a local scale.  Locals talked about the new Asian Trade Agreement that would make the coconuts dripping off every palm tree practically profitless.  It costs too much to harvest the fruit, given the strong labor unions in the state, and now that Kerala coconuts will compete with those of Malaysia, Indonesia, and half a dozen other countries, they may just rot 100 feet above ground.  One day, we went out to watch a coconut cutter on Rosie and Nasir’s land.  A wiry man, who must have been over forty, placed a bamboo ladder halfway up a palm, deftly scaled it and then wrapped his arms and legs around the tree itself.  He shimmied the rest of the way up in thirty seconds flat, and then began to swipe at the coconuts with a small machete.  It’s an art that is slowly losing ground in this state where a coconut is not just a fruit, but a way of life and a symbol of identity. (The NY Times has been following the story of coconut harvesters in Kerala)

In Kochi itself, the atmosphere was certainly less rural, but no less interesting.  You have to take a ferry from the major city of Ernakulam to the more manageable island town of Fort Kochi, and we couldn’t do it fast enough.  Indian cities are tiring; towns, even if they are tourist traps, are rejuvenating.  Fort Kochi is one of the best.  After a day of bumming around the Princess Street tourist track, and eating all manner of international cuisine, we walked back toward the ferry landing and found a place to rent bicycles for the day. 

Oh to ride a bike again, even for a day.  Mine was purple and had a wire basket on the front.  Matt’s was taller and blue-green.  Both had self-locking back wheels, which made it easy to hop on and off at every antique shop, palace, and temple we saw. 

First was the Dutch Palace, former home of Kerala’s maharajas and colonial Dutch royalty.  While under construction, the Palace showed us neatly through the recent history of the city, from bare-breasted maharaja women to the introduction of European silk blouses, leading to the modern sari and (this is at least how we took it) contemporary Indian modesty.  What a bastion of tolerance Kerala was!  Until recently, it had been a matrilineal society, and thus boasted some of the broadest women’s rights in the subcontinent.  The ancient rajas, nearly two thousand years ago, had given refuge and sovereignty to a group of exiled Jews.  Until they started fighting among themselves for power, the Jews had set up their own kingdom, north of Kochi in the town of Cranganore.  Leave it to colonialism to dismantle this legacy of tolerance, and to subjugate women as best they could by outlawing matrilineality.

Next we were off to Jew Town, a short bike ride along the edge of the island.  Jew Town is where most of the small collection of Jews left over from the kingdom just north of Kochi ended up after the uprising there in 1471.  The man who had killed his own brother for the throne had been exiled, and escaped his family’s wrath by swimming across the backwaters to Kochi with his wife on his back.  This is how Jew Town began, and the old synagogue there tells the story in simple, vivid paintings of the event.  When we visited the synagogue, the aging Indian man who collected our 10 rupee entrance fee kept leaning into the room to his right and hollering to the influx of guests that ‘you need to start at the left!  And then walk right!’ to get the story straight.  The story that begins with the man swimming across the channel with his wife on the back, and ends with most of the Jews returning to Israel and abandoning their temporary kingdom. 

Later, when we were in the synagogue itself, an airy blue and white tiled temple, the same man came in behind a group of ten or twelve foreigners and explained that he was one of ten Jews left in Jew Town, the last Jewish family remaining.  They still gather here weekly to pray.  I tried to picture the family here, in this most simple of holy places, in this country where most expressions of faith are tinted in extravagance.  The giant gold-painted Ganesh that a temple just hoisted next to the highway to Bangalore.  The fire-blowing Dasara floats.  Even the Santa Cruz Basilica, which we had visited the day before, had decorated its altar to Jesus with dancing Christmas lights, and blasted hymns to what sounded like a synthesized surf rock beat. 

The small courtyard surrounding the synagogue was lined with old layers of slate marking the deaths of various members of the community.  It was closed to visitors, or I would have perused the history there.  It was a quiet place; a place of exile and loss and community, but also a place still alive with faith and practice, tucked into the alleys of a small tourist town. 

