Over The Counter Culture

Barely a day after posting my diatribe to Indian driving, I decided to set off on a 5 day trek into Goa’s neighbouring state, Karnataka, having been recommended a special spot called Hampi by a fellow traveller in Goa. Hiring a bike proved a little difficult, not simply because it had to be a private bike to travel interstate, but because word had spread that I’d trashed a scooter earlier that week. But in the down season, money moves mountains, and for the princely sum of 350Rs/day (4.50 quid) I had a bike to take me to Hampi - a solid 150cc with new tires, dodgy electrics but most importantly, a decent engine, good brakes and good suspension.

I set off early the next day down the Goan coast, heading inland (east) after about 20km. The Goan roads are mostly new and well tarmacked, and the government has severely limited construction along them; so for the most part they carve through a dense - almost tropical - forest. I’d opted to get off the national highway (NH) road when I turned east, taking a small lane through a nature reserve north of the NH which most local maps didn’t list (but Google Maps did, oddly enough).

What a decision! That 70km leg was the sort you dream of whilst trundling along London traffic - for the most part a well tarmaked single lane winding up and down hills high up above a beautiful lake in undisturbed forestation closing over the road in parts then breaking into sunbathed clearings. The road banked beautifully on turns, the bike having to brake hard into hairpins, then jumping down the next 20-30m open stretch. Ninety minutes passed in the blink of an eye, depsite occasional pauses to admire the scenery when I came to one of several waterfalls lining the road. The pace was good (if a little foolish, due to the clay and broken branches/leaves littering the road, but I was unscathed as I came out).

The rest of the trek to Hampi was an exhausting and monotonous trudge along a rough, straight NH populated by cattle herds, kamikaze public transportation buses, and arsehole industrial truckdrivers, with aggressive and powerful jeeps keeping me on my toes - they were the only vehicle that had the pace to overtake me, or all my focus could have been devoted to the road aead of me and the many, many hazards it can present (see previous post).

– Hell and high water –

I stopped for the night in Gadag, a ‘mere’ 90km from Hampi, as the sun set. I was exhausted, and unwilling to face Indian roads at night with dodgy lights. Gadag is perhaps the worst place I’ve ever set foot in. A dusty, dirty, chaotic truckstop town completely unaccustomed to foreigners - devoid of any appeal whatsoever. The room, smaller than a British prisoner’s cell, had a very odd indian-western ‘fusion’ toilet - the image of someone squatting on one of these, half a meter off the ground, struck me as I showered facing it, and left me feeling dirty despite the cold water scrub. I certainly was dirty - the dust off rocky Indian roads, and the beating sun, had left black and red traces on my sore face that wereundisturbed by the scouring I had attempted. I flicked idly though the 30-odd Hindi channels, mainly bad pop/bangra fusion music TV channels, carbon-copy flashing news stations all constantly announcing ‘breaking news’ with graphics spinning madly off into every corner of the screen, and Bollywood movies of TV dramas. There’s much to love about India but Bollywood is bloody terrible.

The next morning the monsoon struck and rained down hard on me just 1km along from where I set off. The printed maps in my pocket were instantly ruined, the bike stuttered and stalled, progress was slow and potholes hidden - or were believed to be worse than they actually were by the trucks that would swerve suddenly into my path to avoid them. By the time I arrived, my legs were covered in a dull reddish paste from the mud off the road, and everthing was soaking.

To my relief, even under the rain the hotel I was headed to - the Garden Paradise, which the Pole had told me about - was even better than I’d pictured. I stretched out in my steaming socks next to a fire under the treecover along the river on which Hampi was built, and bantered with the other travellers; some French girls, two Oxford undergraduates that we had met in Goa (small world…) and a hippie English couple, as well as the jovial indian hotel owner and his newest employee, the Pole (arrived the previous day).

The Garden Paradise is built on 100m of riverbank that has belonged to the hotel owner’s family for generations. The opposite bank is totally virgin of any construction, the loval government so keen to see it remain so that it dyamited its own brand new bridge just a few years after the previous government had completed its construction (only in India…). The hotel is just a collection of reinforced bamboo huts with ensuite bathrooms, kingsize beds with huge mosquito nets hanging over (a steal at 4 quid a night). The staff is a Nepalese family; as well as being excellent cooks they’re friendly, dilligent and trustworthy.

