The Travel Gods Must Be Crazy

by Sudha Mahalingam

  ‘Tranziting’ through the Czech Republic

  As I check into the elegant Schlosshotel Cecilienhof, in Potsdam near Berlin, I rue the timing of my visit, which happens to be on a cold, grey day in October. The skies are ominously gloomy, portending a storm. But then, I have little control over the timing or location (this applies to most of my visits), both of which are decided by the conference organizers, determined, no doubt, by the bargain-basement tariffs offered by hotels during off-season. Fretfully I saunter around the premises, and stray into the adjoining wing of the hotel, now a fascinating museum. Indeed, this was the historic location where three great statesmen—Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin—met in 1945 to carve out the future contours of post-war Europe. Little would they have imagined that their division of spoils would unravel messily within decades. The hotel had leveraged the event to great advantage, showcasing the interesting memorabilia from the meeting and a wealth of priceless sepia images.

  Schlosshotel Cecilienhof where Churchill, Truman and Stalin met in 1945 to decide the future of Germany

  But there is only so much you can see in a museum. With what I believed to be wise aforethought, I had booked my return ticket to Delhi a few days after the conference just so that I could hang out in trendy reincarnated East Berlin and join the tourists gaping at the Brandenburg Gate or Checkpoint Charlie—perhaps even bring back home a piece of the infamous Wall itself which survives mostly as bits of concrete in souvenir shops.

  Now that the storm is upon us, Berlin is out. I need to find ways to spend the next three days fruitfully. After all, a Schengen visa is not easy to obtain. I scan the map in the hotel lobby for sunnier destinations accessible to my emaciated wallet. Prague seems near enough. The receptionist informs me it is just five hours away by train, that there are several trains a day to Prague and that I should have no difficulty in getting there. She also checks the weather in Prague and assures me it is unaffected by the storm. Back in my room, I Google and check the website of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Delhi and find out that Indian citizens holding a multi-entry Schengen visa can ‘transit’ through the Czech Republic.

  Voila, that’s what I decide to do. I dump my luggage in a locker at Berlin Hauptbahnhof and board a train for the Czech Republic. It is virtually empty and I have a whole coach to myself. Who would want to travel in this kind of weather? We cruise along the Elbe River. A picture-postcard Bohemian landscape unfolds. The sun struggles to break free of the clouds, intermittently bathing the countryside in its golden rays. What more can I ask for?

  A lot more, as I soon find out, when a portly Czech immigration official boards the train at Decin on the German–Czech border. He asks me where I propose to go from Prague. Eager to assure him of my honourable intention to not jump visa and disappear into a subterranean universe of undocumented, unwanted aliens—the scourge and support staff of Europe—I tell him I have to fly back to New Delhi from Berlin and hence would be returning to Berlin in a couple of days, probably by the same train. His impassive countenance gives way to an ominous frown. He pores over the visa page of my passport for a few more seconds, and pronounces, with a sickening tone of finality, that my visa did not allow me that luxury. I can only ‘tranzit’ through the Czech Republic, which means I need to exit through another Schengen country. He might have detrained me, but the train had already moved quite a distance into the Czech countryside by now. Getting rid of me would involve elaborate logistics of finding transport to take me back into Germany. Reluctantly he stamps my passport with that dreaded word ‘tranzit’ and hands over my passport, wagging his finger and warning me not to come back this way. At the next station, he jumps off on the platform and leaves me to wallow in my anxiety.

  This being 2007, Schengen was still an evolving agreement. I haven’t the foggiest idea as to which countries are part of the European Union, leave alone the subset Schengen. Does Slovakia qualify to be a member of this august agreement? Which countries count as Eastern Europe? Geography had never been my strength, what with all those indecipherable maps and rainfall patterns. I had a vague idea that some countries were already in, while others were waiting to be admitted—whoever paid any attention to these irrelevant bits of information on the international pages of newspapers anyway? Would the adjoining Schengen country be Austria? Or was it Poland?

