by Maggie Downs
I stay for a few nights with a lonely fifty-one-year-old woman in Chennai who lives in an empty house—her children are grown and her husband is often absent, so she opens her home to backpackers and travels vicariously through their stories. She teaches me to cook creamy dal makhani out of black lentils, takes me shopping in her favorite markets, and shows me all the tourist sites. She also drives me to the airport when it’s time to go. When I say goodbye, she gets out of her car in the parking lot and gathers me into her arms. She instructs me to be safe and to be good. I cry into her shoulder as she cradles me like a mother.
For one of my final days in India, I head to Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the country. This is the confluence of three seas—the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean—and the beaches are multicolored from the different currents that wash crimson, black, and ochre sand ashore from different locations. It’s also the holy place where Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were kept in an urn before they were released into the sea.
According to legend, this is where the young goddess Devi Kanyakumari stood, balanced on one foot, praying to be coupled with Lord Shiva. When the marriage was eventually thwarted, the furious and scorned woman cursed the food items that had been prepared for the wedding buffet. In her rage, she tossed the food everywhere, and the rice and grains became the rainbow-hued shore.
I dip my bare feet into the azure waves, water heaving around my ankles, pushing and tugging at my feet, and I feel a confluence of natural forces within me too. Like this intersection of seas, I know I am the result of not one path, but many.
I recall my grandmother, who became a traveler late in her life. She often accompanied a neighbor couple on tours and cruises, then packaged her memories into Kodak slides. When I visited her for my thirteenth birthday, she devoted one entire evening to projecting wonders of the world on her living room wall: the Sphinx, the Taj Mahal, the Acropolis. I slurped grandma’s homemade oxtail soup and saw her posed by the Colosseum, both inside and out. The photos were terrible. She either took up the bulk of the frame or was a speck in the distance, and nearly everything seemed to lean—except for the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was strangely upright.
I don’t know what motivated my grandmother to travel, and I won’t ever know, but thinking about it now makes me feel close with her in a way I never have before. I wonder in how many places our footprints have overlapped, how the water that licks my feet has touched the shores of places she has been. It’s true for my mom too. There’s a chance that this water once bathed her, provided a place to swim, rained on her forehead.
Kanyakumari is a spot where the sun both rises and sets in the water, and while I’m standing there, the ending and beginning that exists in all things flashes inside me. I don’t know if I believe in rebirth, but I do believe in hope, and that’s almost the same thing. That’s the gift I receive here.
My mom no longer lives in this world, but it’s only through her passing that I discovered it. This water, this rainbow-littered ground, this sinking sun; it all came to me because of her.
Pave the Way
THE AIR IS MOIST, AND I’M KNEELING ON A HOT SWATH OF road, my baggy cotton fisherman pants sticking to melted bits of pavement, and my T-shirt stuck to the sweatiest parts of my back.
I’m in a rural part of northern Thailand, about an hour-and-a-half drive north of Chiang Mai. There’s no semblance of a town in this remote area, just a few scattered roadside cafés and small convenience stores. Nailed to the occasional tree are hand-painted signs advertising treetop zip lines, trekking, or rafting on the nearby Mae Taeng River.
I’m not here for the adrenaline, though. I’m building a road with about ten other people. Together we mix buckets of concrete and smooth over the street’s cracks and potholes. In some places, the road is so profoundly crumbled, our patches form the entirety of the street.
It’s difficult work, but at least our surroundings are beautiful. There is jungle on each side of the road, a tangle of green, leafy trees, squatty palms, and long, grassy weeds.
This is not what I expected to do when I came here. I signed on to volunteer at an elephant sanctuary because of my mom’s love for animals, because she was awed by elephants. She would think the opportunity to care for and be close to gentle giants is a gift. And it is.
Most days I unload truckloads of produce, shovel elephant poop from the shelters, prepare watermelons, bananas, and squash for meals, and help clean the property. The best part of the day is when we lead the elephants to the river for bathing, then goof around and toss buckets of water on each other.
Elephant Nature Park was founded by a woman named Lek; she created the park as a sanctuary and rehabilitation center for elephants that have been injured, abused, or tortured by humans. After elephants were banned from the Thai logging industry in the 1980s, those animals were then forced to work in shows or give rides to people or were used for street begging. So elephants became an essential part of the tourism industry, but they weren’t any better off than when they were used for logging. Some are trained with whips, chains, or arrows. Some are given medication to keep them awake through the night for street begging.
Though it’s not the most glamorous task, building a road for the sanctuary is another way to help the elephants.
When Lek created the sanctuary and became vocal about the trauma inflicted upon elephants, some government officials were concerned about the repercussions this could have on tourism, and maintenance on the road leading to the sanctuary stopped. That’s why I’m filling holes on a sweltering April day. I’m literally paving the way for more volunteers and animal lovers to help elephants.
AFTER THE PATCHWORK ROAD CONSTRUCTION IS COMPLETED, my volunteer group is given the afternoon off. We take rubber tubes to the brown expanse of river, where mud clings to the water. We drift through the landscape, through green farmland and rice paddies that run up to the water’s edge, through wild jungle, where unruly ferns and fringy palms provide a canopy.
