‘Imagine trying to attack your enemy and you cannot see him? Here there are two tunnels. The enemy think they go in different directions, but no. They connect and so they end up killing each other. Magnificent, yes?’
The torchbearer flicked a match and we could see again. A window of light shot into the middle of the darkness.
‘Once they had realised they were killing each other, they would stop then head to this light. As their eyes tried to adjust to the light, the palace guards would attack them. Very clever!’
The guide led me out of the cave through a narrow opening.
‘See how you have to move your head out first? A guard would be standing here to chop your head off. Come.’
‘Not exactly The House of Fun, is it?’
‘Oh, no, no, no! Tis not fun!’
We were outside now, the sun blinding.
‘The palace is on the top of that cliff; it has been carved flat so that iguanas could not climb up.’
‘Iguanas?’
‘Yes, they were used to secure ropes for the men. But this is too steep for them; no grip with the claw. In the moat they kept the crocodiles. You had to cross it to reach the Bala Kot citadel. At the top you can see the Baradi residence of the queen, Yadavi. You may go to the top. I am an old man, as you can see, so I will not join you. Goodbye and I hope you enjoy India.’
The ‘old man’ turned and bounced vigorously down the narrow steps. Perhaps it wasn’t the several flights of stairs that had sent him packing but the rush of loud, happy schoolchildren tearing down towards me. They pushed past, laughing and pointing at me and my big, cumbersome SLR camera.
Some years after the first invasion, the Sultan Muhammad Tughlak ascended the Delhi throne. Tughlak was so impressed with nasty little Daulatabad that he ordered the entire population of Delhi to move to the new capital. No one was exempt, and thousands died on the way. Fifteen years later the Sultan, having had his fill of this place, suddenly changed his mind about the new address and ordered the whole population to move back to Delhi.
Outside the fortress, I went to my bike, which I had left locked up at a police traffic gazebo and in the care of three boys hawking gifts.
‘Hello, sir. Look, special trinket,’ one of them said, showing me a small gold carving. ‘Key ring,’ he said. A closer look revealed a man thrusting into a woman from behind.
‘Cute,’ I said. ‘But will it unlock my bike?’
I swung my leg over the bike and got as far as the small farming town of Phulumbria, where trucks laid siege to a large paddock of cut sugar cane, their trays overflowing like stuffed scarecrows. I found the only hotel in town, which was run by a man with a cyst the size of a golf ball under his chin. Later, in the restaurant, he served me spicy dahl in the dim flickering light of a solitary kerosene lamp.
‘Yes …’ He leered, his cyst waggling back and forth like a hypnotic metronome, his eyes never leaving me while I ate. ‘Yeees.’
***
The ride out of Phulumbria was flat at first, but then as I neared the Ajanta Caves it became quite hilly and I was forced to slog up a long, arduous slope, sweating and groaning in India’s springtime heat, which was already uncomfortable by nine a.m. I could only wonder what it would be like when summer finally arrived in April, just over two months from now.
More emptiness greeted me when I reached the top. I coursed down the hill, the rush of warm air cooling me, to the entrance of the Ajanta Caves. Built in the same period as the caves of Nasik, the Ajanta Caves were said to be the most detailed Buddhist caves in the world.
At the cave’s entrance, Indian tourists flocked around souvenir shops, drink sellers and samosa stalls. I decided to leave my bike somewhere and pay someone to look after it, but no one wanted a bar of it, not even the bag handler with a big stick and attitude to match. A sign read ‘UNLOCKED BAGS WILL NOT BE CHECK IN’, and, as my panniers were unlockable, he wouldn’t take them.
‘Where am I supposed to put them, then?’
His explanation was a hefty wave of his stick, so I was left with one option: stay the night at the Ajanta Hotel.
I took a single room and slept for two hours, avoiding the afternoon heat. Upon venturing out, I came across a large man. He was deeply lined, grey-moustached, with a yellow turban around his head and a large stomach protruding from his camel safari suit. When I asked to take his photograph his grey moustache shot out either side like antennae.
