my weekend: road trippin', srisailam, naxalites, cinderellas, mainland china, whiplash

I had a fantastic weekend, but that's probably because I have a morbid sense of humor and take pleasure in ridiculous and random occurrences. We left for Srisailam at six a.m. on Saturday, with the intention of spending the night there and returning today. The journey was initially uneventful; I managed to sleep for an hour or too, until the bumpiness of the roads jarred me awake too violently. We had fun listening to Indian music and making pleasant conversation, occasionally interrupted by fear of death as our driver would attempt to pass motorcycles by playing chicken with oncoming buses.

After we entered the boundary of the restricted area containing the nature preserve, we happened upon a group of men carrying what looked like AK47s who were surrounding the recently-burned-out shell of a bus. It turned out that the dudes with guns were policemen (out of uniform), and that the bus had been blown up by a bomb in the road the night before. The crater was probably three feet across, and was about fifty yards past the bus; it looked like the bus had caught fire from the bomb, but had enough momentum to carry it another fifty yards before coming to a stop across the middle of the road. The policemen who stopped our car asked our driver about his cellphone (which didn't have reception); we found out later that they weren't worried about our safety, but rather didn't have a radio of their own, and they wanted to use our phone to report that they had just found another bomb in the hill above the road.

We occasionally have major communications issues with the drivers, who speak rather limited English; our driver told us that the bus had been blown up by Naxalites (a violent Communist group that likes to blow things up), but that no one had been hurt because they had asked everyone to get off the bus first. This seemed a little shady, since as I said above, the bus had clearly been moving when it had gone over the bomb, and it seemed unlikely that a driver would voluntarily let everyone else get off the bus and then drive full-speed over a bomb by himself. We told him that we wanted to turn around if it was dangerous, but he assured us that we'd be fine. Since we had to assume that he didn't have a personal deathwish, we continued on our journey. We found out later from Ismail, the head driver who speaks better English and tends to be well-informed, that the truth was that seventeen people had been killed in the blast, and that the Naxalites had blown up the bus in an attempt to block the road while they carried out an attack on the police station in the nearby town.

I knew that the Naxalites are a problem in India, but I hadn't realized that they are operating within four hours of Hyderabad. I'm not concerned about it, since they're targeting government officials rather than tourists or foreigners, but it made us all slightly nervous.

The drive, however, was beautiful, and we stopped to take pictures at the dam over the river Krishna. But, when we arrived at the hotel that we were supposed to stay in, we were told that there were no rooms. We couldn't get clarification at the time, but we later found out from Ismail that our rooms had been commandeered by the police. So, we went on to Srisailam, which was another half hour away. The drivers looked for some hotels there, but they were all either completely full, or shady, or both. We finally found one with vacancies that looked decent, but they wanted Rs.2500 for five rooms, plus another Rs.2500 deposit. We knew that they were trying to rip us off (we later found out that the going rate for those rooms is actually Rs.100/room, rather than the Rs.500 they were trying to charge); we also knew that if we gave them a deposit, they would claim that we had damaged the rooms, or the office would be closed, or whatever.

This was another instance of failed communication with the drivers. Sharif was communicating between us and the hotel guy, and at first he was trying to explain to us that the deposit was compulsory and that we had to do it. We kept saying that we refused, and he kept explaining to us that we had to--when suddenly (and none of us could figure out why he changed his mind) he told us that we were getting ripped off and under absolutely no circumstances should we give the hotel another Rs.2500. Since this is what we had been saying all along, it was v. confusing when he started to explain to us that we couldn't give the hotel a deposit.

So, with no place to stay, and no desire to be stuck in Srisailam if the situation was about to get worse, we went to the temple in the heat of midday rather than waiting for the procession at five p.m. The temple was an interesting experience, marred by the fact that none of us knew anything about Hinduism in general or the temple in particular. We paid 100 rupees each to skip the line to see the shrine, which seemed to kinda miss the point of waiting patiently to perform obeisiance to the gods, but then again, they weren't our gods. Still, turning someone else's religion into a tourist activity is a little awkward, although I don't have any problems with non-Christians wanting to see cathedrals in Europe or whatever. The problem was that I didn't understand anything about what the thousands of people in the temple were waiting in line to see; the temple at Srisailam is one of twelve temples in India devoted to Shiva, and apparently this one is one of the most important ones, and traveling to this temple will absolve you of all sins and potentially 'free you from the vicious cycle of life and death' (according to a website I read after the fact). I also didn't get to really see or understand the pinacle of the experience; there was a small room in which some priests or acolytes were burning a flame, and something involving coconuts, and a stone that represents Shiva, but you can only stand in front of the door to the room for three seconds before the guards motion you onward to allow the next worshipper to have three seconds in the proverbial sun. By the time my eyes had focused, I already had to move on.