  I can no longer enjoy the gorgeous landscape framed within my train window. My mind is a cauldron of cartographic confusion. Racing through my imagination are different permutations and combinations of European countries, their borders outrageously distorted, no doubt, but with the Czech Republic at the centre of the scheme. I will have to consult Dr Google to put me out of my misery. Unfortunately, I have neither a foreign SIM nor data on my cell phone to do that right away. That will be the first thing I’ll do when I get to my hotel—if I get to my hotel—in Prague.

  Four hours later, the train chugs into Prague Central. I am approached by a tout, an old woman who offers to take me to a budget hotel in the old town for a modest fee. Normally I would have brushed off such offers and wasted much time locating one myself, but today I am in a hurry to get to a hotel. I accompany her and she deposits me in a sleazy budget hotel close to the city centre, grandiosely named Manhattan Hotel.

  Dr Google has bad news for me. The only other Schengen state that shares a border with the Czech Republic is Austria. Salzburg, the Austrian border town, is at least seven hours away by train and it’s another twelve hours from there to Berlin! I quickly check the flight options and find them way too expensive. I have two options now: either to skip Prague, keep travelling through Czech territory by bus or train and reach Austria and continue on to Berlin which I might reach just in time for my flight back home. Or just risk the wrath of Czech immigration officials, and stay on in lovely Prague and face the consequences! I opt for the latter.

  Being in the Bohemian capital on a sunny winter day is unparalleled joy. There are few tourists about although, according to locals, this winter has been the mildest in the collective Czech memory. The temperature is a balmy 14 °C. The Vltava, a tributary of the Elbe, snakes through central Prague splattered with Gothic, Baroque, Rococo and Jewish architecture. Many elegant bridges span the river, but none so ornamental or ancient as the Charles Bridge, the spirit and soul of Bohemia. It is exquisitely studded with statuary, evoking the aesthetics of the Baroque era. There is a live band playing the best of Czech composers. The night is crisp and the bridge is lively with locals and visitors admiring the glittering lights reflected in the tranquil waters of the Vltava. Sadly, I am unable to appreciate this feast for the eyes and the ears. Like a cracked gramophone record, there is just one tune playing repeatedly in my mind—what if I am detained on my way out and miss my return flight?

  It is a Saturday when I locate the number and call up the Indian embassy in Prague in sheer desperation. After a lot of conniving and cajoling, I manage to get through to the Ambassador himself at his residence. Appropriately contrite, I narrate my predicament, but he is unmoved. Had I informed him prior to entering the country, he might have been able to do something, but now there is little the embassy could do for me.

  Distraught, I saunter aimlessly through Europe’s largest square, Wenceslas Square. Or at least so the tourist pamphlets claim. Originally a horse market, this square was named for Saint Wenceslas, a Bohemian prince. The square seems to have witnessed a lot of political action through its long history, such as the national movement of the nineteenth century, of the Declaration of Czech Independence of 1918, of Nazi muscle-flexing, political demonstrations, immolation, vandalism, the works. Today it looks innocuously sleazy and unabashedly commercial. I enter a cafe and order hot wine, that typical Czech specialty to cure you of un-Bohemian anxiety!

  On Monday, I am back at Prague Central. Now comes the tricky part. What if the ticket attendant asks to see my passport? How do I buy a ticket without getting caught? I lounge around the railway station waiting for a suitable accompli
ce to accomplish this mission. The same tout who led me to my hotel on my arrival is shuffling towards the entrance. I accost her and press down a €5 bill into her palm and request her to get me a ticket. She is only too happy to oblige; after all, this is easier than escorting cantankerous foreigners to the city centre and trudging from one sleazy inn to another, just to earn the same amount.

  I am back on the train to Berlin, which, again, is virtually empty and I am too conspicuous, for merely being in it. I curse the Europeans who can afford to run empty trains so many times a day to destinations where few people want to go. I consider hiding under the seat, but it is too narrow for my bulk. Next I target the washroom. The light above the toilet lights up red the moment you shut the door. That means I can’t hide in there either. There is no option but to be a sitting duck, literally.

