The Narmada gives a spiritual significance to all the settlements on its banks, but Omkareshwar is more special because of its river island whose shape resembles the mystical syllable Om (ॐ), that gives the town its name.
The concept of Om is of great dharmic significance and the tendrils of its meaning spread through the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain cultures, but it can be usefully defined as ‘the absolute’.
Omkareshwar thus attracts many pilgrims who come to circumambulate the island’s circuit of temples and to bathe in the river, whose level here has in recent years been sadly depleted by a massive dam resembling an alien spaceship straddling the valley just upstream.
Richie and I arrived in the bustling mid-afternoon and checked in to an extremely basic and flimsy concrete-box hotel room. There was an antique evaporative air cooler built into the wall. This pharaonic technology propels air through a mat of wet straw or bamboo and evaporation cools the outflow.
It’s an effective process, but the banshee screeching of our unit’s bone-dry fan and the hideous gurgling of its tubercular water pump drowned out the street noise - no mean feat in an Indian town.
Other amenities in our room were just as archaic. Richie recoiled from the squat toilet and bucket shower like a flapper femme fatale in a silent horror movie. But I didn’t notice him recoiling from the six-euro nightly tariff.
The plan was to spend a few days kicking (further) back and exploring Omkareshwar. Our onward journey, though, was less clear, but the next stop at Bandhavgarh National Park was determined, and we needed to figure out how to get there. Conducting online research in a local travel agency was a memorable experience.
Oh hey 128k dialup that continually disconnects! Long time no see, decrepit Win2K machine that hasn’t been defragged in twelve years! You look splendid in low-res, toolbar-laden malware-bloated IE6 sucking up 78% of CPU! - And great to catch up, incredibly frustrating Indian Railways timetable website whose logic requires chess grandmaster status to comprehend!
All these together at last; great fun in forty-degree heat. What fun it must have been to navigate India in the Hippy Trail days. After grappling with this killer combo for a few hours we found that it had become necessary to leave Omkareshwar early the next morning for the town of Khandwa, there to catch a train to the city of Jabalpur, there to catch another train to the village of Umaria, there to take a rickshaw the final 50km to the tiger park.
It was unfortunate that our time was cut short. Although not as pleasant or accessible as Maheshwar, Omkareshwar is an interesting and atmospheric town. Its hills and river bridges and its pilgrims, sadhus and mendicants reminded me of Rishikesh - or rather of how Rishikesh might have been before the Beatles rolled through in 1968 and left the place like a Hindu Disneyland.
So we spent what remained of that evening walking the winding paths of the Om island, past the never-ending stalls hawking religious icons, tacky souvenirs and flower garlands, and ended up eating dinner at an empty backpackers’ hostel whose grateful one-eyed proprietor sent his boy on a ten-minute run through the twisting backstreets to fetch bottles of soda water to go with our lime juice.
***
Khandwa to Jabalpur
We drove through total darkness for hours before the sun rose. Night driving in India is unnerving on country roads, but on the highways it becomes truly terrifying. Oncoming trucks blinded us with their high beams, swerving to a random side in the seconds before collision. Convoys travelling in our direction left eight inches of space between their bumpers so, when overtaking, we were forced to drive on the wrong side for heartstopping minutes.
India’s infrastructural modernisation proceeds at breakneck speed with scant consideration for local concerns. Without signage or diversions, the traffic must find its own way through the endless roadworks. On the ouskirts of Khandwa our long-suffering driver drove into a dead end and had to weave audaciously in reverse past the heavy machinery.
We’d been generous with our commuting time and arrived at Khandwa Junction before 7am - several hours before the earliest scheduled arrivals. I purchased a couple of unreserved cattle-class tickets to Jabalpur. As we sat on the deserted platform waiting for the omelette-wallahs to arrive and fire up their kerosene burners I decided to seek the advice of the mighty Deputy Station Manager.
This was a tall and languid middle-aged dandy whose orange hennaed hair and moustache jarred offensively with his snow-white suit and shoes. He sat behind a heavy wooden desk in a small room whose every surface was piled high with boxes and ledgers and files and other accoutrements of Indian bureaucratic authority.