At the start of our trip, we dodge floating lumps of fibrous elephant poop, each about the size and shape of a basketball. (I use a flip-flop to paddle one over in a friend’s direction.) But as we continue, the river becomes swift and quick-moving. It runs clear and wide. When we see a village, we bring ourselves to shore. Some people have money tucked into waterproof plastic pouches, and they buy a round of Chang beers in sweaty glass bottles for everyone.
That night is one of my last in the Elephant Nature Park, although I would be content staying much longer. I’ve done what I’ve come here to do, which is slow down, spend time in nature, tend to something bigger than myself. I feel like I’ve made a contribution.
My mom would be proud of this, I think.
There are two elephants I wish I could tell her about, Mae Perm and Jokia, who have been best friends for years.
Mae Perm worked in logging until the ban in 1989, then was kept as a pet with a poor diet and numerous health problems. When her owners decided to sell her in 1992, she became one of Lek’s first rescues. Jokia, who was also abused as a logging elephant, arrived at the sanctuary in 1999. While she was pregnant and working in the logging industry, she gave birth in the jungle to a calf, who rolled down a hill and perished. Jokia was beaten to continue her work, and when she refused, her mahout shot her with a slingshot and blinded her in one eye. With her continued refusal to work with the logs, the mahout attempted to break her. When he stabbed her in the other eye, he left her completely blind.
The two rescues became fast friends at the park, where Mae Perm made herself into Jokia’s constant companion and refused to leave her side. She leads Jokia through the park, trundling forward, with a mighty trunk that reaches out to offer the occasional tender pat, and reassures her with a low rumbly sound.
It’s fascinating and moving and comforting to realize the most massive animals have the strongest hearts. I’ve heard before that elephants demonstrate grief for their own, but now I’ve seen firsthand how th
e elephants show tenderness and nurture one another. The relationship between Mae Perm and Jokia feels both maternal and old, as though the most basic instinct is for these two animals to tend to each other.
Beyond the elephants, I have one additional creature I tend to during my stay. Stick Dog is a yellow mutt with short fur and joints that have been rubbed raw and pink from sleeping on the ground. His ears are two little triangles that point right up to the sky, and his tongue is dappled with gray spots. He always, always carries the same stick, a broken branch about a foot long, as thick as a hoagie.
Stick Dog began following me around the day I arrived. After two days he started to sleep at the door of my bungalow. If I hadn’t been sharing the room with two other women, I would have let him inside.
He carries the stick even as he clambers up the rickety wooden stairs to the bungalow. Then he curls himself up carefully, still with the stick situated in his mouth. Since he’s become a frequent visitor, I put a blue plastic bowl of water outside my door and sneak a little extra food from the lunch line. Only then does Stick Dog put the stick down, and only for a brief pause before he snatches it up again.
“What’s the deal with the stick?” I ask one of the full-time staff members.
Like most of the animals at the elephant sanctuary, the story of Stick Dog is another of trauma and resilience. Stick Dog’s previous owner was quick to beat the dog with whatever happened to be lying around; in most cases, that happened to be a stick. He came to the park frightened and skinny, his skin exposed and raw with open wounds that he licked until they became infected.
After Stick Dog was rescued by the sanctuary—the story of how exactly that happened is a little unclear—the dog gained confidence. He became assured. He carried his own stick, and he was never without it; nobody was going to hurt him again.
Stick Dog is an example of the anguish that the powerful can inflict upon the weak. Even the elephants are an example of that. But they also show extreme fortitude—how living things can rebound from suffering, how wounds close, how life after pain can be a renewal.
The dusk that settles in this part of the world is purple and misty from the humidity. There is a spider looping a web around the railing that surrounds the bungalow patio. Stick Dog lies against my legs, which are imperfect and marked with hot mosquito bites. For one moment, the dog puts the stick down and allows me to take his muzzle in my hands. I give him a long, hard scritch on the nose, and his tail thumps with pleasure. He is a good boy.
FINISHED WITH MY VOLUNTEER WORK, I RETURN TO THE city of Chiang Mai in time for Songkran, the Thai New Year celebration and water festival. The ancient festival is a time of movement, a passage, when an old year becomes a new one. During Songkran, everything is made fresh.
The traditions originated with cleansing rituals—visiting Buddhist temples and monasteries to sprinkle water over the Buddha statues, pour water over the monks, and say prayers in honor of fresh beginnings.
Over time, this evolved into a massive water fight, involving everyone in the community. Yes, a water fight. The kind with squirt guns and water balloons. In most parts of Thailand, the celebration runs from April 13 to 15, but in Chiang Mai, the party doesn’t stop for six days.
The fact that I bought a thin plastic poncho at the beginning of the festival shows both my ignorance and my naiveté. The moment I walk outside my hostel doors, I am wet. Truckloads of people drive down the streets, equipped with barrels and buckets, shoveling water as though they are bailing out a sinking boat. Some people have rigged up hoses by the moat that surrounds the city, and everybody who walks past is sprayed with mossy green water, including me.