Jew Town’s narrow streets burst with antique shops selling a mixture of faux-antiques and actual artifacts from the last few hundred years.  Iron and bronze are at home here, and hanging oil lamps and rusted gothic keys rub shoulders with gigantic metal and carved-wood elephants.  At one shop in proper Fort Kochi we befriended a shopkeeper and his mother who just happened to come from Kottayam, the town of The God of Small Things.  Trying to be unobtrusive, I peppered them with questions.  ‘But why would you want to go there?’ the mother said wearily.  ‘There’s nothing there.’  When she said that she knew the family who became the story, I got really interested, but uncomfortable as well.  It’s a sad tale that Arundhati Roy writes, of caste conflict and violence and a small town growing up into something uglier than it was.  I have found that most Indians are not fond of the novel, and will instead point me to literature that is a little less confrontational, a little less blunt about the state of things in India.  When Roy’s narrator returns to Ayemenem and Kottayam a decade (and a hundred pages) later, she observes:

“Years later, when Rahel returned to the river, it greeted her with a ghastly skull’s smile, with holes where teeth had been, and a limp hand raised from a hospital bed…

Despite the fact that it was June, and raining, the river was no more than a swollen drain now.  A thin ribbon of thick water that lapped wearily at the mud banks on either side, sequined with the occasional silver slant of a dead fish.  It was choked with a succulent weed, whose furred brown roots waved like thin tentacles under water.  Bronze-winged lily-trotters walked across it.  Splay-footed, cautious.

Once it had had the power to evoke fear.  To change lives. But now its teeth were drawn, its spirit spent.  It was just a slow, sludging green ribbon lawn that ferried fetid garbage to the sea.  Bright plastic bags blew across its viscous, weedy surface like subtropical flying-flowers.”

Both the earlier and the later descriptions of India’s countryside are familiar to me now, not just in literature but in my own personal memories.  While I did not make it to Kottayam itself, I saw God’s Own Country, as Kerala is known, from a tourist’s and a literary eye’s view.  It is a beautiful place, full of ripe fruit and lushness, and cultural collisions of every shape and size.  What I took from the trip was a deeper experience of my favorite novel, and also an antique oil lamp bought from the Kottayam family we befriended.  When we rubbed off the old varnish covering the darkened metal alloy, we discovered its convincing faux identity.  “1980” read the date carved into the bottom, between curling Malayam letters that only a Keralan will know. 

A Visit with Old Friends

We had our first States-side visitors come through about a week ago, and all of us – Michael, Taylor, Matthew and I – had a chance to see some new parts of India and catch up on the past three months. Old friends from Philly, Michael and Taylor arrived in Mumbai and headed south to Turtle Bay, a quaint little beach resort on the eastern coast. After a few days of sleeping off their jet lag, playing cricket with villagers, and eating their first tastes of Indian food, they headed our way. When Matt and I picked them up in Madikeri, they had just come from a local bar, where Taylor drew some stares, I’m sure, over her glass of Kingfisher. This was very Philadelphia of them, and it warmed my heart. I still haven’t worked up the gumption to sit and drink in one of those Madikeri dives.

After excited hugs and a true feeling of displacement (Michael and Taylor in INDIA?!!), we jumped in our friend Charlie’s auto, four-to-a-rickshaw, and climbed up the hill to the Retreat. Up in the rainforest we spent a few quiet days hiking, dining around campfires, and catching up. We even put them to work a bit:  Michael helped Matt out with the new Rainforest Retreat website, and Taylor enthusiastically helped harvest the latest crop of green tea.

Soon enough, we decided to split from Mojo Plantation, and head to Mysore. After checking in at the brand new Hotel Ritz, we set about exploring. First there was the Mysore Palace, home of generations of Mysore maharajas, and embodying the inclusive spirit of India: Islamic spires coupled with Hindu temple architecture and topped off with a Catholic-inspired dome. Belgian and British floor tiles cozied up against solid silver doors, and dozens of optical illusion maharaja portraits rubbed shoulders with hand-carved stone elephants complete with moving parts. When I asked how the Palace was built, in other words, who paid for such opulence, our guide replied that they found a gold mine not far from Mysore that paid for the entire thing.

