In the past 24 hours (Saturday night 10:00 PM - Sunday night 10:00 PM) I have been to the Western Ghats, slept outside an elephant reserve, ate street corn and a street carrot, got whipped in the face with a horses tail, saw the most beautiful scenery in all of India, as well as the most bizarre, and jammed to '90's music through most of it.
Let's begin on Saturday. Two boys and myself had been planning on traveling to Ooty for the whole week. They had told me that not only was it absolutely gorgeous, but it was where many Bollywood movies where shot. Needless to say, I was sold.
First things first, I googled the town to get the low down, see if it was worth the trip. Everything checked out, and I then googled bus tickets, bus leaves at 10:18 Saturday night, 8.5 hour trip. Perfect.
Then comes Saturday. Suddenly our trip of 3 people had grown to about 11. We had no real idea who was going, I just knew when we had to leave and where our destination was. Come 8:30 when we were all supposed to move out, Hari, Aleisha, and myself were told that we were not taking a bus to Ooty. In the passed couple of hours it had been decided that we were now taking a van, it would be 1050 Ruppees each (the bus ticket was 300), and we were leaving at 10:00. Okay. What could we do though? It’s India! I just went with the flow.
In true India fashion our driver didn’t show up till 10:45, I didn’t quite mind, I had just taken a Benydryl I expected to be out within the hour. What I did not expect, however, was that India loves speed bumps. See, in order for the Bangalore police force to do as little work as possible in enforcing the speed limit, the city instead puts literally thousands of speed bumps throughout and around the city. The benydryl may have made me incredibly drowsy, but every speed bump left my wide-eyed and confused. Every. Single. Speed bump.
If the speed bumps were not hell bent on denying me sleep, the 1998 Britney Spears in Hawaii video proved even more determined. At some point between Bangalore and Mysore the movie changed to Ratatouille then to Meet the Robinsons. Thankfully, the movie cut off close to the end, finally leaving us with a fair amount of silence.
I had no idea what time it was, about a week ago I decided to abandon the luxury of knowing the time, and opted out for merely knowing in passing or simply not knowing at all. All I know is that it was extremely dark outside when we drove up to a closed gate. I realized that it was extremely late when the van backed up. I realized that I would not be sleeping ever when the van was shut off and the driver dozed off.
Manny Moon, our beloved Hispanic study abroad bhai, somehow interpreted that we were outside of an elephant reserve and the gate would not be open till 6:00 AM. He assured us that this “is a once in a lifetime experience” and that “this is unlike any slumber party” that he has ever been too. Those comforting words helped me fall asleep immediately.
Unfortunately I didn’t. Did I mention that we stopped around 3:30? For 2 and a half hours I had to somehow situate myself in an uncomfortable van seat that though reclined, somehow always ended up in the upright position in 2 minutes time.
During the 8-14 minutes that I estimate I slept, I had a strange dream about being on the van. Looking back, it may or may not have been a dream – the dream was about the van we were currently in. I think I was just hoping it was to trick myself into thinking that I slept.
When I did “wake up” I saw Manny outside with about 6 Indian people. I mumbled that Manny had run of with some guys, but no one responded, In actuality I probably A. mumbled the words so low rendering them unrecognizable or B. said it in my head – I was slowly losing touch with reality. I knew that sleep was not an option, so I grabbed my camera and followed Manny. I found him surrounded by around 15 people, who subsequently asked for me to take their picture with Manny. Suddenly he was surrounded by 20+ Indians all posing thug life style.
After the picture we peaced out immediately. The sun was rising so it had to have been around 6:00, we still had another 10 minutes but we needed to be ready…and away from the group of people who were now following me.
The early mornings in Karnataka/Tamil Nadu Elephant reserve was rather beautiful. Seeing the ecological variability was like experiencing an episode of Earth. Laugh if you must but let me explain myself, I’ve seen places like these on television and in National Geography, and it’s an amazing feeling to actually see that places like this do exist. I could hardly believe there existed sites this naturally beautiful and breathtaking. From this moment till the scary Boat Lake in Ooty, I had this reoccurring feeling.
We first went to this lookout that had a gorgeous view of the Ooty. The valley looked like a cross between Switzerland, the smokey mountains, with the colors of India thrown in. It was vast and wonderful. While waiting in line I was asked if someone could get a picture of me, this would happen again and again as the day went on…
Next we traveled to a tea factory, where we also discovered that the strange noise that sounded like our right tire going flat was actually the sound of our right tire going flat. As we went to explore the tea factory our trusty guide changed the tire right quick.
At this point everything sort of went down hill. We ended up at Ooty’s version of a tourist trap. The Thread Garden. This place, and experience, was equivalent to seeing the World Largest Ball of Yarn (why did I capitalize that?), I refused to pay the entrance fee – if they kick me out so be it. They didn’t even ask for it, we were just show a very strange garden that was apparently made out of thread. It looked cool. I wanted to leave.
We couldn’t leave though, the boys had decided to rent paddle boats
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