A Travel Junkie's Diary

by Dina Bennett

  Carma

  ORCHHA, INDIA, 2009

  Now that we are several days into our first drive through India, I am focusing my not inconsiderable powers of observation and deduction on understanding Indian road etiquette. I’m like a newly hatched chick, cracking open my egg to emerge into barnyard chaos. During this stage, I am a wreck. What I see outside Sexy Beast’s non-window is enough to unleash a chain reaction of twitches. Three-wheel mototaxis—affectionately called tuk-tuks because of the stuttering sound of their tiny engines—maneuver within seven inches of Beast’s non-door, allowing for the rearview mirror. Since that means mere millimeters from my left knee, then the answer to your raised eyebrow is yes, I’m measuring. They navigate through traffic as shifting and unpredictable as rubble in a landslide. Every other vehicle on the road is larger, able with a distracted twist of the driver’s wrist to squash them and their paying passenger into a metallic smudge on the melting, garbage-choked pavement. Yet this rarely happens, at least not within my line of sight.

  So chaotic is the traffic that it’s mesmerizing and horrifying at the same time. A bus whose chassis has never experienced the blessings of shock absorbers lurches ahead, listing at an angle to make the Tower of Pisa jealous, intent on getting around us so it can jerk to a stop, blocking our path to disgorge a hundred or so passengers. Motorbikes swarm around a seething mass of bullock carts and bicycle rickshaws, like flies buzzing a carcass. That they cannot see around the tractor they’re about to pass, a homemade one hauling a ten-foot-high load of hay on which perch six villagers, is irrelevant. The guys on top are all laughing, probably because they know they’re about to meet a better life in the hereafter than this one in which they have dry grass tickling their buttocks. Trucks bulging like a middle-aged spread list across two lanes, hauling freshly threshed wheat in burlap sacks closed with Frankenstein seams, grain dribbling onto the pavement. Tempted by this free meal, sacred cows merge with the cars, affectionately licking up the spillage, sacred calves at their side learning the tricks of the trade. It’s all I can do to point out to Bernard where we should be going.

  Several days of this and, patting myself down to verify that indeed I am still alive and unhurt, I start to discern a method to the apparent madness. I’d like to attribute our lack of accidents to the presence of a benevolent travel god, called upon by those blessed limes placed in front of our tires in the parking lot puja. But given Beast’s deteriorating mechanical condition I know the only thing they were good for was lime juice and I rue the day I left my bottle of tequila at home. The truth is, our safety has little to do with gods and everything to do with sound. To be specific, a horn. American cars each have one, but we never use it. In India, they do, like a mobile P. D. Q. Bach orchestra on overdrive.

  Whichever engineer picked the sound for Beast’s horn must have been a jazz fan. It’s brash and insistent, the trumpet in a New Orleans second-line, a soulful accompaniment to my prayers. The Toyota luggage van in which we drive next has a horn that makes a choked squeak, part dying mouse, part fierce politeness in that oriental way which lulls you into believing you’re not about to be conquered. Buses sound like a submerging submarine blaring ah-ooooohh-gah. Each time I hear one I think of Red October and Sean Connery trying to evade Russian pursuit in his quest to hand over his submarine to Alec Baldwin.

  The biggest trucks have horns that twitter like Stallone speaking with the voice of Betty Boop. Trucks don’t need horns, though. They’re so obviously unable to stop within half a mile of hitting the brakes that people cede the road to them anyway. Which leaves us with human-powered rickshaws and bicycles, whose frantic brrrriiiinnnggg speaks of outrage and desperation. No one pays them any mind either, which is nearly our undoing.

  Traffic moves according to who honks when. If you’re coming up behind someone and intend to move into their space, you honk. If you’re going to go by them, you honk. If you want someone to move over, you honk. The vehicle in front will ignore you completely, continuing its bothersome, blocking behavior as long as you’ll let it. If they think allowing you to pass is going to damage them, only then will they honk back. And also make a motion with their hand that is explicit. Once you’ve honked, timing is everything. Hesitate a split second and the opening you could have darted through closes. Or the truck creeping along at half a kilometer per hour has pulled right into your lane. Or a phalanx of rickshaws is now scattered across the causeway like buckshot. Our mantra becomes “No guts, no glory.” It is our only hope of ever arriving at our hotel before dark.

