The Travel Gods Must Be Crazy

by Sudha Mahalingam

  For seven hours we trudge through pristine and primordial jungle, stopping every now and then to catch our breath. The trees are disdainfully tall, reaching out to the skies. The canopy is so dense that the sky is visible only in coin-sized chinks that let in light rather reluctantly. Humidity hangs heavy and mosquitoes buzz annoyingly. We are often distracted by the antics of the simians on treetops, but unless you watch your every step, you could land on the forest floor and end up as feedstock for the steamy compost in the making. So, practically, you miss the wood for the next step; forget about taking out your camera, fixing the lens and shooting the orangutans and their aerial acrobatics. Anyway, they are so high on the canopy that even my 400-mm lens will produce only a blur. For the present, each of us is focused on just one goal—reaching that elusive shelter which, I am sure, has been conjured up by Dar’s hallucinations. Who would have gone and built a shelter in this jungle?

  Dar is an experienced guide, although our group is probably the least fit that he has ever guided. He cajoles and scolds, and leads us farther and farther into jungle towards that mythical shelter. Sceptical and murderous, we follow him for want of a better option. The rain now falls in thick sheets with a roar and all our gear including camera bag and passport pouch are dripping ominously. M and my son K, both teenagers, sprint like springboks, while SJ and I limp behind, cursing ourselves for undertaking this foolhardy venture. B brings up the rear, slipping in the mud, staggering over boulders and too traumatized to even curse or scold.

  And suddenly we hear human voices floating through the foliage. We are sure our imagination is playing tricks. But then, we come across two tents on the forest floor on the banks of a creek where three young boys are engaged in typical camping chores. One is filling up water from the creek in a plastic bottle while the other is trying to light a fire, presumably, to cook the meal. We are tempted to collapse in this haven of civilization, but Dar cracks the whip and makes us plod on.

  After about ten minutes of this struggle, we finally spot the shed that had so tantalized us. We screech like sailors sighting land after months. With two giant strides, B crosses the stream and goes and sprawls on a fallen tree-trunk so narrow that it can only hold a third of his girth. And in a jiffy, he is snoring even as a spider and a few ants crawl over his trousers; that he manages to slumber in this precarious position for the next three hours is testament to the extent of his exhaustion. No eiderdown and mattress could have achieved the level of comfort or induced such repose.

  All through our stay in Lubuk Baji, Ali was our lifesaver, literally. He would fetch firewood, improvise a stove with rocks, coax the damp wood to light up and produce hot meals fit for kings—noodles, rice, vegetables, all topped up with aromatic black coffee. No Michelin-star restaurant could have rustled up a more delectable repast, no resort conjured up such a gorgeous setting. This was raw nature. Nothing could rival it.

  The next few days are spent foraying out of this precarious shelter to check out the rainforest and retreating into it at night. With just four wooden pillars supporting a roof and no walls, Lubuk Baji conspires with the elements, giving them free passage, as we shiver on the naked wooden floor all night. Those few days are enough to make us realize the rainforest is as cacophonous as peak-hour traffic at the ITO crossing in Delhi. By day, the gibbons and macaques swing violently from branch to branch, settling scores over territory. An orangutan mum hops across the canopy, violently snapping branches and grunting loudly to scare intruders. If it is fruiting season, the avians will join the simians in the brawl over choice pickings of stinky durian. Hornbills join the cacophony with their rotor-like wings whirring like a helicopter. All these sounds are eclipsed by the roar of the rain that never stops, accompanied by thunder for percussion.

  Buttress roots and bromeliads lining the creek feeding into the Kapuas River in Borneo

  By night, it is a different world altogether. Even as the birds retire for the day, insects of all digits and denominations, as vain as they are venomous, crawl out of the woodwork (literally) to begin their choral symphony. Some flaunt their fluorescence while most announce their presence through their vocal chords. One mimics a sawmill in action, another strums a tuneful drone that would put the latest caller tune on your cell phone to shame, a third shatters your eardrums with its searing cry—not unlike the tile-cutting machine that harries you in urban jungles under construction. The cicadas set up their background screech while a dozen frogs croak lustily, their libidos tickled by the incessant downpour. You can’t see them, unless you risk venturing into the forest floor in the dark, but it is not difficult to imagine how puffed up the male must be, his translucent skin stretched taut on his tense body as he calls out to his mate.

