Day Fifteen

I wont leave you in suspense. No tigers today. I left the hotel in Ranthambore defeated. By whom, I cannot say. Maybe the tigers? Maybe the men who took their skins and filled them with sawdust and set them on display? Maybe my own pride that I should be a man who’s seen these giant cats in the wild? I did get to play with some elephants for a while. The hotel’s had two sisters as pets since they were babies. I fed them sugar cane and rubbed their trunks. I think they liked it. I can tell because they didn’t stomp me to death. Beyond that, Ranthambore was actually pretty fun. If I never knew there were tigers around, I’d have nothing to complain about. The hotel is up there with the best I’ve stayed in. I took another yoga class and got a tasty lunch packed for my drive.

Before I hit the road for Jaipur I got a tour of a local village. It was nice to see the real India that spans the gap between Delhi and Bawana. My guide took me to the family home of a mother of a friend of his. She manages a few acres of guava, mustard, wheat, and other miscellaneous crops (tomato, onion, garlic, etc). With about thirty members of the extended family living in the village, they work the land themselves and sell it at the daily vegetable market. Aside from the shrewd shoppers who wait until the end of the day to pickup leftovers at closeout prices, they make a good living. They earn as much as 50rs per day just from the milk their cow produces. That’s only one dollar US, but must only be a fraction of what their crops produce. I overpaid 100rs for ten guavas and the matriarch didn’t seem blown away. The money goes towards school for the children, dung fuel for the stove, and the variety of conveniences around the home (a bed, some dishes, etc). The main farm house is about as big as a Bawana home, but that’s where the similarities end. The whole thing is plastered and washed clean white. There is no trash around. No flies even. The children seem happy, but less amazed by the visit of a stranger. They’re more interested in hearing my guide (a local boy made good) talk about his plans for the future than in ogling me and my pale strangeness. It’s not modern living, but if this is how people outside the cities live, I’m surprised more don’t stay rural.

The three hour drive to Jaipur showed endless kilometers of villages like this one. Acres of mustard gilded the landscape in a thick coat of electric yellow. It’s not unlike Nebraska corn, but turned up a notch in the hue and saturation. My driver tells me about his land (not too far from Bawana) where he grows crops for his own use. I ask about how much mustard he could possibly need and he tells me how it’s used to make cooking oil. Sounds spicy.

It’s nice having the driver. I can bounce questions off him and grill him for words in Hindi. I doubt I’ll get far, but it passes the time. We cover a few hundred kilometers and I see all sorts of stuff. Aside from the comparison to Nebraska, I also see badlands like in south dakota. Channels are cut through the land by the torrential monsoons leaving pillars of rock and clay to bake in the sun. As the channels flood and then dry, they sprout thick carpets of green green grass. The effect is stunning as these verdant rivers rush in serpentine lines off into the horizon.

I see two boys playing teeter-totter with a hand pumped well. They alternate jumping up and setting their weight to the pump, forcing it down as the water flows. It reminds me of the girls at Hotdog on a Stick, jumping up and down on the lemonade machine.

I see a deer, at least four hundred pounds, dead in the center of the road. Hit by a truck in the nighttime, it will stay there until nearby villagers take the initiative and drag it off to be buried. Seeing this giant animal, and then dog after dog by the side of the road, I ponder the rift in perceived value between this beast and that. How long until great hulking deer like this one are as scarce as tigers?

As we near Jaipur, the farms thin out and then disappear. They’re replaced by the ubiquitous strip malls that lined the road between Delhi and Bawana. Eighty percent of them seem to sell nothing but prepackaged snack food, hanging in long ribbons of mylar wrappers. The rest are barbers, cement sellers, motorcycle shops. This urban sprawl puts Los Angeles to shame. Goats and pigs share trash piles. It’s pandemonium.

Arriving in time for dinner, I find my hotel to be another five star monstrosity ill suited to solitary travel. I don’t mind being by myself, as long as I’m around other people who are by themselves. How stupid does that sound? Regardless, I feel out of place and kick myself for being passive with my travel agent regarding the places I’d stay. It’s pretty much all I can think about as I’m enjoying my gourmet meals or soaking in my sunken tub. I know. I’m ridiculous.

The only other thing I’ll mention about the hotel is that at dinner there’s a trio of Indian musicians playing folk music. A girl comes out to belly dance, but in a conservative outfit (sensitive to Islamic culture maybe?). The dancing looks a bit like she belongs in a Bollywood chorus, and would be boring if it weren’t for the giant lit burner on top of her head. She spins and dips and the flame spins and dips with her. Sputtering up and down, but never side to side. It’s hypnotic. I have this brief daydream that I will see her wandering the city, dressed in street clothes, but still with the burner on her head. Her dance ends, and she and my fantasy vanish. I finish my dinner and head off to bed.