Manali Missives, Christmas 2013
On Travel in India
Travelling in India is filled with amazing experiences. At any one time there are more people moving around this vast country than many nations have citizens. The logistics of transporting this shifting multitude across a land at least as diverse as all of Europe, with 16 major languages, hundreds of dialects and enormous variations in culture and socio-economic status, are enormous. That, allied with the constant challenge of providing adequate transport infrastructure for a swiftly growing population, and the equally evident resourcefulness of Indians engaged in businesses dependent upon the transport industry, and you have a recipe for fascinating memories. The distinctive call of the chai wallahs selling tea through open windows to train passengers at stations; dried, cracked rice paddies stretching out into the heat haze at the height of summer; creeping through Delhi’s interminable satellites cities and suburbs towards Nizamuddin Station, where I (David) once saved an elderly woman and her son from toppling down the enormous escalator…
My earliest memory of India is of landing at Madras International Airport on the first day of 1977, staring through the aircraft’s porthole and seeing, side by side, a statue of a dancing, multi-armed goddess and a soldier standing rigidly at ease (if one can be rigidly at ease), holding a bayoneted 303 rifle, his skinny legs sticking out from under his enormous Bombay bloomers.
“OK,” I thought. “This place is going to be different.”
And so it has proved! There followed the first of many queueing experiences, on this occasion to run the gauntlets of Customs and Immigration. Though in the middle of the night and the Tamil version of winter it was still stiflingly warm. Much has changed in the intervening years, however. Visas are now easily obtained. In Australia processing has been outsourced to a private company, and apart from tight security the whole process of passing through Indian airports proceeds smoothly in both directions.
A couple of years ago I flew internally in India for the first time. That several nimble, keen young airlines now compete with Indian Airlines (the state-owned corporation that recently merged with Air India), and the union government’s emphasis upon providing modern airports in major centres have contributed to a great improvement in Indian aviation, though also, unfortunately, to the nearly ubiquitous air pollution. I’m amazed at the size of the market, too. A number of the young professionals I’ve spoken with seem as au fait with, even as casual about flying as young westerners.
A few days after landing in Madras that first time I had my first experience of Indian buses. My travelling companion and I undertook the three hour journey to Vellore, where we investigated the famous Christian Medical College and Hospital, and Schieffelin Leprosy Research & Training Centre at nearby Karigiri. While we worried about the placement of our packs, tied tenuously to the roof of the bus, our fellow-travellers were fascinated by my Rubik’s Cube, then all the rage in western countries. Those buses, inevitably overcrowded and underpowered, sounded as though they were setting land speed records, but when I later lived for some months at Karigiri I was able to tailgate them between the two centres on my Indian bicycle. Once again, much has changed. These days the drivers of high-powered Volvos and Mercedes Benzes often do seem to be trying to set records, or at least keep up with difficult schedules, on narrow, hectically overcrowded roads, between major centres. Even local buses have more power than they used to. Passing another bus with centimetres to spare and both travelling at more than 100kph is not for the faint-hearted. Inevitably, and despite Indian drivers’ acute sense of space and where other vehicles are in relation to their own, accidents are frequent.
Despite the recent commissioning of the INS Vikrant, the nation’s first aircraft carrier, India is not known as a maritime nation. It does, however, have a long coastline, and I have good memories of boat trips here too. My first was a 24 hour trip on the deck of a steamer from Goa to Bombay, also in 1977. The weather was balmy, the food was simple, Indian and adequate, and the surroundings and company were never less than fascinating. Once in Bombay we headed to the offshore Elephanta Caves, during which ride I had my first, bewildering exposure to the whole system of philosophy, religion and life that is Hinduism.
“We believe in 33 million gods”, my teacher explained. “But actually, we believe in only 3 gods, Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Sustainer and Shiva the Destroyer. Then again, we believe in one god. Or if you will, you can believe in no gods at all.”
Trained, as all westerners are, to be a dualist, to understand that A is not B, I had no way to respond to such nonchalant monism.
