Go, Then Stop

Sir,

 

Forgot to mention a thing that happened yesterday ... On the way into the park we were flagged down by a park official of some type and he just hops a ride in my jeep to the park.  Doesn't even acknowledge me or say "thanks" or anything.  And it's not even that far.  I mean, it's literally like half a city block

 

On the way back, the same guy just climbs in. 

 

And this, is a mistake.  He starts chatting with the driver and I just cut in.

 

"So what makes you think you can just ride in my jeep?  Doesn't that seem presumptuous to you?  You think, 'oh, stupid tourist, I'll just do whatever?'

 

"Well, I'll tell you, it's rude.  Rude."  They're quiet now.  He doesn't understand what I'm saying, but he'll understand this next part, for sure.  I rub my thumb and fingers together.  "You owe me 100 rupees."

 

Driver shifts gears.  No talking.  Good.

 

I cackle a little bit and there's nervous laughs and glances at the front.

 

We go to drop the official and he speaks to me.  I hiss, "You can just owe me."

 

Swine.

 

 

***

 

 

I'm taking mefloquine for malaria and one of the side effects can be extremely vivid dreams.  I'm also taking large doses of vitamin C, and I've been off it for a while -- whenever I do that, I get saturated colors.

 

When I was in high school, I had an assignment to keep track of my dreams and as we went around class and people read what they were dreaming, I realized just how far gone my mind was.  Everyone else was dreaming of their boyfriends and families, where I was having stuff that was better suited to Dali paintings.  When it came to be my turn to read, I lied and just made up something mundane.

 

Now if you mix a little psychotropics into things, it gets truly bizarre.  I won't go into the details here because, quite frankly, it's none of your business and the dreams I've been having are disturbing at a level down to the very core of my being, but here are some small images: my old del Sol in Denver has been converted to three wheels and parked in a place I never left it -- oh yeah, and the paint is animated; Darlene is talking to me but her tongue isn't, shall we say, "normal;" grandparents I've never met have house cats, the way they feed is by eating other cats in their entirety.  And this is just the tip of the ice berg.

 

Since I was about 8 I've had a theme that runs through my dreams -- I have two or three like this a week -- and that is that something amazing happens, I'm astounded and everyone else either ignores it or doesn't care.  Louella once said, "That's funny, it's just like your waking life."  And it sort of is.

 

The vague theme of these dreams I've been having is roughly the same.  But they are so real and so hard hitting that when I wake up I'm having trouble making out the differences between what really is happening and what isn't.  When I dream, I come with a pre-loaded RAM of assumptions, beliefs and behaviors that are somehow hardcoded before the dream "starts," and it's taking me quite a while, in some cases hours, to figure out what's real and what's not.

 

This, of course, is compounded by things like screaming calls to prayer, the smell of cow dung smoke in the air, blaring H. themes, quickly spoken foreign languages and an untold number of visions of spectacular things.  Sleep is both amazing and discomforting.  When I lie down it's both with feeling of anticipation and great uncertainty. 

 

But I would not describe what happens to me at night as "rest."

 

 

***

 

 

I have toast (only) for breakfast and read until my car shows up.  The driver claims he speaks English, but in fact speaks almost none.  He's much more aggressive on the roads than the other guy and he too is shocked that I want to ride in the front seat -- in fact he goes in and gets the hotel manager to come out and talk with me. 

 

"Sir, are you comfortable?"

 

"Very." 

 

I guess there's no explaining whitey.

 

I just ignore the fact that the seat belts have been removed and turn my confidence over to whatever higher power is appropriate.

 

We drive through the countryside and at one point he takes a turn.  My orientation is surprisingly good when I'm "afield" and I know, right away, that I have never been on this road before in my life.  Over several gestures and minutes I inform the driver of this little fact and he gets it back through to me that this road has less traffic and is better.

 

Okay, whatever.  We'll just let it roll and see what happens.  Maybe I'll end up in J., maybe not, but it is, as my dear dear friend Mary, who works for Chrysler once said, "a nice ride."

 

And I'll be damned if he's not right.  This road is absolutely new and there is no one on it.  Almost like a test track.  We just fly.