Despite clearly having nothing to do, it being 7am, he waved me away dismissively with a vague recommendation to take the second train to Jabalpur, due to pass several hours after the first.
A group of young off-duty Indian Railways employees arrived and countered this advice. *All* the eastbound services were full, they said; crammed with labouring Biharis returning from Bombay to their native state for a brief summer holiday. Best to just board any passing train and haggle for an upgrade, paying no more than Rs150 per person to the conductor.
So when the first train arrived we jumped onto a sleeper carriage that was unbelievably jammed. Families squeezed eight to a bench and single men in plastic sandals carpeted the filthy floor. Children played and slept atop baggage heaped on the upper berths.
Richie and I stood swaying and sweating in the aisle for a couple of hours until our fellow passengers began to take pity. First they offered to stow our bags behind their heads and under their kids. Then they found room where there was none, and allowed us to perch on the edge of their seats.
The woman beside me wore many golden bangles and many golden earrings, one of which was attached with a golden chain to a golden nose stud. Shuffling to make a tiny space, she crossed her legs and unfolded a banana leaf upon which she began dextrously to chop onions, tomatoes and chillies into chaat for her family.
***
A group of hijras moved through the carriage. “Gays, gays,” dismissed the woman beside me.
Often erroneously defined as ‘eunuchs’, a better term would be ‘transsexuals’, although some hijras campaign to be recognised as a third sex. The word derives from the Arabic root hjr, ‘to leave one’s tribe,” from which also comes the Arabic hijra, signifying Mohammed’s journey in exile from Mecca to Medina.
Despite an established culture dating back to the Kama Sutra, and despite favourable mention in both the Ramayana (in which the community is blessed by Ram) and the Mahabharata (wherein Krishna assumes female form in order to marry a man), South Asian hijras are perceived as a lowly caste and are traditionally isolated from mainstream society.
Much blame for this can be directed at the late British Raj which, with its social arrogance and hysterical conservatism, criminalised the hijra. Although these laws were repealed very soon after Indian independence, the stigma had after a hundred years become intransigent.
Some hijras earn a living by ceremonial performance (or rather to depart promptly from the ceremony once their part has been played), but many more resort to sex work, and the community as a whole is often subject to prejudice and persecution ranging from the vocal to the violent.
The small group in our bogey comprised a strikingly beautiful teenager in a yellow sari, with piercing green eyes and a determined and graceful articulation, who was clearly the star of the show. S/he was followed by two plump ladies in blue and green, and a shambling and sniggering man in late middle age, with an obvious mental disability, who compulsively drew a pink veil across the grey stubble on his cadaverous face.
Moving through our carriage the hijras flirted aggressively with the younger male passengers, touching them around the face and (presumably) shaming them with coarse talk. Although they tried their best to avoid eye contact and remain studiously ignorant, most of the male passengers contributed paper money - as did many women.
Despite clearly being the richest pickings in attendance Richie and I were bypassed without a glance, which I thought unfortunate. To this day I regret not asking them if they would allow me to take photos in exchange for a donation, but my camera was buried deep in my bag.
***
A while later the oppressed train conductor discovered us goras. He beckoned me to fill out multiple forms and pay Rs300 for a bench along the aisle from which I believe (with shame) a couple of lower-paying passengers had been evicted. There Richie and I lay head to foot for the next five hot hours until arrival at Jabalpur.
***
Bowling in a rickshaw through the roasting city we found our chosen hotel to be full, so we checked in to the next option. A wedding was taking place downstairs, and gangs of associated children shrieked through the corridors on a sugar high.
After venturing out to obtain snacks and booze, Richie and I sequestered ourselves in the blissful windowless cool of our air-conditioned room and spent the afternoon taking a break from India in the company of James Bond. Later we went to eat in a restaurant filled with portly middle-class families sucking up mountains of pistachio ice-cream.
Early next morning at Jabalpur station we strode illegitimately into the first-class ‘retiring’ room and awaited the train to Umaria and the national park. I went outside for a smoke and was accosted by the pink-veiled hijra from the day before. He pursued me hooting and grabbing drunkenly at my crotch. A crowd gathered and the auto-wallahs laughed coarsely but good-naturedly from their rank.