“OK,” I thought again, “it might take some time to understand this…”
But it’s the famous Indian railway system that has left the greatest impression on me. For patriotic Indians the British legacy is mixed, but most I have spoken with on the matter are grateful for the railway system that has bound Bharat together. Many hours spent at close quarters with diverse travel companions have provided me with an invaluable Indian education. Travelling, over many years, by second class in compartments with three tiers of bunks has enabled spending time and even bonding with a whole array of characters who have wanted to practise their English, share their opinions and insights about their country, culture and religion, or get to know me. One of my all-time favourite memories is of tag teaming with my son to discuss with two Muslim passengers why Christians believe that God allowed His Son to die. For Muslims it is of course impossible that God could have a son, and Jesus’ (Isa’s) death on the cross was such a terrible dishonour that they don’t believe it happened. But Lena reported that other passengers in the carriage were translating the conversation to their fellows. Such an honour!
Of course not all my experiences of travel in India have been positive. I remember trying desperately not to stare in horror at a beggar, whose selling point was the dead Siamese twin emerging from his chest, plying his “trade” in the bus I’d boarded. We’ve had luggage robbed, I’ve had soft drink snatched, been hit by a stone thrown by a “trainspotter” and had a piece of soot lodge so firmly in my eye that it required a visit to a Sikh ophthalmologist to remove. I’ve slept on a carriage floor, sitting upright on a huge bag of hemp (rope!) outside a toilet, and across 2 top bunks 2 metres off the floor. Twice I’ve spent a night on railway platforms, having miscalculated a journey. The second occasion resulted in me catching a 6am bus to meet my worried friends, hemmed in by many small village women taking baskets of live chickens and other produce to market! Years later I re-visited the same friends, who delightedly drove me to the scene of my mistake!
But even seemingly negative experiences contribute to the great tapestry of travel in India. In 2007 Lena, her sisters and their families travelled by private vehicle to Seja, the remote village in the central state of Madhya Pradesh where their parents had worked for 15 years. A mid-journey refreshments break drew a crowd of at least 50 young men whose stares indicated unabashedly that they hadn’t seen many blonde women before. When we resumed the journey several followed, worryingly, on motorbikes. But my fears were unfounded. They turned out to be very pleasant; one even let me ride his machine.
That set off something in me. Until then I hadn’t driven or ridden a powered vehicle in India, but had been “chauffeured" everywhere, from being seated in the Guyanese ambassador’s vehicle to an annual Republic Day parade in Delhi, to hitching a ride on the back of a lorry in rural Andhra Pradesh. But within a couple of years I was back in Andhra, riding a borrowed motorbike from the port city of Visakhapatnam to my old haunt, the leprosy hospital in Salur, and back, In so doing I fulfilled a “bucket list wish” to ride a motorbike up the main street of Salur to the hospital. There had been significant improvement to the road network in 23 years to cope with the explosion in numbers of motor vehicles; part of my journey was along the dual carriageway that now links India’s major cities. But the major value of that trip was in learning the unwritten road rules that pertain in this country. Keep sounding the horn, especially when approaching points of constriction, to let others know where you are! Just because it’s dual carriageway don’t assume you won’t meet something - a bullock cart, or a tractor, or a family on a moped - coming straight at you as they take a shortcut from one side of the highway to the other! And most basically, the traffic is of bewildering variety, travels at all sorts of speeds, and drivers are, in the main, considerate. The experience was a lot of fun!
It’s just as well I think that because my ecological project with the Amritsar Diocese of the Church of North India will require me to drive a lot, largely on narrow, steep, poorly-maintained, landslide-prone Himalayan roads. Several weeks ago Dr Ranjit Christopher, Lady Willingdon Hospital’s administrator, and I travelled by express buses to the diocesan headquarters in Amritsar. There a white Mahindra Scorpio Hawk, a locally manufactured SUV purchased by Amritsar Diocese with money donated by UnitingWorld, the overseas division of the Uniting Church in Australia, to be used for my project, was waiting. The Scorpio is well-made and admirably designed for local conditions. We returned in it via Chandigarh, India’s richest, most orderly city, where “Christo” shopped for the hospital and I for furnishings for our flat in Manali.
One good thing about driving back to Manali ourselves was that we had our fate partially in our own hands! Although it was night the return trip went well until we approached the border between the states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Suddenly National Highway 21 was transformed into a dry creek bed! The traffic bunched into a line of bucking, twisting trucks, buses, passenger vehicles and motorbikes, each searching for the smoothest way through, and to overtake slower-moving vehicles while avoiding oncoming traffic. As each vehicle kicked up a curtain of fine, ubiquitous Indian dust that diffused the lights of that traffic the scene reminded me of a World War II convoy of ships in a fierce storm. Having negotiated that section of wrecked road we continued to the town of Swarghat, just in Himachal Pradesh. Christo instructed me to put my lights onto high beam, drive in the centre of the road and not to slow down. I thought we must have entered a bandit-infested area. We had not: Christo feared that because the Scorpio was registered in Punjab, Himachali toll collectors were likely to charge steep tolls if they noticed us! Having avoided this peril too I drove on deeper into the Himalayas, learning local driving tricks on the job by tailing a manically descending and overtaking lorry. With hands, feet, eyes and brain ceaselessly in motion, I was filled with exhilaration by this form of driving, so different from anything I’ve done before.