Next we set out for St. Philomena’s church, where I bought a few unexpected Christmas ornaments from the adjoining liturgical store. After that, we were off and walking through the streets of Mysore, for essential oil extracts and sandalwood, musical instruments and saris.

Our greatest find of the trip was undoubtedly the bright and bustling Dasara Fair that we happened upon later that evening. Now, Dasara is the biggest annual festival in south India. Schools close down, temples go nuts creating outlandish electric floats depicting religious stories, and Indians of all faiths pour out of their homes in the dead of night to dance in the streets on this Hindu holiday. But Dasara happened nearly three months ago, in the very first month of our culture shock. So it seemed a little odd that the Dasara Fair would still be in full operation as we approached the end of the year. Undaunted by this calendrical fact, Mysoreans of all ages and occupations flocked to the belated festival on this balmy Friday night, like any American schoolboy to the county fair. And like a county fair it was. Dozens of shops lined the entranceway to the store, and we immediately stocked up on gifts for Christmas and beyond. We were the only foreigners in the fairgrounds, and happily gobbled up the Indian prices on pashmina scarves and elephant print bed sheets before the vendors could figure out that we expected them to quote a much higher price. After that we explored the food court, with its giant pooris and unknown curry dishes. There was even a temporary Cafe Coffee Day set up inside, the Indian equivalent of Starbucks, stocked with microwaveable chicken rolls and thick slices of death-by-chocolate cake. We couldn’t resist.

We moved on to the agricultural exhibits and educational booths, which included odd collections of taxidermy and tourism. At one, we witnessed the month-by-month progression of bovine fetal development through square portals of preservatives and glass. At the same booth, we also got to see the objects most commonly found inside an Indian city cow’s stomach (loads of unidentified metal objects, to say the least), and we had the opportunity to purchase a live emu egg for just 1500 rupees (about $30). We considered bringing it home as a gift for the farm, but instead carried on through the truly gigantic fairgrounds.

For some time we had been eyeing a gigantic tiger head built up at the back of the fairgrounds. Now we walked toward it, until we stood under its gaping mouth. After paying a 25 rupee entrance fee (the fair itself cost us just 10 rupees, so that’s saying something), we walked through the tiger’s mouth and found a mountain to scale. But first, we had to deposit our shoes, which meant something holy was coming.

Here is what we found along the mountain:

First, we waded through a Himalayan river. I assume this was a cleansing ritual before our ascent up the sacred peak.

This is how I knew we were supposed to be in the Himalayas. We must be somewhere in or near Kashmir for turbaned Indian army officials to be planted at strategic points to guard pilgrims.

One of several small shrines along the way. This one, Matt felt particularly drawn to.

After the final ascent, we walked through another holy river, and then on through a dark cave.

I had known this was coming ever since we had deposited our shoes a whole plastic mountain ago. But Taylor didn’t, and she entered the shrine laughing. We were all caught a little off guard after the hilarity of the climb. Perhaps even more exciting than the 25 rupee “ride” we had just completed was the view we got on the other side.

Although we did much more in Mysore that night and the next day, the Dasara Fair wowed us with its peculiar mix of the agricultural, the scientific, and the religious, with both its joy and solemnity. We wandered wide-eyed in this serious and silly microcosm of India for several hours, through the “Scery House” and past the Om Shakti bouncy slide. When we finally left the fairgrounds, we had been over-stimulated and impressed, and we found ourselves exhausted by the fun and the reflections it provoked.

The next day we continued to explore, rising early to beat the crowds at Chamundi Hill, and spending the early afternoon seeing tigers, elephants, and apes at the Mysore Zoo. While we found some interesting things during our explorations of the city, it was the company that made it really special. After spending three quiet months very far away from old friends and family, Michael and Taylor rejuvenated me, reminding me that life goes on at home, and when we return States-side, our old community will be there waiting for us.