  At Decin, the dreaded Czech immigration official, a woman this time, boards the train. She seems to have at least one customer to inspect. After scrutinizing my passport thoroughly, she turns aggressive. ‘Didn’t my colega tell you you can’t go back to Berlin?’ She towers over me and glowers. I cower and fish out my return ticket and wave it on her face. If I miss my flight, I will be the guest of the Czech government, for God knows how long. I lapse into a rapturous description of how beautiful Prague was and how much I enjoyed seeing their lovely city. She is unmoved. I resign myself to the prospect of being detrained and detained on foreign soil. After a few excruciating minutes of stony silence when we face each other as in a pantomime, she suddenly asks me, ‘So you’re transiting through Czech Republic a second time?’ I nod appreciatively. After all, she needs a valid reason to let me off. She stamps my passport with a second ‘tranzit’ and tosses it on my lap. I heave a sigh of relief! The Bohemian countryside is beautiful again.

  Teetering between Myth and Reality in Yingkiong

  A cheerful Siang is gurgling away, some 300 feet below my own two feet that straddle the ominously sagging bridge. No, I am not standing on one of those metal suspension bridges, but astride an artisanal prototype made up entirely of single-origin bamboo and ropes. It is an ingenious contraption, an engineering marvel of sorts, conceived and executed entirely by local villagers, using indigenous materials: home-grown jute, rattan and bamboo. But it serves their purpose—of avoiding a five-hour trudge to reach markets on this side of the river.

  The ropes on the bridge are so loosely bound that the gaps between the knots are large enough to send your considerable bulk crashing through, into the swirling waters below. The floor of the bridge, also made up of jute ropes, is helpfully covered with pieces of jagged wooden planks. Since the planks are not, and cannot be, nailed anywhere, every time you step on one edge, the other edge lifts up like a see-saw, leaving you hanging on to the ropes in sheer terror. Your own steely nerves hardly make up for the absence of steel in the bridge.

  Swaying bridge over a swirling Siang

  We had no idea of all this when Pema, the smart and helpful official from Yingkiong administration, suggested we send our vehicle ahead through the rutted road leading to Tuting. It would take five hours for the vehicle to reach the other bank of the river. Once it arrived, we could cross from the Yingkiong side to the other bank through this infamous rope bridge and be on our way. Incidentally, it would give us five more hours in quaint Yingkiong, which we could use to visit the local attractions. Who can refuse such well-intentioned and persuasive advice? We comply.

  R and I are headed for Tuting and Gelling, frontier villages in Arunachal Pradesh on this side of the border with China, to glimpse the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo before it enters India, where it is rechristened Siang. Visions of the cascades through which the river leaps down the Great Bend have haunted me for several months now, after I had listened to river experts waxing eloquent on this unique phenomenon in various seminars in Delhi. Which is why, when we get an opportunity to visit Duliajan in Assam, I jump at the opportunity to check it out. R joins me on this adventure. Our indulgent hosts in Duliajan are helpful enough to arrange a sturdy four-wheel drive for the trip up to the border. What they don’t tell us and probably don’t even know, since they themselves seldom stir out of their comfort zone, is that there is no proper road to the border except a rutted, dusty path washed away in parts by the monsoon. There are no buses plying on this route—only an occasional SUV taxi hired by crazy outsiders. Even the locals take the weekly chopper flight rather than endure the ride.

  Pema tells us Yingkiong markets will open only after a couple of hours and advises us to wait in the circuit house until she can arrange someone to accompany us. We return reluctantly to our room to relive the nightmarish memories of previous evening, when our vehicle wheezed and sputtered on a precipitous ledge on the mountainside. It was an eerie night when any moment we expected to plunge headlong into the bottomless ravine on the other side. Hadn’t we read that like the Great Bend itself, the gorges in these parts are twice as deep as the Grand Canyon? It is a miracle we reached safely.

