 |
| The male ego and national pride at their finest |
 |
| Crossing the Brahmaputra River |
 |
| Small boats in the river. |
The descent into India.
We were greeted by a placard with our names on it, not at the usual place but virtually as we departed the plane. The young man from Leh, Ladakh had only recently moved to Delhi but he definitely knew how to move through the system. He tossed the placard behind a desk where two young women giggled at him. He helped us collect our luggage but as we approached customs he turned the pilled up luggage cart over to us to push through as he was not really suppose even be on that side of customs. We all wandered through unassailed by the customs police and as soon as we were through he took full charge of our luggage once again. With a big smile and confident manor we rushed down the hall to toward our hotel. Since it was in the Domestic half of the airport we had to exit the International and go through 4 sets of security checks to get into the hotel itself even though we never left the building.
We are on our way now, well into the heart of the beast. In Delhi we stayed at the Airport Hotel. It was quiet, clean and very well run. Great food for breakfast – those comfort foods that the uninitiated forgo for the local flavor and the seasoned traveler deeply enjoys for what may be the last time for many weeks. Those flavors and textures that are close enough to home to feel familiar and comforting may not be around until you actually get back home. Yes the American Breakfast please. Eggs, toast, butter and jam, orange juice and coffee. There are Continental and Oriental options on the menu but you know the comfort foods will soon be off the menu for a good long time. There is an exercise room full of equipment and a view of the runway with the growing bustle of a large international airport waking up to the hot sun.
The night before there was a choice of hand soaps one smelling like watermelon and the other lightly scented and sweet but unfamiliar. Fancy showers that you wonder where the water goes because there is no obvious drain in the floor but it all disappears magically. It was a quiet dark room at that perfect temperature where you never think about the temperature. Then as the morning comes as inexorably as the sunrise the day rushes on you, and you’re off to get through security and into the domestic terminal to catch your plane (a significant step down in quality, cleanliness and friendliness from the overly commercial but very clean and organized International side. International was clearly very different where every military man seems to have both a handgun at there side and a machine gun on a lanyard around there neck, now replaced by slightly older soldiers with what look like ancient rifles from another era, slight less sharply dressed with well worn clothing down to the shoes that were not quite as shinny.
The plane from Delhi to Guwahati was not as large, nor as clean either. But the people were a breath of fresh air. The China Eastern flight from Vancouver to Shanghai and then on to Delhi had been inhabited by the typical stewardesses from a new Chinese airline. They almost felt mean, never smiled, made you feel like you were in the way of them getting what they wanted and it was not taking care of you. When you looked at them you felt first the pain of unhappiness and then pity. The Indian staff on the second flight were lighthearted, eager to please and always had a smile on their face, when I showed up at the back of the plane to sneak a photo of the Himalaya out the window, the they immediately said sure try this other side too with big smiles and lots of questions always asking about my family and where I was from. On the flight from Shanghai I had literally had to sneak to get a photo out the back window and had been chassed away and chastised for not staying in my seat all the time the plane was in the air.
The hotel in Guwahati required about an hours drive through a town that was completely disorganized. Coming out of the airport two things happened at once. We were going head on at a high rate of speed toward a vehicle coming at us in our lane and there was a very large quiet slow moving cow in the middle of the road but more in the other drivers lane, and hence they were in our lane. It was disorienting, the switch to a little bit of old British charm with everyone driving on the left while at the same time having cows and calves everywhere on the road was a shock to the sensibilities directly out of the airport. The earlier shock had been when the driver took us to the car that was to take us across town to our hotel. As we approached it was just a little surreal, 5 of us, one well over 6 feet tall, 5 large pieces of luggage and 3 more smaller ones and every one with a small pack on their shoulder. The vehicle comfortably seated three in addition to the driver, sort of a micro mini. The driver confidently took on the task of loading the cab … two of the larger pieces went in the back and the other three were sill sitting on the ground behind the car. He just said ‘no problem’ and started to walk away. We suggested a larger vehicle; he said ‘no problem’ again and walked off. He returned shortly with another car, this one marginally larger. Two more pieces went in the boot and the others pilled into the back seat and we were off shoe horned into the two small cars…. “Welcome to Assam” the sign said as we paid our 60 rupees to the parking attendant.
The hotel in Guwahati was nice by local standards. You had to go through a metal detector to get inside, the reception area went a full 7 stories high inside with balconies off two sides of each floor going up. When we go to our room it was nice, on the highest floor and something of a suit with the bedroom and sitting area separated by a large opening that had a curtain that could be closed, a large table and very nice bath with a tub with 10 jets and a separate shower. The tub of course leaked and the shower sprayed over onto the floor. The room had a familiar but bothersome odor of naphthalene, mothballs, which were in every drawer. I dutifully collected them all and put them all in a plastic bag in the closet, the smell had been overwhelming. We each got a small glass of what looked like the green ‘super food’ drinks in America but this was just a unique local fruit juice I had never had. We all found it refreshing. At dinner we were entirely on the other side of the cuisine divide and we ate all the things that were familiar but Indian. Nan bread, rice with saffron, dishes with the chicken drenched to drowning in delicious sauces. And as we talked and ate…. the lights went out, not just at our table but in the room, the hotel and all the lights we had seen outside. There was an instant of silence and it felt like everything shopped then just as quickly the waiters began to move and the conversations at the tables restarted, all in the dark, a few minutes later the generator started and some of the lights in the restaurant came back on though most of the buildings outside the windows were dark for another 45 minutes while we ate. Then we went to our room to get to bed on the local time schedule.
