Hot and dusty in Coimbature plus a few unnecessary things in the backpack.
On safari at Bandipur National Park
A day and a night on the Indian Railways
Not feeling so good today. I think I ate some apples yesterday that have upset my guts.
Yesterday I took an eight hour boat ride through the back water canals in Kerala. I nearly missed the boat. I always play these games with myself, should I catch a rickshaw? But then there’s no rickshaw to be found. So, it becomes Or should I just walk swiftly for twenty minutes and if I still haven’t found/arrived at the end place then should I catch a rickshaw? It’s no different than when I walk home from the Financial District back towards Pacific Heights. And there’s no bus down at Embarcadero so I decide to just walk up Sacramento Street rather than sit patiently and wait at the bus stand. Because if I wait at the bus stand I’m wasting time and not DOING anything. The Number 1 bus never shows up when I want it to so I walk up Nob Hill past the Fairmont suddenly accelerating from feeling cold and damp to hot and sticky and feeling asthmatic. And before I can stop it, the bus wheezes past me heaving and groaning from side to side, a big white capsule of a Got Milk ad. And I debate again whether to sit and wait or to walk and catch the bus on the way. I never sit and wait.
Before
long I had five minutes to find the boat jetty. I tried to run but it’s
awkward with a backpack on my back and a pack on my arm. Dum-dum, from
side to side. The rickshaw drivers stared at me. (They hang out together,
leaning against the noses of their rickshaws, arms crossed, staring into
the street, Ah-low! Ah-low!) I knew what they were thinking. The same
thing I think when I see a woman in her skirt and heels running alongside
the Express bus in the morning, hoping to catch it. I couldn’t stop sweating
either. The sweat was getting into my eyes (a salty, grimy sting). I had
a wad of toilet paper in my hand that I used to pat my forehead but the
paper had gone all bitty.
The guys along the canal started walking alongside of me, telling me to stop running. Don’t rush! Don’t rush. No run! One of the rickshaw drivers had gone up ahead and stopped the boat. The ferry pulled over to the side of another boat further along the canal and I crawled through it.
The coast line of Kerala is criss-crossed with canals. They’re picture perfect. Coconut trees lean over the water, the houses have thatched roofs, herons and egrets and kingfishers laze around, and the only sound is the thwap-thwap of women smacking wet clothes against the steps into the canals. It’s green like Kauai is green. Drippy green. Banana tree green. Kerala gets two monsoons a year.
Eight hours
is a long time on a boat trip. Particularly with classroom seats. It rained
for most of the trip so we were all forced to sit inside. It was the first
time since I’ve been in India that I’ve been with other tourists. There
were about 25 of us, a mixture of Indian tourists and Westerners. I spent
most of the time watching the others. One couple turned out not to be
a couple. At least, that was my guess after a few moments of watching
them. The young woman (she was beautiful and remarkably chic looking in
her espadrilles and pencil skirt) kept twisting her ponytail around her
fingers every time the fellow sitting next to her spoke. She’d roll the
hair between her index and forefingers. 
My
school friend Heather used to do this when she was annoyed or suspicious
about a situation. The girl also kept leaning into the wall, away from
the guy, and playing with her ring. And itching her face, her arms, flick
flick. He kept uncrossing and crossing his legs, and would look down past
his feet every time Diane (I later ended up finding a hotel with the girl)
spoke as if to suggest he was contemplating every word she uttered. Flick,
flicked her hair. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were going to hook
up. I can’t think of any other phrase for it. Hook up. Yuck. He looked
keener than she did. Plus, his shorts were sweatpants that were cut off.
They didn’t seem to work with her pencil skirt.
As it turned out, the young woman was called Diane. She is half French (17eme arr. in Paris) and half American (Morristown, NJ). Diane has spent the last few months at a charity school in Hyderabad, part of an internship for her second year of studying politics at university in France. She is spending a month travelling through southern India on her own before heading back to her final year in school. The guy she was sitting next to is a teacher from Britain. He’s spent the last few months traveling through Iran, Pakistan, Nepal and is now working his way through India before heading up on to Australia and Japan. He has found Iran the friendliest country.
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