‘Forty rupees!’ he demanded.
‘Really?’
‘People from all over the world – Holland, Denmark, Germany – come to see me and they pay,’ he said, hand to the side, in a half wave.
I politely declined and instead took photos of grey haired and black-faced langur monkeys, hanging lazily from the trees above. Named after the Hindu monkey god, Hanuman, they are sacred in India and thus left alone. This fact, however, was lost on a group of rowdy children who took pleasure at throwing stones at them. The monkeys barked to life and took off, leaping on to the rocks, their grey tails propelling them.
Though the afternoon sun had peaked, the rock face of the caves radiated an intense heat, and I took cover in the coolness of a deep cave. This was just one of the 28 caves that had been carved out by hand as a permanent place of worship for the monks, supposedly to protect them from the heavy monsoons.
This particular cave housed various murals. Flaking away from centuries of neglect and recent attempts to restore it, one mural showed sailors being seduced by Sirens who later devoured them; on another mural, limbs and heads were being cooked in pots. This wasn’t exactly the sought of thing I expected to see in a Buddhist monastery, and I half-wondered whether these horrid images were perhaps intended to scare off unwelcome guests (notably school children, who were now testing the reverberations of the cave with high-pitched squeals). Apparently these murals told the story of Buddha’s past lives to illustrate certain virtues (I would have thought that eating each other was an obvious no-no, but perhaps some wayward monk had grown tired of vegetarianism and decided to have a chomp on someone).
I flitted from cave to cave taking photographs, dodging postcard sellers and more tourists. Parched by the heat, I grabbed a Sprite and got talking to a rock seller who had a large grey beard and a woven topi.
‘These Indians. They know nothing,’ he said, sweeping his hand derisively towards the stallholders, who were now packing up for the day.
‘Er … aren’t you Indian?’ I asked.
‘No! I am Muslim. They are Hindu.’
But before I could say, ‘But that still makes you Indian, doesn’t it? And oh, what do you mean by “they know nothing?”’, he was waving his next thought at the growing shadows around the valley.
‘You should go with your bicycle and cycle around here while it is getting cool. It is very wonderful to cycle now. You can see many things: monkeys, birds, tigers –’
‘Tigers? Here?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You’re saying that I should cycle, with tigers about?’
‘Do not worry, my friend. They only eat monkeys and goats.’
The bespectacled manager of my hotel had a different take on the matter.
‘No! Do not walk here at night. There are tigers. It is not safe,’ he warned like some Agatha Christie stooge before bolting like buggery for the crowded Jeep.
I was surprised that there were any tigers in this area, as there was hardly a bush or tree for them to hide under. A hundred years ago, there were at least 40 000 tigers on the Indian subcontinent. But now, following decades of tiger hunting under the British Raj, human encroachment and poaching, the tiger numbers in India have reduced to less than 2000viii.
The caves were shutting down and tourists were told to step on it by the baggage man with the big stick. Stalls packed up, samosa shops closed their dusty shutters, and the hawkers, 20 at a time, jumped onto and hung off Jeeps. In less than an hour, the once-busy entrance was quiet. In fact, it was so quiet that I would have
one of the most peaceful sleeps in India on my entire trip.
To beat the heat, I got up at five a.m. When I went to the bathroom I pushed the door open to see a small Asian woman shaving her head. She was a Korean monk and told me that she had been here for a week to meditate by the caves. Early mornings were best, before the hordes of tourists arrived.
With the bike now loaded, I felt the rush of cool air, quiet and fresh on my face. I heard a growl somewhere in the darkness.
Tiger?
I turned to see three dogs racing towards me. I jumped off, putting the bike between their gnashing teeth and me.
I reached for the sugar cane stick strapped under the bags. An old woman had cut it for me the day before for me to eat, sitting sidesaddle on a motorbike while her son slowed so he could chat with me as I rode in the afternoon heat.
The leading dog lunged and I swung the cane, causing the dog to recoil and bark more ferociously. The other two, obviously inspired, had a go too, so I started swinging blindly at all of them.