One of the people in our party had a room that was freezing cold, a problem easily fixed by opening the door to the hall, as it was 44 degrees (111 F). It was not so easy in our room where we had turned on the AC to cool off the room while we were at dinner. However the AC did not work. It was late; we were tired and after a quick shower were off to bed in the sweltering heat. You did not really need the quilt that night. I stayed up trying feverishly to get the many tasks done online over the internet that had crawled to a snails pace as everyone in the city returned to cyber-life in the late evening. I eventually got most of the work done by about 4 am (one of the hazards of having several jobs back home was the volume of work when you are gone that still has to be done). About 2 am the faint hearted cyber-life folks seemed to drift off to sleep and the speeds on the computer crept up to where I did not have to keep switching between tasks to stay awake as I waited for one to render or watch the spinning icons measure the time until an e-channel in cyber space opened up.
The next morning we were up early. After an hour then two hours delay we were off in two vehicles. With our friends from Jhamste, Dorjee and Ngwang and a driver in each vehicle with us, our party now grew to 9 over night. No airports now just the roadway to travel on. In India people on the road communicate with their horns and one hand is always on the horn and the other on the wheel. There is a constant stream of traffic coming at you from the other direction in your lane of traffic as well as the opposite lane. It is hard to describe and hard to imagine but it is just the way it is all over India. It seems disorganized but there are rules. We stopped to pick up dental supplies for the clinic and it became very clear we were not supposed to be there when the bus driver jumped out and came up to tell our driver in no uncertain terms we had to move, from the passenger side of course because the traffic on the drivers side was dangerous. He did not and soon there was a policeman dressed all in white at his window on the traffic side with everyone stopping and the honking and tension building even more. But to my surprise the driver argued with him (in Hindi of course) emphatically saying we had to stay there for the supplies and the policeman getting more agitated and angry appearing. For some reason the scene at the India Pakistan boarder jumped into my mind where the two military, highly uniformed sides close the gate between them at the border crossing with such fierce testosterone driven pomp and bravado that it has become high theater.
The policeman looked at our driver disapprovingly and condescendingly as he finally inched forward and down the street only to stop only a little more out of the way, with cars still honking but able to get around if they went from two to one lane of traffic. Finally we went a few blocks down the street and parked (illegally still) with many other cars on the side of the street and traffic once again roared by our car.
When the other driver and our dentist returned we were off, first through the narrow streets then on the crowded boulevards and finally to the highway with mostly free flowing traffic. Finally we were on a 4 lane separated roadway with only occasional bicycles and cows in our way and an occasional pothole to dodge. After about 4 hours of cramped sitting the roads got smaller, the potholes and cows more frequent and we arrived at the Brahmaputra River, one of the lifelines of India. The road was built atop a dyke that gradually become higher as we approach the river. We went on perhaps 10 miles over a large flat part of the country where the river is the ruler and the flood plane is open to its ways. The bridge over the river is long and straight and is at least a mile long. The water only looks a few feet deep and one wonders how the canoes being pushed with long poles manage to say afloat. Quickly we are across the river and very near our home for the night Tezpur. It is a regional center and the place that the students from Jhamtse are sent when ill for medical care. From here it is just a quick 2 or three day drive (18 hours) more to the school.
The hotel in Tezpur is another step down the road into India. There is a guard at the entry way where we drive in, he get up off his stool and moves it so that we can get inside the narrow garage-gateway into the reception area. Now with friends from the school we can just let them navigate the culture to get into a room and rest. We had only fillout about ¼ of the page of registration details when the receptionist simply took the paper an asked for our passports. We protested that we were not yet done and she looks quizzically back at us and simply says ‘no need’ and walks away to copy the face page of our passports and we wander upstairs to the restaurant. There the large screen TV goes back and forth between cricket and Indian soap opera, too loud to have a conversation over and with the all male staff of 8 paying far more attention to the TV than to the few customers. Chai comes (milk tea that India is famous for and to which you will become addicted if you come often to India). Eventually the other car arrives and we are all reunited, finish tea together and head to our rooms.
The walls are shabby. The refrigerator does not work. The Internet is on and up but the screen just sits there when the passwords are entered. It is very clear that the passwords we are given are not the right ones. The woman at the front desk not at all bothered that they don’t work and very likely not having any idea either how any of this works and wondering why we would care at all if it worked. Which it never does, despite the repeated attempts to make it work by a person who has a need to get it to work. There are two single beds and just after getting into the rooms the electricity goes off and we are in the dark, after about an hour the generator comes on and now everything but the AC is working. We call but the person answers in Hindi and it is clear they know why we are calling and we understand without speaking a word that it is not going to be fixed anytime soon. It of course turned out that the generator can run the lights but does not have enough power to run the AC in all the rooms. But several hours later it comes alive just in time to have a cool nights sleep. Ming goes into the bathroom and runs a bucket water and takes a bucket bath shower in tepid water like that is how he showers every night, with the water spraying all over the bathroom floor as it has always done in India and which you get use to but are never really comfortable with. The showers and places to wash are not separate from the rest of the bath room so the floor is wet until the heat dries it and yes if you wear socks they will be very wet so barefoot is the rule for sure.
At 4 am there is the rattle of machinery several stories below and the world comes to life slowly and with a growing intensity of noise, motion and light. It is cool and the AC has kept its word to keep us at 23 degrees all night long. Gradually brightening light filters through the window shades as I sit here and type the only real light emanating from my screen. Yes we have arrived in India. We are now waiting to gather everyone that will travel with us for the trip into the Himalaya.
