buses trains and brahma bulls

Ive been running through my head the best way to put down on “paper” the events of this last week. By events really there are only a few, and mostly travel. I think I just needed to get a few days out before I could look back with a level head to Wednesday the 16th. This was the day that we officially headed out of manali. Our bus was at 5:00 in the afternoon leaving from new manali and supposedly arriving in new delhi 13-14 hours later. We sauntered around in the morning, getting our daily dose of momos from the Tibetan café we had grown so accustomed to and meandered around the shops till it was time to head into town. We got a rickshaw and loaded our gear in, I have traded backpacks with aaron as he cant carry his big bag anymore with his arm in the shape it is. We got to the bus stop the customary half hour early, and I gorged quickly on a samosa (maybe not such a good idea right before a bumpy ride) and we settled in for the gauntlet.

We had no idea how much of a ride we were going to be getting. About three hours later, I was not sure if I was going to make it the whole way, I sincerely thought that I would be a mentally broken man by the end of the trip. I had ridden on buses before, town buses going hither and thither, experienced the turns, crowding, smells and everything else…but it had not readied me for this ride. The first three hours brought us to mandi, the town we had been in previously and to our first stop for chai and dinner or whatever. I just sat on some steps and recovered, readying myself for the next bit. Remembering the motorcycle trip up, I was sure that after another two or three hours we would be close to out of the mountains and on to flatter ground.

However, it was not the intention of our busdriver to give us such a clean and pleasant ride. Instead he took off on a lesser known road, a single lane job straight down the mountain, mostly unpaved. I was sure our driver had gotten confused with driving and being the head man on an Indian bobsled team, he careened down the mountain leaving us bouncing around like pinballs in the back. He would pass other people on the road in places im not sure you could have walked around them and keep at speed. By hour eight I had not slept at all, every bone and muscle in my body hurt, and I was praying that I would make it through the night. But we were barely halfway through. We made it eventually, by the end I was yearning to be sick on a train again, it would have been a cakewalk compared to that nightmare. We ended in delhi 16 hours later at 9 in the morning, barely human.

The trip left me feeling slightly off at first, and sure enough when we got to our hotel I availed myself of the facilities almost immediately giving in to another case of the delhi belly, fluids exiting all ends quicker than I could replenish keep them. during all of this aaron headed out to find a decent hospital so he could finally get his hand back in healing shape. He returned later that night to find me a skeleton of a man imbibing Indian HBO in between trips to the bathroom, he had found what he thought was a good hospital, and he had gotten an appointment for the next morning as the doctors he had seen said that he needed immediate surgery or he would risk losing movement in his thumb. this turned out, as you will read, to be a bit of a misdirection.

I felt much better the next morning and so headed into the hospital (rockland medical center) with aaron for moral support. The first thing they asked for when we got through the door that should have tipped us off to the events that were to transpire was a 5000 rs deposit. Aaron gave it hesitantly and headed into the opd to find his doctor and get ready for surgery. As he tells the story, he awoke a number of hours later post anesthesia to find his hand already casted, when he inquired to his doctor the doctor told him that they decided after they had put him under that he didn’t need surgery after all and they would just set the bone right (which they did in fact) and then cast it up. This seemed all well and good until aaron got the bill, it seemed that even though they hadn’t done any surgery, they had decided that aaron needed to pay for the time that he had been in the surgery room and all of the additional fees associated with surgery a whopping 15,000 rs all told. Needless to say he was livid, but they sent him to the hospital financial goon who laid it out telling him he could either pay or they would call the police. He conceded and we left legs between our tails back to the hotel, and rested up the rest of the evening.

We had gotten our train tickets at some point during all of this, leaving the 19th at 6:40 from new delhi central train station. We had decided to take it easy during the day, so we headed to the everest café at around noon (checkout time from our hotel) for a quick bite. In the everest I had an excellent pad thai and we laid out the day, or the day was laid out for us as it were. We met a girl named katrine (from paris) first and chatted a bit soon enough our group grew by one as a wiry big nosed fellow named ed came in. he was from Scotland and spoke with a brazen and excited Scottish brogue. After a good bit of chiding about we all decided to head to a hooka bar about half an hour away, and enjoy a better atmosphere, a hooka and a few drinks. A great way to end a raw couple of days. The result of this excursion was me and aaron rushing hurriedly to our train, we barely skirted in arriving at our platform a light two minutes before departure and settled in having left ed and katrine to their own delhi devices.what followed was a blinding 36 hour jaunt down to Chennai. this was almost pleasant though, as the memory of the busride was still heavy in my mind. The scenery was beautiful and the people pleasant.

This bring us to yesterday, we arrived in Chennai at 6:30 in the morning of the 21st got a quick breakfast, and wanting to be done with our travels in one stint immediately caught another bus (a four hour gig) over to tiruvanamalai. This bus ride was much more pleasant, although packed, we had Aarons big backpack slung across our laps and another person squeezed into the seat next to us. We passed through beautiful countryside, people living in thatch roof huts no different than they had for hundreds of years, brahma bulls littered the streets, with their huge horns painted different exotic colors doing various kinds of work. We finally arrived around noon to Aarons home, stopping briefly for a quick bite and coffee at ute and Volker. The rest of the day we spent relaxing, although we took a couple of hours to head to the arunai orphanage. The children were great fun to hang out with, I helped them with their homework while aaron and babu discussed things with a prospective donor and then finally we headed in for the night.

Tiru will be an entirely different time than what we have been doing for the trip so far, this morning we woke, showered and headed in for chanting with ma devaki at the yogi ramsuratkumar ashram, an experience in itself they had me lead a chant as apparently they like to stir up the newcomers, it felt much different than chanting in the U.S. Ma Devaki has a certain way that she likes to do things, and wouldn’t hesitate to stop someone that had started a chant if it wasn’t the chant that she wanted sung next. At one point during the chanting a giant cockroach looking thingy made a beeline for me from across the room, I turned it away with a quick flick but it left me a bit unsettled as after it had made a beeline for me it went to the direct center of a casting of the yogis feet on a lotus flower….i think I may have flicked the yogi away from me after chanting was a giant meal, free for any that had come. It will if nothing else be much cheaper staying down here.


these bowls are for cooking rice according to aaron, the bigger one the size of a hot tub.


where the rice for said bowls come from


a few water buffalo doing their thing in mud wallow on the side of the train tracks


maybe this is what flagstaff looked like in the beginning...a conglomeration of tents sprung up next to a railway.


this lady didnt look very happy about anything, i dont blame her, she was a beggar at some train station about 12 hours into our trip down to chennai


this fellow looked a little happier about his situation, he was also at the same trainstation...i will call him the firebaba

the next couple are for the aesthetists....










a brahma doing some work