  The rainforest seeps into every cell of our body during these days. But it does more than that, as I soon find out. On one of my excruciating trips to the loo, I find my lingerie is bloody; in fact, blood is trickling down my thigh although I feel no pain. I panic, thinking I have hurt my innards. After some investigation, I prise away a couple of leeches from my nether regions. How they got all the way in there is still a mystery to me.

  Even now, years later, I sometimes wake up in the middle of a nightmare, hands flailing to prise out the obstinate leeches, the rainforest having seeped into my psyche as well. Yet, not for a moment do I regret the surreal days we spent in the jungle, days in which we glimpsed something precious, intimate and unique. I would go again, if I could.

  Frozen in Norwegian Summer

  The automatic currency-changing machine at Oslo Central does not like my dollar bill. It spits it out every time I feed it into the slot. I try various denominations, but without any success. It is a Sunday evening and the adjacent forex counter had just closed. I need Norwegian kronors for the tram ride to my hotel about 5 km away.

  Earlier in the evening, as soon as I arrived from Stockholm, I had offloaded my luggage at one of those yawning lockers to take an unencumbered stroll around the town while there was still daylight. Now I need a 20 Norwegian kronor coin to retrieve my suitcase. I am stuck, and outside there is steady rain. It is also getting dark. I curse the machine, which I suspect of being racist; otherwise, why should it spit out my perfectly legal greenbacks? After a few more attempts, I give up and head into the streets.

  I go out in the sleet to Karl Johans Gate (the Swedish gata had become the Norwegian Gate), the high street in Oslo. The street stretches for about a mile with glittering shops on both sides enticing you to buy, buy and buy. I look for forex counters, of which there are four, but each one of them is closed. There are ATMs every few yards, but unfortunately, I have not memorized my secret code for drawing cash; it is scrawled on a piece of paper safely locked up in my suitcase, which in turn is safely stuck in the station locker. I decide to do without it.

  Tram number five trundles to a halt in front of me and I stroll in confidently and pull my cap over my forehead and, without a word, push my Swedish krona into the tray. The lady driver doubling as conductor asks me something in Norwegian and I just nod my head. The machine rumbles and spits out a ticket. I hastily pull it out and saunter down the aisle and park myself in front of an old lady with loads of shopping. I nervously keep glancing at the driver through the rear-view mirror hanging in front of her, but she’s oblivious of my existence, leave alone my minor misdemeanour.

  The tram drops me ten stops away—which is where the hotel brochure had asked me to get off. The rain has turned the thawing snow into ugly slush. A long, slippery road stretches ahead of me. I gingerly press my shoe into the ice and it goes right in. In a moment, my toes tingle—through five layers of socks. My throat is parched and the snow makes me disoriented. Every house looks the same and there’s not a soul on the street.

  I trudge patiently, trying to read the map in the brochure. After a good twenty-minute walk—about which the brochure had not warned me—I stumble into the hotel, bedraggled but relieved. At least I have my passport and my handbag with me. Tomorrow morning I
have to catch the train to Bergen to take the famous Flåm Railway for which I have already bought tickets and a ScanRail pass.

  The narrow strip of the Norwegian coast forms the back of the tiger, which marks the map of Scandinavia. It’s a craggy coast with deep inlets and some spectacular fjords. Everyone, including my Lonely Planet guide, had advised me to take the multimodal journey through the fjords if I wanted to get a taste of Norway in a nutshell. Since I have only three days in Norway, I decide to give Oslo the royal miss and head straight to Bergen from where the fjord trip begins. Early morning, I set out from my hotel after changing a hundred-dollar bill at the counter at a terribly discounted rate and head for the railway station for the famous Flåm Rail trip. It is a combination of train, boat and bus rides to see the fjords.

  The seven-hour train ride to Bergen, past forests, alpine villages and the starkly beautiful Hardangervidda Plateau, is followed by a ferry ride up the spectacular Nærøyfjord to Gudvangen, a bus ride to Voss and a train back to Bergen.