‘Good luck!’ A voice called out from the top floor of the hotel. It was the Korean monk. She beamed a bright smile to me.
‘Thanks!’ I yelled back before taking another swing at the dogs, which were now chorusing a hellish din. ‘GO AWAY!’
‘Much good fortune for you!’
‘Right!’ I jumped back quickly as a jaw made a lunge for my leg.
‘Bye, bye!’ she shouted, waving.
‘Yep! See ya,’ then at the dogs, ‘Would you just PISS OFF!’
I backed the bike down the road, swinging the cane at the dogs as they followed, but then they all stopped as if contained by an invisible force field. I had been evicted; one by one they wagged their tails and went back and curled up under a truck.
I lurched into the darkness; every crackle, leaf turn and ant step had me switching around and twitching with fear.
‘What was that? JUST WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?’
But no tiger was out that morning, and I cycled back over the Ajanta Range. I moved out onto the main road to see farm workers getting ready for the day brushing their teeth with neemix sticks by antiquated pumps. Women in beautiful purple and red saris balanced tin jugs of water on their heads, children played in the dust with sticks, water buffalo moved aimlessly down the quiet road, dogs eyed me suspiciously as they twigged to the faint cackle of my chain, and men combed their hair as they huddled around a smoky fire fuelled by dried cow manure.
I cycled through the cool morning and had the wonderful experience of cycling through a forest somewhere past the town of Pahur.
I was pleased with my run: I had cycled 60 kilometres in about two hours. This had much to do with a truck, stacked with sugar cane, driving in front of me at 40 clicks and acting as a windbreak.
‘Wow! This is faaantastic!’ I yelled to myself, marvelling at the speed until I realised I had missed a turn-off some 15 kilometres back.
I had been quite lucky with the road. Most of Maharashtra state was well sealed, even on the smaller roads, which meant that I (as a cyclist) could go a lot faster. That was until I neared the border of Madhya Pradesh, where the road disintegrated into bitumen scabs.
The bike shook and my teeth rattled as I slowed from a smooth 30 kilometres per hour to a bumpy ten. It frustrated the hell out of me and forced me to dodge pothole after pothole. I threw the bike into the rough, hard shoulder but this proved to be no better, with fist-sized boulders waiting to catch my wheels, jarring my shoulders horribly.
I soldiered on until about an hour later I felt something mushy under the back wheel, like I had substituted the tyre for a sponge cloth. I looked behind. The tyre was almost completely flat.
Conveniently, the tyre blew when I was under a huge tree that shaded a chai stall but inconveniently, no puncture repair wallah was about.
Setting to work, I threw off the panniers and bags. A crowd gathered; some played with my tools as I reached for them, while others fetched me water and helped me pull the bike apart. A truck stopped and the driver got out, squatted beside me, and from what I could gather from his excited finger and thumb gesticulations, was telling me to put my bike on his truck and go to a whore house.
‘Yes,’ I raised an eyebrow, ‘but that’s not the kind of hole I want to fill right now!’
I took out the tube, stuck on a patch, and stuffed it back in.
A man with slightly greying hair and stained and broken teeth came over.
‘I am Asif.’
‘As if what?’ I joked. But he didn’t get me.
‘I am the mayor of this town.’
I looked around at the dusty shacks. ‘Town? What town?’
He wobbled his head.
‘Here, I pump you.’
‘Excuse me?’
He grabbed the bicycle pump and began thrusting the handle back and forth.
‘You must have many wives.’
‘Why’s that?’ I asked. He leered and continued pumping.
‘I have four wives. Ten children.’
I didn’t understand what he was saying. He pumped the tyre harder, making noises and grinning.
‘You been talking to that truck driver?’
‘Many wives! Strong man. You. How many wives?’
‘I’m not even married!’
‘No. You must have many!’ he said and began pumping so vigorously that I had to stop him in case he burst the tube.
