knivesout

Happy new year, people! I had a most excellent time this new year's and seeing as how some of actually like reading, here's a slightly long accont of my experiences, as it was one of the best new years I've had in - well, prety much forever.

Four for the road
Here’s how it all began: with a car, and a plan that wasn’t a plan.

Sometime last year, my former colleague and esteemed buddy, Ashok (who kinda looks like Lenin) bought himself a car and began using it for little weekend getaways to all sorts of places. We decided we’d have to do a trip together. Some day.

Some day turned out to be Friday, the 30th of December, 2006. We’d been discussing heading down to Wayanad, a hilly, forested area in Kerala, for a while, in a noncommittal fashion. On Thursday, we met up in a pub (a pub that I detest and loathe and will not visit for another 3 years at least because they have rude waiters, pretentious customers and a tone-deaf DJ who only plays wimp rock and French pop music from Africa) to finalise these plans. Another friend, Rajan, decided to join us too (Rajan doesn’t look anything like Lenin, but he does seem a little Vietnamese at times). My friend Karthik came and sat our table after his girlfriend left, and we asked him to come along, too. And then we proceeded to drink our heads off.

The next morning, despite raging hangovers and some amount of existential angst, we all rendezvoused at the somber and roofless (they have trees instead) Airlines Hotel. We ate breakfast. We drank coffee. Our nervous systems stumbled back to life. We got in the car and headed out to the highway.

At around noon, we pulled over at roadside hotel whose name I forget, but they should call is the Disclaimer Hotel. We asked for cool drinks. They explained that they only had cheap knockoff brands of dubious purity, and the fridge broke down anyway so the drinks were probably toasty warm by now. We asked for food. They explained that it would take very long, and wouldn’t be hot, and probably not be very good because the waiter shot the cook three days back and they’d just press ganged a passing derelict into service in his place. Also, the derelict had scabies.

Finally, the food arrived. Powdery rotis and a dal fry that looked as if eldritch horrors lurked in its nameless depths. This wasn’t just food that we didn’t want to eat, people, it was food that didn’t want to be eaten! It resisted us every step of the way, fighting back bite for bite and chew for chew. Somehow, we prevailed.

We consoled ourselves with chilled beers in a nearby bar, and then hit the road again. We passed an increasing number of trees and began to see hills looming up in the distance. Karthik suddenly remembered a nice resort he’d once visited in Masanigudi. So we found our way to Jungle Retreat, where we had lunch and then stationed ourselves on a lawn with a magnificent view of the hills. By the evening, we’d decided we wanted to stay here. This involved the intervention of pure luck, because resorts are usually heavily booked this time of the year. After some hemming and hawing, the lad at the reception revealed that he did, indeed, have a deluxe cottage that we could rent for the night. I concluded that we’d died the previous night and this was the afterlife.

The rest of the evening is hazy. The night more so. I overindulged in wine and hash and probably misbehaved in some manner.

The next morning I woke up at dawn, and had time to appreciate just how deluxe our cottage was. It had a bar, a bar counter, a sprawling bed that could house an entire Balkan republic, a pretty drawing of a baby elephant and his mother framed on the wall, wooden carvings of elephants beside the bed, a comfortable couch that could house the citizens of rival Balkan republic and large picture windows that opened to let me admire the sunrise and the hills. I bathed and then spent a few hours ambling around the resort and looking at all the green stuff. I also encountered a fluffy little Pekinese that eventually stopped running away at the very sight of me, but was far too posh to allow me to pat it. I suspect it may not have been a part of the native wildlife.

Karthik joined me in a while, and we sat around at a little table on the lawn, soaking up the sun and reading comics. A middle-aged German woman at a nearby table complained about male sex workers from Maharashtra. ‘They are just not worth it.’ She concluded.

Next, we had to vacate our cottage because of a prior reservation. We were offered another cottage at a rather ludicrous New Year’s Fleece-U Special Rate and, sadly, had to refuse. I really liked the place. When I am rich and famous and pretty and in a relationship again, I will come back here with my woman and sit with her watching the sunset, plying her with wine until she passes out and then carry her back to our cottage to exploit her.

We then drove though the Bundipore Game Reserve, en route to Wayanad. We saw some elephants along the way. There was this pair of elephants standing quite close to the road who stared at us with sullen, baleful eyes as we pulled over to take pictures (except for me, I didn’t have a camera). They eyed our car in a disreputable fashion, possibly assuming it was a slick, citified lady elephant of rather diminutive stature, so we drove on.

And on and on.

Through increasingly steep terrain, past a succession of small Keralite towns, tea plantations (tea plants look so cool!), and some very interesting trees with spikey aerial roots. Trees are not simply sticks of brown with a green haze of leaves at one end. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and I’m glad I got to see some of the stranger types.

At Lakkidi, in Wayanad, we found that all the lodges in the area were booked. Apparently we weren’t the only people who’d decided to head to the hills for the new year. Undaunted, we drove all the way up to a resort called Rain Tree Country, where the manager was initially wary about taking in 4 unannounced bachelors, but relented and then suddenly remembered we’d been in the same college at around the same time. He gave us his own room, which I thought was pretty thoughtful of him. We really must have died back in Bangalore, because this seemed more and more like the afterlife.

The night’s entertainment consisted of Keralite tribal drummers.
They were far better than the crowd really deserved. Unfortunately, the crowd had to pleased, so after an exciting 30 minutes of polyrhythmic acrobatics, they subsided into a standard thapaang beat that the louts could dance to. Pfui.