– Hampi’s extraordinary relics - stone and human –

The next day I set out to see what else Hampi has to offer. I crossed the river by the small motorboat that ferries people across, and rented a mountain bike to head out to the Hanuman temple, a temple perched atop a steep hill inhabited by monkeys. To the other side of the town lie sq km upon sq km of ruins of an ancient breakaway Indian empire that appears to have been particularly fond of building grand stuff. That made for a long, exhausting and sunbaked walk/ride-hitch that afternoon.

The night was spent in the silence and candlelit darkness of a blackout eating tibetan momos and sharing a joint with a crumbling French-speaking Crocodile Dundee type I inadvertently befriended by offering some antibiotics I had lying around to take care of his sniffles. He was a forest ranger (on sick leave with a broken wrist on the mend) hired by the India government on the books to manage India’s sprawling forests and off the books leading a struggle against tiger poachers that have left many of India’s ‘Tiger reserves’ totally devoid of tigers, a fact all backpacker sites and guidebooks alert you to but still manages to elude the (admittedly dwindling) masses of family vacationers who visist India. When pressed to explain what he meant by ‘leading the struggle’ and how it tied in to his upbringing in the Congo (his father was a mercenary general, he claims), he chillingly admitted that he gets paid by the severed hand he or his trainees bring back. Totally silent when eating, a later blackout weirdly prompted him to breakout into French oldie pop music for the benefit of a French pair playing chess on a nearby table, his yellowing teeth twinkling in the candlelight, a bizarre experience that I recorded on the sly on my mp3 placed on the table in the shadow of a pepper pot. The conversation meadered, from global politics to Diana/Al Fayed, forestry to self-immunisation against snakes (by taking in very small quantities of their poison, apparently). The very pleasant (albeit odd) experience was largely repeated, this time with a traditional Indian hash pipe passed round a larger circle of people, the next night; blackouts are almost welcome in a hotel where not a single other building is visible and a river gushes noisily down below the cafe area.

– Dodgy police on the make –

The departure was unremarkable, as was most of the day, spent once again trying to stay alive in the face of ungenerous odds as I covered 200 or so km to the town of Yellapur, before stopping for the night to be well rested for the highlight leg along the lake. Little did I know that the next day, my bike would be gone from outside the hotel and I’d be dealing with a very dodgy police force. Having gone to the station to report the missing bike (after walking around the tiny, pleasant town) I was told they had it, in their impound. Upon asking why, I was informed that it had been towed due to ‘not having the steering lock engaged’. The clincher? A fine of 500 Rs (admittedly only 6 quid, but 3.5 times what I’d paid to stay in a hotel that night - an outrage).

I don’t like dealing with bureaucracy and its enforcer arm, the police. You never know just how much troubled you’re facing. Forcing politeness, I enquired as to what law allows fines for no steering lock. I was told that if I had a problem, I could take it up with the station commander, who was expected in 1hr30. I was keen to get home, but pulled out a book and made myself confortable. A mere 5 minutes later the station suddenly whipped itself into a comical frenzy of shirt-tucking, collar buttoning, back-stiffening and heel-snap saluting as a haughty but young commander strode in, baton under arm and daily paper in hand. I was summoned, explained my situation, upon which I was corrected as to the nature of my crimes - a missing rear number plate. Aghast, I whipped out my camera and showed a photo (taken three days ago but announced as yesterday’s) showing a plate bolted on to the rear. A phonecall to the owner of the bike later (whom I said had ‘lent’ me the bike, a large notice on the insurance docs clearly stating no cover for rentals) and I was dismissed.

I later learnt, whilst a photocopy of my passport was taken as a matter of routine (compensated for my time by biscuits, tea and false smiles from the very same officers who had pressured me for a crisp yellow 500 note) that the station commander, several years their junior despite his age and rigour, had taken charge just yesterday!

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Lifestream. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.