However, despite my obvious ignorance, it was on the whole a rather powerful experience. The temple at Srisailam has been in existence for almost two thousand years, and the never-ending stream of pilgrims (many of whom had shaved their heads as part of the rituals) was moving. A recorded chant of 'om namah shivayah' played constantly over loudspeakers in the complex, which could help to create a transcendental experience for those so inclined. Also, you can't wear shoes in the temple, which helped me to connect to it, if only because the rocks were superheated in the sun and the pain was a constant reminder of how much this would mean to the worshippers there, even if the religion isn't my own.

The only thing that marred my time there was the fact that we were such a noticeable, large group. It's hard to really focus and understand and experience (although I hate saying that this is an 'experience', it sounds so fake and pretentious) when there are other Americans talking unnecessarily loudly and doing things that just make you cringe as you intuitively feel that they're probably offending the people around you. This wasn't a problem with any of the people I work with directly, since we're all pretty decent people, but it's still hard to have a meaningful experience in a serious place with a large group of people. Despite all that, the temple was awesome (in the awe-inspiring sense of the word, as well as the more modern 'dude, that rules' sense of the word). We couldn't take pictures in the temple, but I did take a picture of the temple itself.

Since we couldn't stay at the hotel that we were supposed to stay at, and since the Naxalites were busy trying to blow things up, we couldn't get the guides that were supposed to take us in jeeps into the nature preserve. So, after spending an hour at the temple, we turned around and came home. We briefly stopped at another small temple to Ganesh on the way home, and stopped again in a village halfway between Srisailam and Hyderabad so that the drivers could take a break. We made it home by seven; it was a long day, fraught with many strange occurrences, miscommunications, and funny situations. However, I am so glad that I went. Despite the Naxalites, the lack of rooms, and my almost-complete ignorance of Hinduism, the temple was definitely worth seeing. I also enjoyed getting out of the city for the first time and seeing the countryside (which was gorgeous despite the lack of water in the last weeks before the monsoon).

We all showered upon returning to the apartments, and then went out for dinner at Mainland China. This was v. welcome; we didn't have lunch, since it's not smart to eat food from roadside restaurants (a lesson reinforced by memories of the terrible food poisoning my father got from the shashlik stand near Kiev), and so I subsisted for the entire day on two poptarts and a few crackers. My second poptart was great; I'd put it in the cargo pocket of my pants, then fallen asleep on it, and the heat from my thigh actually warmed it up almost effectively as a microwave. No one else took me up on my offer to cook them a poptart, however, and so my talents were wasted.

Despite the tastiness of my poptart, I didn't eat much; I also didn't drink much because my fastidiousness doesn't allow me to use a squat toilet more than once in a day. Needless to say, Mainland China was awesome; we ordered tons of food, and most of us had drinks as well (I had a pina colada, which actually tasted like a rum milkshake, and two 'cinderellas', which were a couple of difference juices with rum and an umbrella). We also went out afterwards to a club in the basement of the Taj Krishna; the club was fun, and they played a mix of Indian music and techno (including 'Sandstorm', possibly the best techno song ever). They also played the worst techno song ever--a techno remix of 'California Dreamin' by the Mamas and the Papas. We got home a little after one, I started watching a movie w/one of my roommates, but fell asleep on the couch and missed the last half. Sadness.

Today was much less eventful; brunch at the Taj Krishna, followed by shopping (of course). I checked out a pearl store, and a bookstore, and FabIndia; then, I came home and worked for a few hours. And so, that was my weekend. Lessons learned:

1) Don't let someone else organize a trip for you, particularly if that person does not speak your language fluently.
2) Even more importantly, don't expect to understand what is happening around you if the only English spoken by your driver involves the names of the stores you frequent, and if the only Hindi words you speak are the equivalents of 'hello', 'thank you', and 'go faster'.
3) Poptarts can be slow-roasted with body heat.

Oh yeah, and I also finally learned the meaning of the song 'Rock the Casbah'. In the song, the background is 'Sharif don't like it'. Now, if 'Rock the Casbah' referred to our driver named Sharif, then it would be clear that what Sharif don't like is driving with any sense of prudence or caution. Yesterday was harrowing enough, and that was out in the relative openness of the countryside highway; today, he was the driver who took me and Regina shopping, and I can assure you that riding with him in Hyderabad is even worse. He rear-ended another car while we were out and about; luckily for him, the other car was pretty tall (SUV-like) and so he didn't damage it at all. We were back on the road in less than a minute, after both drivers got out and checked their cars; you apparently don't file a police report here unless one of you is pissed off. However, I think I got some mild whiplash; my back started hurting after the incident, and I've felt nauseous the rest of the day. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow--and between Naxalites, whiplash, and ten hours in a car traversing the Andhra Pradesh countryside, I'm guessing that my week will seem positively boring by comparison.