  The train is virtually empty and I have the luxury of almost an entire compartment to myself. Frame after rectangular frame of Norwegian countryside fleets past with wooden cottages that look straight out of a Christmas card. I almost expect to see Santa Claus and his reindeer chariot parked near one of those red-brick chimneys. Except that it’s not December, but April. Yet, the temperature outside is in the minus and this is all-year-round ski country through which I am travelling.

  At Geilo, one of the midway stations, you can step out of the train straight into a cable car which will lift you up to the ski slopes. When the train stops at Geilo, my suzerainty over the compartment is at an end. The coach is invaded by hordes of modern-day Vikings with longish skis that look as deadly as the Viking spears. In a moment, they have come and colonized my compartment, dumping their luggage everywhere and hanging their fluorescent-coloured jackets and windcheaters from the pegs.

  The Flåm train is actually a toy affair. It has just two compartments and exactly eight passengers. In fact, I am impressed that there are seven other fools like me, wide-eyed about snow. The train wends its way through the mist to begin its steep descent into the Flåm valley. I feel I am in an aircraft because nothing is visible out of the window. The glossy brochure never mentioned this possibility. There, all the pictures are in rainbow colours and vividly clear. I lurch from side to side as the train takes its twists and turns and seems to plunge into the valley. After a couple of hours, we reach Flåm, where a wooden railway compartment doubles as a restaurant.

  The boat for Gudvangen will not sail for another couple of hours, and I have enough time to stroll around Flåm. I take a walk around the town and find that many houses have rooms to let and there’s even a youth hostel bang in the middle of the town. So bad their business today seems to be, they would have gladly rented their rooms to me, a youth in her late forties. Flam is a one-horse town with a single shop, single railway station and a single restaurant catering solely to tourists.

  The motorboat takes off finally, shattering the calm of the fjords. Once again, visibility is near zero and all I can see is the foamy trail left in the wake of the boat. The brochures had promised bushes full of strawberries so close that you could reach out and help yourself. They had carried pictures of picnicking families on a magnificently flat fjord—as if someone had neatly sliced the top off the hill—of which I see no sign now. I learn we are traversing the Nærøyfjord, the most magnificent of all Norwegian fjords, only when the captain announces this.

  The bus journey to a rain-washed Voss takes me on the other side of the Sognefjord, the longest and deepest of the Norwegian fjords. A frozen stream accompanies us all the way, but I spy some tantalizing glimpses of the deep blue water from time to time. The route is picture-postcard perfect—in fact, I might have been better off gazing at the picture postcard than freezing here in this monochrome landscape.

  Stuck with the Buddha in Sichuan

  Sichuan seldom figures on the global tourist itinerary. Eclipsed by seductive Shanghai, intimidating Beijing and, increasingly, historic Xian, this province seems content to remain in the shadows. Some of the travelling pack—mostly Chinese domestic tourists—stray into Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, primarily to glimpse and cuddle that black-and-white furball endemic to this region.

  But a visit to the Giant Panda Breeding Station in Chengdu disabuses you of your notions about the adorable-looking bear. Try cuddling the animal and you will get a bleeding gash on your face and a solid kick too, before it wriggles out of your hold and crushes your toe in the process. The animal is neither cuddly nor friendly. Like all wild animals, it recoils from touch, and you need to keep your distance, which the research station is at pains to drill into you, often in vain. If you’re that keen on a cuddle for your Instagram, cough up a hefty fee to hold a domesticated panda that poses like a pro in the presence of the paparazzi.

  Unsurprisingly, many tourists do pay to cuddle, in this land where the selfie is a national obsession even more than in India, and the panda a national icon. A few even volunteer to pick up panda poo and sweep the enclosures for the privilege of being on the inside of the fence. My friend and I do neither, but just saunter through the research station ogling through the fence at pandas of various age groups putting up virtuoso performances. One is hanging upside down, another busy chewing bamboo, a third sits like a human, hind legs outstretched, playing with a stick.