After a few hours our train arrived at Umaria and we had no choice but to stump up the Rs500 for a 45-minute rickshaw ride to the national park. The road was nicely tarmaced by the state government right up to the park gates, where responsibility for its upkeep fell to the forestry authority, and its quality immediately became abominable.
***
Bandhavgarh
As Dublin boys, Richie and I were amused, after a day’s hard travelling through rural India, to arrive in Tala village, in the remote Bandhavgarh National Park. We were a long way from Tallaght, and the temperature was forty-three degrees Celsius.
It was low season and the local state tourist lodge was operating at 5% capacity. But their grudging discount was so derisory that the nightly charge at the adjoining no-frills guesthouse was exactly equivalent to the difference between their full and discounted rates - so we went for the cheap option.
As Richie slept off the journey, I headed out to meet other travellers, to get the lowdown on the park and its workings, and to find the local English Wine Shop. Drinking Kingfishers at sunset on the rooftop of the Royal guesthouse, I met an incoming safari group.
I was dismayed to learn from them that there were several areas within the park, each served by different entrances. Passing through Gate 1 virtually guaranteed a tiger sighting, but access needed to be arranged months in advance (by fax, naturally) through one of the five-star resorts outside of town. Gates 2, 3 and 4 were for plebeians like us.
It became clear that the only way to get through Gate 1 was to arrive well before dawn and literally beg for a spare seat in one of the jeeps in the queue. So we resolved to do just that.
Arriving at Gate 1 at 5am the next morning we found Indian bureaucracy to be alive and well. Waving their daily permits, a mob of local drivers jostled and clamoured to be authorised by an ancient official behind a single tiny office window. All the other Indians squatted around drinking tea and smoking. The poncy five-star guests sat bolt upright in their jeeps gently stroking their giant cameras.
We approached some of the more empty jeeps and offered to pay handsomely for a space. This was an interesting experience. Perhaps it brought us closer to the lives of those destitute Indians outside railway stations who shove malnourished children in one’s face and make heartbreaking hungry-mouth gestures.
Some of the five-star crowd merely ignored us with incredible arrogance. Others waved us away without looking. So rude and nasty! Most of the rest - mainly Indians - tried to explain that “the driver wasn’t allowed to take anyone else.” Bullshit: the driver does what he’s told and gets some extra baksheesh.
There were only five of us looking for a space, and there were at least fifteen free spaces in the queued jeeps. But we got nowhere, two mornings in a row. Astounded by this lack of charity from fellow travellers, we gave up and went through Gate 2.
Three days, three jeep safaris, and not a sniff of a cat, although we were tantalised by tiger and leopard tracks fresh in the sand. We also saw some rare deer and fancy birds. But the most memorable creature we encountered was a caricature of a German woman who we named Leni Riefenstahl.
Leni was a stylish but slightly manic photographer in her late middle age, travelling solo. Without asking, we soon learned her pedigree: she’d visited Bandhavgarh, and most other wildlife parks in India, many times, aside from other far-flung expeditions to Africa and Indonesia. I resisted the urge to ask her why with all this experience she had failed to gain admittance through Gate 1 and had to beg for a seat alongside rubes like Richie and me.
On our first safari she sat in the front and noticed that our teenage driver was very tired. "Aha, mein freund, I see zat you are sleeping!” she roared, “But we come to see tigers, yes? So, let us go!" And then she fell asleep herself, almost immediately, as if she’d been shot dead, and her dyed-blonde head in its wrap-around shades and designer scarf bobbed obscenely close to the gearstick.
When we got back she flayed the poor boy for having been five minutes late that morning. With him still within earshot she turned to us and bellowed, "I tell him, not five fifteen AM, not five AM, but four forty-five AM you vill be here! And he is laughing!" She threw her head back, "Kha, kha, kha! And he says Oh! Kay! And actually his head is waggling! But I say, you must tell zese people many times, or zey are not listening!”
She had a point. She also twitched around the face.
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