Northern India

This is what I wrote while travelling through Northern India, the most beautifully confusing place I have ever been.

It’s all about perspective.Interpretation. Relative Reality. There is no “truth” in India, only perception. What you know to be true in one instant proves itself to be very inaccurate the next.

Example: The Agra-Jaipur train farts you out to 20+ awaiting tuk-tuk drivers, aggressively competing for the fare. Laden with heavy bags, lady cramps, and little sleep, you choose a face from the crowd that seems relatively welcoming. Assured with the “Of course I know where Im going” head waggle, you push off into 12-way traffic. After dodging dogs, beggars, oncoming taxis, and cattle for 15 minutes, your driver turns to you and asks “Where you go?”

Example: A busy morning of shopping ahead, you board a new tuk-tuk and ask to go to a well- known bazaar. You must trust this stranger, and into the din you drive. You arrive at the proposed destination, which now has signs with very different names above the entrance. “What happened?”,  you ask.”Bazaar closed. You go here” , as he ushers you into his brother’s/friend’s/loan shark’s shop.  Weaving away from the driver’s shouts, you duck into an alley for escape, and hail the next tuk-tuk to the intended bazaar (which is not nor has ever been closed). 

Example: Jim Corbett National Park. While staying at beautiful “Jim’s retreat”, we opted to go on a nature walk, which no one else had seemingly ever done before. The staff debated for a while, drew straws, and our guide emerged. He had 3 teeth and as many English words in his repertoire. Wordlessly we walked into the wild, expecting to see some birds and identify some plants. Twenty minutes later, we were still walking through a wilder and wilder forest, our guide not looking back once. With darkness impending, our guide finally turned to us and pointed to a steaming pile under his feet, grins his three teeth, and says the one word he’s sure of: “Elephant”. 

When he paused to sniff or listen for unseen animals, we sniffed/listened right along with him. Then, as “shush!!”, as he shoved us behind a bush and pointed. A male elephant was sauntering through the dried-up riverbed 200m away. In monsoon season, the riverbed would look very different, but the elephant’s patterns remain consistent throughout the year.

 Suddenly, the man motioned for us to run- though, we were not sure we were running to or from  something. He stopped, stooped. The   elephant surely trundled closer to us, but his brother  was the one we were wary of. We tracked the two for a while more, until both made their way easily back into the bush.

 We spent the next 30 minutes stalking a tiger that was most likely stalking us in return. Our guide kept pointing to the deer that had come to the riverbed for a dusk drink, and the alarm calls of the deer indicated that our guide was correct. Something was lurking. We would never discover who was more delicious- out of shape tourists or delicious deer, as dark fell before dinner did. The walk home revealed more steaming piles- tiger this time- which our friend reached into to show us a half-digested deer hoof. I pocketed this treasure, as an idol to remind me to be thankful that my future tourists would never find one of my own bones in that pile.