By 1am Christo was at the wheel. The traffic had disappeared and we were singing revival hymns in harmony when we were stopped by 5 policemen. Again my concern was unfounded. When Christo explained that we were delivering a new vehicle for the use of the Mission Hospital in Manali the lead officer immediately nodded in understanding and waved us on. That was my best indication yet of the regard in which Lady Willingdon Hospital is held. Christo tested out the Scorpio on the narrow mountain road with some fast precision driving, and it responded wonderfully well, getting us back to Manali by 3am.
A couple of weeks later I was one of the designated drivers and Lena one of the doctors for a weekend expedition to Jibhi and Gadagushani, two remote, Himalayan villages somewhat south of Manali. At Jibhi there is a complete, though little used hospital; at Gadagushani a clinic. The driving was even more hazardous than the trip back from Amritsar had been. The roads were rougher and narrower, and frequently resembled 4 wheel drive tracks clinging to the sides of precipices. For many kilometres I rarely shifted beyond second gear. The views, as you might expect, were…well…Himalayan! My main learning was how to negotiate passing oncoming buses and trucks on a one lane mountain road with a wall on one side and a precipice on the other!
As a designated driver I had little to do at Gadagushani once the medical team sprang into action, so I took photos. One scene that particularly struck me was of two women bearing enormous loads of hay. Having rested on their loads in the open field in which the clinic was situated they stood up and, slowly and methodically, walked across the steep slope into the distance. “Shanks pony”: that was the main form of travel for ordinary people in Jesus’ time, and for Jesus Himself. In this land of Mahatma Gandhi, and despite India’s swift development it still is for probably the majority of Indians to this day.
The whole issue of transport highlights and symbolises the quandary that development places nations in. Without adequate transport systems it is impossible to improve people’s lots. Road, rail and air transport infrastructure facilitate access, communications, commerce and promote many benefits, but they are hugely expensive, financially and ecologically. Governments tend to think first of military needs. Like the Romans did the Indians are developing a network of roads to move troops and supplies quickly to areas of threat. In a massive venture a 9 kilometre long tunnel is currently being built under nearby Rohtang Pass, the 4,000 metre high gateway to India’s far north and the Chinese border that is blocked by snow for at least 6 months each year. But like the German autobahns transport infrastructure can be a derivative blessing for civilian populations as well. The Rohtang Tunnel is likely to help people living in the remote north for whom those same snows prevent access to medical treatment and other necessities of life. On the other hand, once access is granted the newly mobile middle class are likely to join western tourists, infusing wealth into local economies but polluting and introducing a way of life foreign to that of the locals.
My most creative responses to this quandary thus far have been to use India’s excellent mobile network and commonly available, cheap wi-fi hotspots as much as possible for communicating, thus minimising the need to travel for face to face meetings, and to purchase a mountain bike. One day in June or July in the next 3 years I intend to join a group of cyclists who will cycle over Rohtang Pass and onwards for 400 kilometres to Lei, the capital of Ladakh. In the meantime, in lieu of trains I have four means of transport with which to traverse this great landscape: buses, Shadowfax II, the white Mahindra Scorpio SUV, The Green Machine Merida Matts mountain bike…and, best of all for climbing mountains, Shanks Pony! And I can also join Bishop Samantaroy’s annual motorbike ride for peace one year.
There are donkeys in Manali, but I don’t propose to put one of them to the same use as Joseph and Mary did. Just as the famed Roman roads of that period of history facilitated the spread of the good news of the birth, life, death and resurrection of their son Jesus I believe that we should also today use the technological means available to us to reach people with that same message, and with the practical help that so many people in this part of the world badly need. The discipline will be to do this while at the same time maintaining rigorous environmental protection. Is this possible? That is one of the fundamental questions my project will address.
May you and your loved ones be richly blessed this Christmas.
David & Lena Reichardt
Lady Willingdon Hospital
Manali, Kullu Dist., H.P. 175131
India
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