A stream runs through the resort. At one point it’s been widened to form a mid-sized pond around which people can sit and watch ducks swim. We were placed on a slope just above this pond, so that we could watch the drummers without having to mingle with the rest of the crowd. There was also a swing next to us, and we took turns swinging. We drank 9 bottles of stream-chilled beer, had a hash joint and some whiskey and quietly ambled back to our room and passed out at around 2 in the morning.

I think we’ve set impossibly high standards of conduct for bachelors at the Rain Country Resort.

The next morning, I woke up first again and stepped outside to see this old watchman eyeing our car morosely. Seeing me, he brightened up, and came over and explained to me with a mixture of sign language and blatant telepathy that he would like to wash the car. I signaled that he could. He proceeded to round up towels, buckets, soap and water, and merrily set about washing the car. It seemed to lend some new meaning to his very existence.

In the meantime, my friends had woken up, so we went down to the mess for breakfast. At this point, Ashok and Rajan returned to the room to sleep. Feeling rather more restless, Karthik and me decided to try out the nature trail at the resort.

I should explain here that I used to summer at Kodaikanal, in the Nilgiri Hills, as a boy and spent many hours clambering about the hills. It seems like I developed some sort of muscle memory in the process, because after some initial straining and wheezing, I suddenly got back my mountain legs and proceeded to prance up and down slopes with a touching alacrity. I was like unto a mountain goat with the face of a murderer and the soul of a poet-king. Also I had a beard.

The walk was fun. I’d forgotten how much I love aimlessly striding through forested hills, feeling that each new vista that opened up before me was the best yet, deciding that that next peak would be the last, and then, having crested it, knowing that I had to check out that other spot just over there and so on and so forth. We climbed up a small green hill with a single tree on it. I decided to climb the tree. Karthik told me watch out for tree snakes. Undaunted, I climbed up anyway, and settled down in a crook between branches, only to be attacked by some of the local creatures. Perhaps my friend should better have cautioned me against tree ants.

We returned to our room in a while and showered. The others were still asleep, so we decided to get out of the Resort grounds and wander around the general countryside. This was another challenging but ultimately rewarding walk. There’s nothing like hunkering down on a fallen branch on the edge of a mountain trail, looking out over valleys and hills and imagining, just for a moment, that you somehow have stepped into a place where cities and the people that ooze around them no longer exist. Instead, we were soon disturbed by a young laborer carrying sacks of concrete to a construction site further up the hill. He asked us if we were allowed to be here. ‘Fuck you, we are French,’ I informed him. He shrugged, turned into a dragonfly and flew away. It was nearly 11.45 at this time.

OK, so then it’s back to the room, wake up the sleepers, have lunch, check out and hit the road to drive back to Bangalore. Bah.

Several amusing and edifying things took place on the way back, including a pretty harsh attack of depression some 20 KM away from Bangalore, but the best part of my narrative is over. Perhaps I’ll tell you a bit about the rest another time.

Things I’ve learned on this journey:

I am comfortable with all manner of strangers, even if they are not comfortable with themselves.

I like a dry red wine. I do not recall its name, though.

Pekinese dogs are native to the Nilgiri hills, despite their name.

Middle-aged German women demand the sort of deep sexual pleasuring that Maharasthrian men can never provide.

It is useful to go to college, whether or not you attend classes or actually learn anything. Simply make sure that as many people as possible see you and will remember you when they are in a position to save your life some day.

Also, in the words of Conan the Barbarian: ‘These people have saved our lives. We must act as good guests towards them.’

Muscle memory never fades away. Some day I may also be able to practice free-form amniotic swimming again.

My friends and I never got lost in the highways and backroads. We did get lost the moment we reached the city of Mysore. We are not fit to live in cities, plus it’s easier to find your way in the wilderness.

Most people are not sensitive enough to realize that flinging plastic things into the wilderness is not a sexy thing to do. Nevertheless they will take photos of this wilderness and complain that there are plastic bags in them. The only way to deal with this is to pick up all their bags and bottles yourselves, whenever you can, and also to not carry a camera, so that you can instead embroider things in your memory and remember everything as even prettier than it really was.

Thank you for your perseverance and forebearance in reading all this drivel. I’ll see if I can get some pics to go with it later.

Leto

well, sounds like a very good way to spend the turn of the year.

And yes I confirm, muscle memory never fade away...

Please add pics as soon as possible.

Princess Ivy

and a glass of wine would not go amis right now!¬

Alexa

Why French and not, let's say Americans ? :biggrin:

__________________
"Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true" (R.W. Emerson)

knivesout

va te faire foutre nous sommes français!

Well, simply because I don't actually associate the French with rudeness, and I liked the irony of it. Also, that part of my account may not have been entirely factual. :biggrin:

Leto

:biggrin:

Bet you haven't met much of us then.

Alexa

Oh là là là. And I bet you don't know I'm a francophone. :biggrin:

__________________
"Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true" (R.W. Emerson)

knivesout

I've heard that your waiters are obnoxious, though. :biggrin:

Oops, Alexa - don't tell anyone what I said! :redface:

littlemissattitude

Doesn't matter, JP. :wink:

I was just complaining to someone by e-mail a few minutes ago that I really need a vacation but that I'm not likely to get one anytime soon. But, thanks to your narrative, I've had a bit of one now. :smilie:

Leto

Now, that's a urban legend, they're not worse nor better than most place in the world. Which is true in the "Pardon my French" is that although we can be polite when we need it and want it (the key word her is WANT), when tensed we have much more profanity at disposition than the regular F and S words in English. As most of us are not afraid to use it in a creative way, hence bad rep. Plus most French tourists (or most tourist) are pure walking shame for the human race. Maybe that's why I pretend to be Canadian when abroad.