After one final lavish lunch, the four of us jumped into a rickshaw and directed the driver to the Mysore bus stand. Matt and I pushed our way through the madness of the city bus stand and delivered Michael and Taylor to a deluxe Volvo bus headed straight to Bangalore. From there they would head on to Nepal to visit some other old friends, where I was sure they would work some similar magic refreshing and rejuvenating in a far off land. Amidst hugs and hurried goodbyes, we promised to see them in six months back in Philly. “I can’t wait to see you there!” I shouted, and they were gone.

“There’s nothing like following a man with a rifle into the jungle”

Trip to Kerala, Part I

Last week, Matt and I took off from the farm for a week’s trip through Kerala.  Known for its backwaters, its communist government, and – to some – its literary prowess, Kerala is India’s southernmost state to the west.  The state meanders along the Arabian Sea, connecting Karnataka to India’s southernmost tip at Trivanduram.  Apparently, Kerala attracts 90% of the 10% of tourists who choose to visit South India over North India.  I had been eager to visit the place since setting foot in the south, mostly because it is home to the story and the characters that once entranced me in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.  So when I heard about an agriculture and export conference in Kochi, Matt and I jumped at the chance to take our first big trip through a new part of India.

Our first impressions were of motion and comfort.  We had taken a bus from Madikeri three hours south to Wayanad, to spend a few days looking for wildlife before heading toward the coast and down to Kochi.  As we passed through Kutta, the last town in Karnataka, and headed into Kerala, our rickshaw suddenly sped up, and Matt and I stopped bouncing into each other.  Well, we thought, the roads are certainly better in Kerala. 

We were greeted by breakfast and coffee at the guesthouse we had booked, and ushered up to a tree-house bungalow.  Wooden walls! we noticed happily, after months of cement rooms necessary to withstand the hefty rains of Madikeri.  The bungalow was built on wooden stilts, and attached to a real live tree.  It was raised, we mused, in case a wild elephant came crashing through the coffee plantation. 

We wasted no time, jumping at our first opportunity to explore the Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuary across the road.  We did it safari style, piling into a covered jeep with two French tourists and two Indian guides, one in front and one behind.  As we entered the reserve through a big iron gate and drove through the first towering stands of teak trees, I imagined I could hear the wildness of India breathing huge sighs of relief.  Here was a natural place thoroughly protected by the Indian government, in a country that is hungry for space for its bulging population.  Not only is it a fairly large wildlife refuge, but India has done well in connecting it with several other nearby national parks to create a massive, continuous habitat for the big and small animals that desperately need it – elephants, tigers, giant squirrels, deer, and monkeys, to name a few.  Helping to cement its longevity, India also uses the area to create several streams of revenue, such as tourist dollars and profit from carefully sustained teak “orchards” grown within the reserve. 

Our experience confirmed the wildlife’s relief.  Almost as soon as we were 100 meters into the reserve, our safari driver slowed down.  “Spotted deer,” he whispered, pointing to a herd of fifteen or twenty deer, full grown fawns to my North American eyes.  And then, “Hanuman langur monkeys,” as he pointed up into the trees.  Within another ten minutes we had spotted the elusive luna moth, a trio of bison, a sambar deer, and a malabar giant squirrel.  And then, as we rounded a bend and headed deeper into the jungle, our guide in the back of the jeep called for the driver to back up.  He cut the engine and we all leaned out the open windows, listening.  There was crashing in the brush just beside the road, and I could see young stands of bamboo waving wildly against some mighty force.  Elephants, the guide mouthed to us.  And we all leaned a little further out the windows of the jeep, straining to see the cause of all the ruckus in the brush. 

Soon another jeep pulled up behind us, and we moved on.  Hearing the elephants was powerful in itself, perhaps even more than seeing them right away, as it made me begin to understand the vast appetite of the animals, and the sheer power of the lumbering beasts.  They pull whole trees down when they’re snacking, and make no effort to quiet either their footsteps or their munching. 