 

After stopping to top the radiator, we hit the edge of J. and I need a bank -- I'm almost out of rupees.  Just in front of me I can make out the National Bank of India.  It's super-crowded here, but I tell the driver to stop in H.  He's surprised both that I'm speaking H., and that I'm asking him to stop. 

 

I point at a gap on the shoulder.  "Go there."

 

I walk the two blocks back to the bank, but it wasn't exactly what I needed -- it's a branch, not a main bank.  But they have an ATM.  I check my cargo pockets, I don't have my credit cards -- they must be back in my super-secret pocket of my pack.  I go back and get my pack.  They're not there.  I rifle through everything in my pack.

 

The driver asks in English, "Is there a problem?"  "Problem" is a word that everyone who deals with tourists knows.

 

"No."  Hmm.  Did I lose my credit cards?  If I had my money belt, this wouldn't be happening, because they'd be right there.  Hmm.  But stuff like this doesn't get stolen.  It just doesn't.  Not where I've been, not with the people I've been in contact with.  Hell, I haven't even had a maid in a room since G.

 

Traffic swirls by around us.  A government official comes up to tell us something along the lines of "you can't park here," so I do the simple and obvious thing -- strike up an immediate conversation and starting talking real fast asking questions.  He immediately retreats.  That trick always works.

 

I pull out my passport ziplock and open my passport, and there, in the pages, are my cards.  Great.

 

I go back and there are two people struggling to use the ATM.  The whole concept of using a card and a PIN and getting cash is not only new, but a little heavy.  I wait in line and immediately the vibe changes -- they get nervous that whitey is even here.

 

There is no mark anywhere on the machine that indicates my card is okay to use (not even the typically ubiquitous VISA symbol), BUT the machine doesn't hold my card either, so I'm going to try it.

 

The first guy can't get his card to be recognized.  He struggles for about 15 minutes and gets no where.  The second guy gets it to work and withdraws a little money. 

 

The first guy tries again.  There's a fair amount of shouting and scuffling and the line now has four people behind me.  It's driving them insane because they really want to push in and scuffle too, but whitey is being a problem -- just the fact that he's standing here is a mild discomfort.

 

I feel like I've waited long enough.  I say, "Let me try."  Everyone's surprised that I'm even able to speak, so they stand aside and I step up to the machine.  It doesn't read my card on first pass, so I try it a lot faster. 

 

And now all the people in line behind me are in the ATM.  There's seven of us if you count me (but if you count me, you should probably count me double or triple), there's no air conditioning and it's a room slightly larger than a phone booth.  I'd conservatively say it's about 115 degrees with 85 percent humidity, and I'm certain those figures are low.

 

I'm being asked for my PIN.

 

So let's see.  I'm in a foreign country with six people at a bank that I know all want money.  I'm being asked for a PIN and everyone is staring right at the screen.

 

I'm also at least a head taller than everyone in this room and may well out-weigh the heaviest one two-to-one.  There's a guy standing just behind me to the left -- he's the loudest one and clearly the ring leader of this group such as it is.  I can reach him with my left elbow easy.  I could put him down in a blink.  A little bit of quick bloodshed is shocking enough that people will back off.  Then I'm outta there. 

 

I can work this a couple of different ways, if I need to.

 

I go ahead and enter my PIN, but the entry process is super slow.  There's probably a 15 second delay between every digit I enter.  Everyone's looking at the screen.

 

How much would I like to withdraw?

 

I hadn't even considered getting this far.  Let's see, how much do I need $200 worth -- RS8000 -- that should do me.  A guy next to me says, "It wants to know how much you want to withdraw."

 

"Oh," I say and type in 8000.

 

And with absolutely zero delay.  Zero as in none, it spits out RS7500 in brand new 500's and RS500 in 100's.  Amazing.

 

I'm not the only one.  There's a hushed murmur over the amount of cash I now hold in my hand.  I turn to the guy that was having problems, motion and say, "Try faster.  That works sometimes."

 

Now I've got to get the hell out.  I quickly leave the booth and as I leave the gate, the sun is to my back, I can tell I've picked up someone following me.  I can navigate through a crowd with a surprising amount of dexterity when I have to and between the length of my stride and several fast dodges, quickly lose whoever or whatever it was.