He gave me a cup of chai and I lay down on some rubber straps criss-crossed over a bed frame. These beds are a common feature in rural India, and I often found truck drivers and their jockeys on these beds, limbs asunder, unconscious once the speedy effects of chewing betel nut had failed to keep them awake.
Lying there, I realised I couldn’t feel the upper left side of my back nor the fingers on my left hand. I tried to stretch the wretched pain out when my left shoulder shrieked. My tendonitis, an ailment that had been dogging me for two years, was back and it would never leave me alone for the entire trip.
Now this is something that nobody really ever tells you about cycle touring; pain.
They’ll mention everything else – the sights, the beautiful days, the heroic climbs, the traffic, a great café, but they never tell you about how their body ached, how they stopped countless times to adjust the handlebars to take the weight off their bottom, the numbness in the hands, the stiff thighs. No wonder Lance Armstrong has a team of chiropractors on Le Tour de France. Asif did give me a shoulder rub – but somehow it just wasn’t the same.
But there was another thing that wore me down more than the rocky roads in India: the constant attention.
Stop to check the map, adjust the brakes or sit down at a chai stall and you’re soon mobbed. At the beginning of the trip, this level of curiosity was refreshing, but now, almost two weeks on, I felt like I was an infectious disease that was constantly being swamped by white cells.
With the crowds came the inevitable questions, the same questions and almost in the same exact order and often when I had to repair the bike:
‘Hello, sir. Which country?’
‘Australia.’
‘Oh, Australia! Cricket! Shane Warne. Ricky Ponting!’
‘What are you doing in India?’
‘Cycling.’
‘What is your good name?’
‘Russell.’
‘Hello, sir. Which country?’
‘Australia.’
‘Oh, Australia! Cricket! Shane Warne! Ricky Ponting!’
‘What are you doing in India?’
‘Cycling.’
‘What is your good name?’
‘Russell.’
‘Hello, sir. Which country?’
‘Australia.’
‘Ah! Cricket! Shane Warne! Ricky Ponting!’
‘What is your good name?’
‘Russell.’
‘What are you doing in India?’
‘Cycling!’
‘Hello, sir. Which country?’
‘AUSTRALIA!’
‘Ah! Cricket! Shane Warne! What are you doing in India?’
‘CYCLING!’
It was like someone saying ‘Have you left the iron on? Have you left the iron on?’
Cycling away offered no escape and I was often almost killed with kindness: motorists, excited upon seeing me, would drive alongside and unwittingly force me into the hard shoulder of dust, turds or other vehicles while cheerily inviting me for lunch or tea.
Now, I appreciate the fact that seeing me, a Westerner on an expensive bike in their country, was a novelty and indeed a gift in these rural parts. And I appreciate that my Hindi and their English was limited. And I understand that these were poor people. I get all that. I really do. But the constant attention and the same questions were like the relentless commercials on Australian television – you never quite got used to itx.
I hate to say it but those ‘naïve Brits’ back in Mumbai were right. It was getting to me.
However, all this would soon be the least of my concerns.
I said goodbye to Asif, thanked him for his help and the chai, and got back, somewhat reluctantly, on the bike.
I struggled through the late afternoon heat and got as far as Burhanpur, another dusty, derelict town like many I had seen so far in India. They were all starting to look the same: a blur of chaotic traffic, noise, tobacco booths, staring crowds and street stalls selling fruit, chai and sweets.
I swung the bike past some gates to a swanky hotel called the Monsoon Palace. It was the cleanest hotel I had been in for some time – the sheets looked as if they had been changed at least once that month. The hotel was so glitzy, in fact, that management nearly didn’t let me put my bike in the room with me. Now, there was a first.
I had a shower, washing away the day’s dust and grime, then took a swig from a chilled bottle of beer, stretched out on the king-size bed. I felt a warm flush over my face, something I had noticed in the evenings of late. ‘No! It can’t be! I’m too young for menopause … wait a second, that’s a lady thing …’
In the morning, I felt like someone had made off with all my remaining energy during the night. My hips ached and my eyes were so sore that I was sure someone had been using them as bulls-eyes on a dartboard.
Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle Page 5