  After roaming the streets of the spectacularly located Yingkiong town—it is surrounded by mountains on all sides—and visiting the produce market dominated by women, we return to the bridge around 3 p.m. Our vehicle is already there. Our driver waves to us from the other bank. Having sent across our luggage in the vehicle, we can now cross unencumbered by our bags, but I still have my camera and lens dangling around my neck.

  I send R ahead. Being an intrepid sardarni, she is unfazed by the sagging, swinging contraption. Holding on to the loose ropes on the sides, she bravely steps on the bridge and walks purposefully across, undeterred by the see-saw plank. I follow gingerly, trying not to look down between the ropes, but the blessed river is wherever you look. The bridge sways, at first gently, but soon, violently.

  R, holding on to dear life on the shaky rope bridge

  About a third of the way, I lift my head to see a steady stream of villagers coming over from the other end towards us. One woman carries a big bundle on her head, another, a baby strapped to her back and several other villagers with bags, all headed for the 3.30 bus that would leave from Yingkiong to another similar godforsaken destination, no doubt. For them, crossing the bridge is daily life, their only link to so-called civilization.

  Every time we stop to let a villager pass, the bridge sags and sways some more, threatening to dislodge everyone, but they smile indulgently and move on. I manage to stop midway to click R’s picture for posterity. Step by painful step, we manage to cross over to the other side where a very steep climb up a hillside dotted with bramble awaits us. We clamber on all fours, lacerated and breathless. As soon as I am safely up on the other bank, I turn back to admire my feat, only to let out a scream. A man on a motorcycle, both legs stretched out away from the pedals for balance, is gliding through the swinging bridge, frowning in intense concentration. My shrieking disturbs him. But he manages to keep his control and is already on this bank, expertly guiding his bike up the steep slope. My jaw remains open for the rest of the day.

  Soon we are on our way in our SUV, virtually making our own road through the wilderness. Although it is not yet 4 p.m., the sun goes down rapidly and it is already twilight. On one side of the road is a deep gorge, one through which an unseen Siang flows, and on the other, the hillside dotted with tropical vegetation, mostly banana trees and palms. There is no settlement between here and Tuting, which is a good four hours away, and we are driving into primordial wilderness. The rutted path is a river of slush, thanks to the torrential rains of the past week. There are places where the path cleaves in two, leaving us wondering which fork to take. Soon, it is inky dark, the only source of light being our own headlights and the dashboard, which cast eerie reflections on the vegetation, hoodwinking you into believing there are well-lit houses out there. We are literally driving off the map. For the first time in days, I sense apprehension gripping me. Am I being foolhardy, undertaking a venture like this for some illusory Great Bend that no one seems to have set eyes on?

  Aft
er six hours of bumping through the inky blackness, we arrive at Tuting, a village wrapped in more inky blackness. The total population is 600, all of whom have made their peace with the fact that electric connectivity and supply are two different things. We check into its derelict circuit house piled high with broken furniture everywhere and fall into a fitful slumber. In the morning, we go around this frontier town to reconfirm our impressions of the previous night. There is virtually no activity here, not even cultivation. With nature dishing out bananas and edible roots and vegetables, the villagers seem happy enough to just live off the land.

  From our Tuting abode, nothing is visible. We now have to trudge at least a couple of hours to reach the high point called Gelling from where the river will reveal itself. When we reach the high point, all I can see is a tame Siang, no wider than 10 feet, wending its way sinuously into Indian territory. The Great Bend is nowhere to be seen; in fact, no bend is seen anywhere. It must be beyond that chain of mountains yonder. If at all it exists, it must be in Chinese territory. We have no permission to go even an inch farther. The many cascades through which the river leapt down into Indian territory (according to water experts) are nowhere to be seen. Did I not hear water pundits wax eloquent on how the cascades capture all the precipitation on the Indian side, adding to the flow of the water?

  Disappointed, we make our way back to Tuting. Fortunately, the weekly helicopter comes today and R and I are happy to find ourselves on it, amidst bundles and bags of assorted sizes. There is much sneezing and coughing and visibly sick local residents travelling all the way to Dibrugarh to get some medical help. What are we complaining about?