  IV and I are in Sichuan for an entirely different purpose. RB, my friend and fellow traveller on a different journey, had piqued my curiosity about a big and beautiful Maitreya Buddha carved out of an entire mountainside in Sichuan. In fact, some history books claim Mount Emei was where Buddhism was first established in China, during the Tang dynasty; the Leshan Buddha is the world’s tallest pre-modern statue. Mount Emei has been accorded the UNESCO World Heritage Site tag, although that means little when the title is distributed like pizza fliers to all and sundry.

  We had arrived in Chengdu the previous day, by the fancy high-speed, high-tech train, all the way from Lhasa where we had spent the previous week. On the train, soft seat compartments pamper you with your own TV screen like in an aircraft, a pair of slippers, unlimited supply of steaming hot water, and oxygen masks if you need them at those altitudes through which the train cruises. But no one seems to turn on the TV, what with the scenery outside being so stunning. Everyone gets off the train at Tanggula station to take their regulation photographs. At 16,627 feet, it is the highest railway station in the world, trumping Cusco in Peru by more than 5000 feet.

  Chengdu is an indistinguishable modern Chinese city mauled by malls and minted fashion designers. We have neither the money nor the inclination to savour its many delights, and hence look for a way to get to Mount Emei directly. The picturesque town of Leshan, the springboard for Mount Emei, is about five hours away by road. Not familiar with the language or the terrain, we opt for a tour bus, which would take us there and bring us back after a couple of days.

  Early next morning, when we arrive at the boarding point for the bus tour, there is bedlam. This is a long weekend in China and virtually everyone and his uncle is heading out somewhere. There are a dozen buses departing for myriad destinations in all directions. There is a sea of humanity milling around the buses. We seem to be the lone non-Chinese. How do we locate our bus in this crowd? After much miming and clowning, we eventually reach it.

  The tour guide in our bus is a portly Chinese, but that’s not the problem; he is hopelessly unilingual, and the Chinese tourists annoyingly garrulous. Not only won’t we be learning much about the history of the place on this tour, we would be missing out on much more—as we find out. Over the next three days, while everyone else gorges on platefuls of everything that creeps, crawls, slithers, grunts and squeals, IV and I, the only vegetarians in the group, gulp down blanched beans meal after meal. The resultant flatulence was our sweet revenge on our fellow travellers cackling away throughout the trip.

  After
five hours on winding and forested roads, the bus deposits us at a shady-looking hotel in Leshan. We find out it is called Traders’ Hotel. The lobby is gaudy enough to set alarm bells ringing in our heads. Predictably, the faucets are leaky, the carpets musty, and the flush doesn’t work. There is a mild drizzle. We check in, freshen up and start our climb up the steep steps to the fabled Buddha statue. En route, we have to brave dozens of huge pink macaques glistening with raindrops and grinning with glee as they snatch my bag to investigate. They are particularly fond of cell phones and cameras, but fortunately, both are safe in my backpack. A burly macaque expertly opens my water bottle, takes a sip and flings it at me with all the contempt it can muster.

  We huff and puff up the meandering steps to the top. We stop at the sprawling Dafo monastery, light incense sticks, and proceed. Just as we turn the bend, the Buddha’s smiling visage comes into view. We are awestruck by the sheer scale of this Buddha. Having visited hundreds of Buddhist shrines all over the world, I have seen many huge Buddhas, seated in meditation, standing upright and even reclining when there is not enough vertical space, but the Leshan Buddha trumps all of them. We learn later that it is indeed the world’s largest Buddha. Heavy-lidded and with an inscrutable smile, this 71-metre giant watches over the confluence of three rivers—Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi.

  The inscrutable Leshan Buddha

  Like all such places, this too has a local legend. During the Tang dynasty—yes, you read that right, not Ming, not Qing, but Tang—in the eighth century, a monk called Hai Tong began carving this giant statue to appease the raging rivers that routinely capsized villagers’ boats. Although the carving lasted all of ninety years, longer than Hai Tong’s time, the giant Buddha did take care of the problem. Of course, it would. All that debris from the carving was dumped directly into the confluence below, stemming its flow and turning it into a tame and stagnant pool where tourist boats now float listlessly.