  I can divide road obstacles into categories, which I soon begin to consider as adversaries. That’s what it’s come to: an us versus everyone else on the road proposition. Each category is worth its own level of reaction, starting with ennui, rising through wincing, past white-knuckle clutching of the oh-shit handle, all the way to breaking my pledge and issuing Bernard a stern warning, or mewling plea, to watch out.

  The most vulnerable adversaries initially seem to be animals. However, dogs and cows know that none dare hit them, so they don’t move. That is, they know this if they haven’t already been squashed by a car during infancy. There’s nothing I can add to the copious reports on India’s sacred cows. We all know they’re sacred and that no one will touch them on pain of creating such extraordinarily bad karma that one’s next reincarnation would likely be as a sewage-feeding insect. The only injured dogs I see are the ones that actually try to run across a high-traffic road. Those that blithely sleep in the gutter with their toes sticking into the roadway, or that call a palaver with the neighborhood pariah dogs in the middle of the street where they mingle and howl, have no worries.

  Pedestrians, bicyclists, and rickshaw pullers belong to the second most vulnerable category, because they have no armor to shield them, neither sacred nor metallic. It stuns me that they rarely move out of the way either. They must consider themselves in the protected dog/cow category. That, or they’re so deafened by the incessant honking that they don’t hear us bearing down. At one point we muse that this must be a display of the fatalism inherent in Hindu beliefs, but then we notice that Muslims are as imperturbable as Hindus. Neither flinches when a car—okay, our car—whizzes within centimeters of their behinds at 45 mph.

  Truck drivers, for the most part, impress us with their driving skills and joie de vivre. They chauffeur the most colorfully decorated rigs we’ve seen anywhere. It seems obligatory that every square inch of a commercial transport truck be painted with designs and illustrations. This is driving in ha-ha-ha mode. Jolly blue hearts and green diamonds festoon the wheels. Alluring beach scenes, palm trees and all, decorate rear axles. Gas tanks have a happy diesel djinn painted on them. Windshields are obscured to half their size by frames of scalloped tin. Gods and goddesses dance and wink from the hood, and bulls’ heads brandishing horns of mythic proportions adorn the front grille.

  Every single truck, bar none, has PLEASE HONK or BLOW HORN emblazoned in decorative multi-colored script on its tailgate. They are dead serious about this honking business. To prove it, they remove their outside mirrors so they can’t possibly see behind them, as if to say, “Your call if you want to pass me. But you better make yourself heard, because, bro, I can’t see nothin’ behind.” More than any unwritten rule of the road, this inability to see behind puts the entire burden of safe passing on the driver who wants to get by. If you are ever hit by a truck there can be no dispute about whose fault it is, unless that truck is behind you.

  I know this for a fact. One afternoon, as we drive toward Orchha, we inch across a long bridge snarled with traffic as slow moving and sluggish as the sewage clogging the river below. All four lanes are clogged with vehicles. Suddenly, we’re unceremoniously booted forward. I swivel my whole body around and see the enormous, heavily painted snout of a cargo truck nuzzling our van’s rear end. “We’ve been hit,” I yell to Bernard. “I’m getting out to see if there’s any damage.” Before he can stop me, I do the most foolish, life-threatening thing I’v
e ever done. I jump into the middle of Indian traffic which at that moment starts swerving around me, likely because the policeman who was directing it has awoken from his nap.

  As I move to the back of the van, Bernard starts driving it forward and I wind up jogging in the middle of swirling traffic trying to keep up with him. With amazing forethought, I place myself between the van and the offending truck, so that he cannot pass us, managing to erase from my mind how any truck that could smash into the van’s rear once could do so again, turning my legs into a condiment. Thankfully, the policeman resumes his snooze and traffic stops once more. I use this lull to clamber up the steps of the truck cab where I stare down the hapless driver. He eyes me back, embarrassed. Terrified. “You hit our car,” I shout, not because I’m angry, nor even because I imagine he’ll understand English if I speak loudly, but because the honking around me is deafening. “Please pull over after the bridge.” He nods so fast it’s like a Parkinson’s tremor.