Partly because of our unrequited encounter with the elephants, and partly because of a longing to connect with the reserve in a more personal way, Matt and I splurged the next morning, and hired our very own guide and guard to take us, on foot, into the reserve.  This is a rare privilege, and to do it you have to pay for these two men, one a local tribal guide, and the other a man touting a rifle, to personally walk you through the place.  The duo in serious brown uniforms added some clout to our small entourage, and as we stepped past the gate, rather than rumbling past it in a jeep, I immediately felt a sense of adventure overcome me. 

We walked along the road for a while, spotting an isolated langur monkey here and there, and marveling at tiger prints and bison droppings.  Soon enough, our guides pulled up short and stopped to listen.  Silence, and then a muffled crushing of sticks and leaves and bamboo.  We looked for the source, and there, not 50 meters away, a tall, skinny bamboo stalk wavered and fell, and was shortly dragged away into the undergrowth.  This time, we knew what stood behind the brush.  Matt and I walked back and forth along the road, testing views from every angle, and getting short glimpses of a fanning ear, a dusty gray back, and a tail whipping back and forth.  After a few minutes, our guides motioned to us.  They were looking for openings in the brush to creep into, and one of them, the man with the rifle, Anu Kumar, said to us, “we go in, behind them.”  Through this shortened sentence, I assumed this meant that Anu Kumar was going to circle behind the elephants and flush them out so we could get a better look.  This seemed somewhat risky, but feeling grateful for our gutsy guide, I said, “okay, good luck!”  But then he beckoned for us to follow. 

Looking back at me, Matt said, “there’s nothing like following a man with a rifle into the jungle,” and we plunged into the brush.  The guide cut a quiet path with his machete, leading us through a swampy area and around the backside of the elephants.  We emerged on raised ground covered by trees and shrubs, and looked across a small stream to a herd of four wild elephants.  They hadn’t noticed us at all, or maybe they simply weren’t concerned.  There was one huge male, with long white tusks and two massive humps on the top of his head.  Three smaller females, not three quarters his size, stood around him.  All four chewed slowly at the pile of bamboo they had pulled down, first shaving off the bark and then sucking out the fiber within.  They waved their giant ears, and curled their wiry tails back and forth along their bodies, and it was a perfect display of elephantine calm.

Shortly, Anu Kumar started pulling on our sleeves, beckoning that it was time to go.  He was worried that a jeep would drive along the road and spook the small herd our way.  It was a valid concern, but after a minute of entrancement in the company of such calm wildness, I didn’t want to go.  He continued to coax us out, and we turned to backtrack along the makeshift path only two or three minutes after finding our view.

That was only the beginning of our trek through the jungle, but a description of each and every moment would hardly be blog-friendly.  We spotted dozens of tiger prints and even a pair of leopard prints, and encountered a half-dozen malabar giant squirrels.  These creatures, perhaps the most beautiful to be seen in this stretch of rainforest, are reddish-orange and nearly as big as a German Shepherd.  They run along the rainforest canopy like the most adept monkeys, and when they turn to look at you from their treetop lookout, their faces are circled like a raccoon in whites and browns and blacks.  Their bushy red tails follow them like a final flash of brilliance as they disappear into the forest.

Thankfully, Anu Kumar did not need to use his rifle even once during the trek, although we did get attacked by a hoard of wild beasts.  The leeches, my personal bain of the rainforest, finally got the better of me, devouring both Matt’s and my feet during one particularly moist stretch of trail.  Their ferocity would leave their mark for the rest of our week-long trip to Kerala, as their nasty little bites swelled up and had me itching for the next six days.  But it was worth it – for the elephants, and the squirrels, and all the other creatures we encountered, and for the experience of walking absolutely vulnerable into a wholly wild place, except for the presence of a guide with a gun. 

Photos: 1- Entrance to the Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuary; 2- Luna Moth; 3- Entering the jungle with our guides; 4- Elephants!; 5- Sweet relief from the leech bites

A Beach Vacation and Then Some

Lauren and I took a vacation a few days ago, and ran away to the beach.  We thought it would be a five or six hour ride, one way, but in typical Indian fashion, we pulled into Trasi Village a full nine hours after we left the farm.  We would spend two full days traveling for one day of blissful, pampered relaxation on the beach, and I must say, it was totally worth it.

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.