 

I get back to the car, we make a quick run to the train station, I pay and go inside.  The bad news is my super-helper isn't at the tourism office today.  He's got some underlings that would rather I wasn't there -- I get a hotel recommendation from them, leave a note for my pal, and then head into the station.

 

The ticket lines are the bedlam you'd expect.  The way to deal with this in this country is to ignore it -- hire a travel agent and have them do it for you.  I learned that the hard way, years ago.

 

I find my hotel.  It's nice by In. standards -- even has a small refrigerator.  I tell the receptionist that I need to buy a train ticket, "I'll send a boy up."

 

I go back to my room and take a two hour nap, never awakened by the "boy."  So, I go back downstairs and say I still need to talk to the person.

 

A guy comes up who speaks no English.  No problem.  I write everything down in big block letters.

 

TRAIN

J. => V 

BED

CLASS 1, 2 OR 3

 

He leaves and so do I.  I haven't had an Internet cafe since G and I need to write to you. 

 

I wander around and find a place.  It's a tiny store above retail shops "P-10 Computing."  The stairs leading up are narrow enough that they only hold about half the length of my foot.

 

"Internet?"  I ask.

 

"Yes, sir.  Unfortunately it's down right now."

 

Whoa.  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  This guy is completely and totally fluent in English.  100% native. 

 

I haven't been able to say a full sentence to anyone in about a week.  It's so nice just to be able to talk.  So I sit down and have a conversation with him.  Turns out he's a former call-center guy.  We talk about families and politics and religion and how he likes living back in In. compared to Spain.

 

Travelling by myself, and in the particular way I'm doing it, is so isolating.  And, as you know, I'm a big communicating kind of guy anyway.  It's just great.

 

When the conversation closes, I get directions to another cafe and trundle off.

 

I miss the one he directed me to, but find another.  This one too is on the second floor and the spiral staircase is so narrow that I have to tiptoe my way up.

 

I bang out email to you and my pals and then head back. 

 

The walk back to the hotel is in the blackness of a town with no street lights (fairly common for the smaller In. towns) and it's only once I walk in that I realize I feel completely safe on the streets here.  Never even think twice about it.

 

I ask the front desk if there's been news on my tickets.

 

"Yes."

 

"Do you even know what I'm talking about?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Do I have train tickets or not?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Okay, great.  I'm sure this will all work itself out.  You gentlemen have a good evening."

 

I go up to my room and as I'm getting ready for bed the phone rings.  This'll be interesting.  It always is in this country.  I've had one call on this trip so far -- a crank call from teenage girls at the White Tiger Lodge.  This could be anything, but considering it's M.P., it's probably not the cops.

 

"Hello, sir?  You wanted train tickets?"

 

"Yes."

 

"I will send a man up."

 

Great.  Maybe.

 

There's a knock on the door and I let in a man who is very distressed to discover I only speak English.

 

"No problem," I say and I write out in big block letters the ticket I need. 

 

He says, "You stay.  I get English.  Come."

 

I've had a million conversations like this in my life.  It means I should stay put, he's got a pal who speaks English and then he'll come back.

 

I go brush my teeth in a bathroom (that has the largest cockroach I've ever seen -- quite a bit larger than my thumb) then there's another knock at the door.  It's my new-found pal again with a nicer dressed guy.

 

"Yes, sir.  I've come to find what you need."

 

His English is pretty good.  Maybe 70% American fluent.  Certainly good enough for my purposes.  I explain what I need and he's starting to fixate on which class I want.

 

Along with heavy sign language I say, "I don't care.  First class is best.  Then second.  Then third.  Two tier is better than three tier.  But I need to have a bed.  Bed."  I point at my bed.  "Bed is important.  But I need a ticket.  I need to be on that train."

 

He asks for RS2500 to cover and sends the runner off, then leaves himself. 

 

About 20 minutes later they come back.  "The ticket office is now closed.  They open at 09:00.  You probably will not get first class, but second should be possible."  They hand me RS500 back and say that they'll give me change and a ticket tomorrow.

 

I don't know these guys from Adam, but I know in my gut that this is going to work.

 

I go to bed and realize that my sore throat is finally starting to get better,

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