  By then, Bernard has gained another hundred yards, so I leap back down to the pavement and trot after him. I’m not a runner, and the amount of exercise I’m now getting in the heat and accumulated exhaust could be enough to kill me. “Stop!” I wail after Bernard, in between gasps. Much too far away, Bernard finally pulls over at a roundabout protecting the policeman from the surge of vehicles to which I am fully exposed. A brief explanation, plus pointing out the fresh dent in the van’s rear, is enough for the official, dressed in a white uniform heavily weighted with gold braid, to signal the offending truck to stop. The driver steps out, papers in hand. He’s scrawny. I see instantly that his cotton shirt is so worn the tinge of his dark skin shows through. His shorts are tattered too, held up by rope. He looks exhausted.

  “So,” the policeman turns to us. “This driver says the truck does not carry insurance. And his papers are expired. This is a serious matter. I advise you to press charges. Then we can make this driver pay you right now. Or, we can take the driver to the station, where matters will be settled.” His tone is practical and briefly I believe that he’s just being pragmatic, avoiding the exchange of many small-denomination bills in full view of the crowd that now surrounds us. The driver peers into his wallet for salvation, his hands on bony wrists fiddling with the cracked and ripped leather. He holds it open to show us just how empty it is. Totally. It’s dawning on me I’ve made a terrible mistake. There’s nothing this poor man can do about the dent. The truck isn’t even his.

  “What do you mean, ‘matters will be settled?’ Do we have to go to court? Or sue the truck owner?” Clearly the driver has only enough rupees to buy himself an occasional chai and chapati, which means about fifty cents. This is getting worse by the minute.

  “No madam. At the station, you can have us settle this matter for you.” He places more emphasis on each word than it deserves. The crowd tightens in. Their mass feels vaguely threatening and I have no idea whether they’re there to applaud or lynch us. Nothing even remotely alarming has ever happened to me in India, despite the disparity between haves (us) and have nots (them). It’s as manifest as a naked man in a fashion show, and as pervasive as mosquitos on an Alaska summer night. If they can take me at face value, who am I to typecast those around me by their personal possessions? I have come to love the country in large part for the unquestioning warmth with which we are greeted by everyone everywhere. That is, until now. Whether it’s the mere presence of a crowd, or that the crowd is getting louder, my inner safety-ometer begins to swing from the benign blue zone of cold feet, up past the yellow of nervousness into the orange zone of apprehension, wavering at the red zone of panic.

  “Bernard, come over here so we can talk this over,” I say, pulling him away from the officer to a street corner as private as one can be with an audience of hundreds. A man I noticed lurking on the periphery of the crowd comes over to us. He’s short, unimposing, but his rumpled white shirt and wool slacks define him as a mid-level Indian professional, as does his command of English.

  “Excuse me,” he says. “I have noticed that you were hit by that truck. That is most unfortunate. I am terribly sorry for this matter.” He pauses. We wait. “There is something the police are not saying to you.” He pauses again. We wait some more. “Perhaps you do not understand?”

  “I don’t know. What is it that I wouldn’t understand?”

  “If you allow the police officer to take this driver, they will beat him. Severely. Very severely.” So that’s what “settling” means. We shake the driver’s hand, shake the policeman’s hand, tell everyone we will not be pressing charges. The policeman is crestfallen. He shrugs and returns to his traffic perch, checking each finger of his white gloves as he walks away. If we can no longer provide the possibility of an interesting, quasi-violent afternoon beating a hapless driver in front of his pals, then we ourselves are of no further use. Meanwhile, the driver scampers to his truck, slams the door, and the engine roars to life. In minutes he’s easing his way back into traffic, relieved to escape in case we change our minds. The crowd? Well it wasn’t threatening after all. It was just a collection of bored people who saw the possibility of something interesting happening. Once the show is over it does as all such crowds do. It melts away. As for us, we both are breathing shallow as we walk back to the van. It’s one of those unspoken moments that long-married couples with similar values sometimes experience. This one is that we’ve narrowly escaped our own type of dismal fate: being complicit in making an already difficult life more miserable. We remain silent, occupied by our private thoughts, as we drive off.