A plump monk races down the street toward me, packing a massive, assault weapon–style water gun, and his saffron robe clings to him like apricot glaze on a pork chop. I just barely escape, ducking into a 7-Eleven to catch my breath. I’m wearing the plastic poncho, but I know already it’s a pointless act. It’s been less than ten minutes since I left my hostel, and my T-shirt and pants are soaked. I grab some junk food and a can of beer to take back to my room. But when I stand in front of the cashier to pay, he pulls a tiny water pistol from beneath the counter and shoots me in the face. Then he warmly wishes me a happy New Year, a new start.
Time Is the Destroyer of All Things
MY FRIEND ANGIE FROM HOME MEETS ME IN BANGKOK, where she treats me to a nice hotel room with all the amenities—a pool, air conditioning, a mattress with springs. But after a few days of sightseeing, we are headed for another country.
I feel obliged to show Angie a terrific time, as this is her first time in Asia, and I’m nervous about taking her overland to Cambodia. For one thing, there’s an ongoing conflict at the border, though all of the violence has been north of our destination, Poipet. Also other backpackers have told me the border crossing is notoriously shady, and even the most experienced travelers are scammed out of their money.
The problems begin almost immediately. The cab driver who is supposed to take us to the bus station refuses to use a meter. He only wants to charge a flat fee, which I know is too hefty. When I insist on a meter, he stops the cab and throws us out.
We eventually get to the bus station. At this point I’ve been backpacking long enough that I know to look at the bus before I buy a ticket. The bus to Poipet is nice, with plush seats, air conditioning, and TVs that will show movies during the five-hour ride, so Angie and I make the purchase. What I don’t expect is this: an hour into the trip, the driver pulls the bus over on a rural road, and all of us passengers are transferred to a rickety bus with no air conditioning, broken windows, and hard, plastic seats.
The highlight of the ride is that there’s a small Cambodian girl, about two years old, sitting with her mother in front of me. She peers through the crack in the seat, curious. I smile. She giggles and turns away. Moments later, she turns toward me again, but I duck my head beneath the seat. This game of peekaboo continues for a long time through the Thai countryside. When the girl finally tires and settles into her mother’s side for a nap, there’s a sad, heavy pain in my chest. I think I’d like a child to find that kind of comfort and shelter in me.
When the bus stops hours later, Angie and I still haven’t reached our destination. In order to get to the border, where we can catch a bus on the other side, we need a rickshaw to take us another seven kilometers.
Instead of the border, our rickshaw driver brings us to an office that looks more like a diner.
“Maggie, I don’t like this,” Angie says, and I don’t like it either. But I try to assume control of the situation. I feel like I should have known better, like I should have been able to avoid being taken for a literal ride, but I don’t know what I could have done differently.
I refuse to get out of the vehicle and tell the driver to take us to the real border crossing. The driver nods and says he will take us to the real place for our Thai exit stamp. We putter down the road a little more, passing small homes and cows, roadside shops and vendors pushing handcarts. We come to a halt in front of a building with a cardboard sign that says “VISA BOARDER,” with magazine cutouts like a ransom letter.
Angie and I both shake our heads. No.
At last the driver takes us to a huge gated building with official-looking seals on it. This building looks more like an embassy than anything we’ve seen yet, until we step inside. There are no desks, no queues, no computers. Just two old men playing chess. One man says the twenty-dollar Cambodian visa will be fifty dollars. I refuse to pay.
Incredibly, the tuk-tuk driver is still outside, waiting for Angie and me. I tell him this is his last chance. Either take us to the border, or we won’t pay him. I don’t know if this makes me an ugly tourist or a smart one, but I am tired.
At the real border, the process moves smoothly. I receive my Thai exit stamp and the twenty-dollar Cambodian visa. Then a policeman examines the passports and gives Angie and me two choices: we can either retrieve the passports from him the following day or pa
y three dollars now for “express service.” My wallet is almost empty, but I can’t hand him the money fast enough.
We cross the border on foot, underneath an archway that looks like the putt-putt golf version of Angkor Wat, and then a shuttle takes all the tourists to a transportation center where our options are certainly overpriced. We don’t care anymore. Angie and I have been traveling for more than eight hours, and we still have at least two more to go before we even get close to the home where we’ll be staying in Siem Reap.
We hire a cab, who drops us off on the outskirts of town and arranges a free rickshaw ride that isn’t really free; the rickshaw driver drops us off at a café and demands payment, I’m out of cash, and when I call the friend who is supposed to be giving us a place to stay, her phone is busy. Then I’m crying in a café. I’ve let Angie down; I’ve let everybody down. I’m tired of movement. I want to stop. Make it stop.
Angie buys me a can of beer. She puts an arm around me and doesn’t say anything, because a good friend doesn’t have to. We sit and let Siem Reap bustle around us, with twinkling fairy lights, shoppers and caftan vendors and drunk tourists, men pushing carts full of pineapples and women in silky smocks offering foot massages, shops advertising ice cream and cocktails and baguettes, and in that moment, our stillness feels like an act of rebellion.