  For the remainder of our road trip, Bernard honks at whatever’s in our way—animal or vegetable, stationary or motorized. His technique is surgical, easing us through traffic like a scalpel through soft flesh. All that’s left is for me to stare steadfastly ahead, memorizing whatever may be the last scene I see before I die. I have shrieked only once or twice.

  Bush Spa

  DIMEKA, ETHIOPIA, 2011

  It’s hot in the Omo Valley, 110 degrees at times. That’s not as hot as Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression of volcano fame, but it is a water-starved region, with parched sandy ground baked brick hard, yielding reluctantly to acacia thorn and razor-edged, spiky plants that only a starving cow could love. Whenever I turn on a tap, I apologize. To anyone. When I find shade, I sit, panting, distressed by thoughts of the crisp, icy winter air of the Rocky Mountain winter back home as well as by the shirt pasted to my back like an over-licked stamp. Despite a label to the contrary it has veered sharply from drip-dry into purely drip territory, thanks to the sweat coursing down my back and from my armpits, all evidence that I have once again lost the climate battle. I struggle to come to terms with a region where the thickly leafed interlocking branches of towering ficus along the edge of the Omo River are so useless for cooling. It’s as hot and muggy in the shade as anywhere else and the only beasts not fazed by this are the colobus monkeys chattering above. They spring through the topmost branches in playful frenzy, white mantles fluttering like Casanova’s opera cape, setting the leaves a-rustle. I sweat just listening to them. From a high sandy bank, I scan the languid café-au-lait Omo River, which flows like liquid dust, easily spotting the nostrils of crocs drifting mid-channel. There’s nothing lovely about a crocodile, but I wish to be one so I, too, can lurk for hours in the water without fear.

  We drive to the northern Omo, where the small village of Dimeka hosts a spirited market every Saturday morning. Our plan is to arrive early, so we can see everything that’s on offer before it sells out, but our American timing is out of sync with local reality. This is not the neighborhood grocer, open at 8:00 a.m. for your shopping convenience. With everyone walking from miles away, the Dimeka market doesn’t get started till midday, or whenever the vendors stride out of the bush toting their sacks and baskets of wares.

  We pass the time lounging on wobbly chairs at a juice bar, whose enterprising owner has lashed banana-leaf panels to poles, stringing a blue and white striped tarp over the top
to create a shady patio. It’s crude, but it works, offering quiet and respite from the heat. Behind a low concrete wall, the owner squeezes citrus on a handheld plastic juicer or whirls thicker produce in a blender whose surface is smeared with the accumulation of past orders. Used glasses and pitchers from the morning rush soak in a tub of what looks to me like watery vichyssoise. If the owner wishes to wash and rinse his barware in bilge, who am I to spoil his fun. I just hope the glass in which my tasty beverage arrives won’t spoil mine. We each have a fresh mango-avocado juice, raising our glasses in a silent “cheers” to the locals sitting across from us, and buying a glass for a street boy who’s tagged along behind us. The mix is tropical and unctuous, its layers of orange and green making such a fine complementary parfait that I can feel the thud of Martha Stewart kicking herself for not thinking of it first.

  The Dimeka market field is flat and open, its red dirt barren but for a handful of thorn trees. Like every local market it has a system to help shoppers find what they’ve come for. In the case of Dimeka, the system is those thorn trees, under which women cluster according to what they’re selling. Each tree hosts its own particular offering. There’s the poultry tree, where one can buy small beige eggs the size of a fresh date. If you’d rather have the glossy black and red chicken which laid those orbs, you are asked to pay $1.50, but that’s before the bargaining starts. There’s the by-products tree, with acacia honey and sour-smelling homemade butter sweating in coiled clay pots. And there’s the health tree, with vendors proffering small bunches of herbs and packets of brown tobacco leaves bound with water reeds. Out in the open are tarps with small mounds of savage green and red peppers; just looking at them sets my tongue ablaze.