Lovely Lonavala
Because our weekends have fallen into a rut of sleeping late, puttering around, and maybe going out to eat one night (very pleasant surprise Saturday -- potato gnocchi that melt in the mouth and then explode with garlicky goodness), I keep pestering K to come away with me out of town. As of Friday, I thought we'd be attempting the Matheran trip again, but at the last minute, K, who is trying to do a cat-placement run to the U.S., announced he'd have to attend to some urgent vet-travel-document-business on Saturday. When that all fell through on Saturday, I was pretty annoyed. (I mean, the gnocchi helped, but I was still pretty annoyed.) I told him, in no uncertain terms, that we were going to Lonavala on Sunday.
Sunday, 6:40 AM, K attempted to wake me up.
K: "Get up! We can still make the 8 AM train!"
Me: "Gnnaaagh."
K:"Don't you want to go?"
Me: "Gnnf-uhnh."
K:"Do you really not want to go, or is this one of those things where later you're going to wish you had gone? And maybe blame me for not having gotten you up?"
It occurs to me, sometimes, that perhaps we should break up simply because he knows me frighteningly well.
So, 7-something-ish, we're in a taxi trying to get to Bombay Central station, and the driver is obligingly stopping at every single station en route in the hopes that it's the one we want, and K is trying to pantomime the address, and I'm rather fruitlessly yelling variations on "andiamo!"
We ran into the station, K helpfully informing me that the locals refer to it as "the smelly one," and located the ticket booth. No line! With relief, we presented ourselves to the genial and elderly clerk...who tells us this particular train leaves from Victoria Terminus, across town. We started away from the window, to regroup, when the clerk called K back to the window. There was about forty seconds between each of his words.
Clerk: "You'll...never...get...there...by..."
K: "Yes? Yes??"
Clerk: "...bus....You'll...need...to..."
Me: "take a taxi? Taxi? Ok! Thanks!"
Clerk: "...waa-iiitt..."
K&I: "Taxi! Great! Thanks! Bye!"
We rushed out, somehow missing that the taxi stand was on the other side of the station (perhaps what the clerk was trying to tell us?). A tout poised at the exit asked if we wanted a taxi.
I have a general rule: when you're traveling, never accept services from someone who approaches you. Go interrupt someone going about their business; they have less prep time to put together a scam.
But K doesn't subscribe to my philosophy of life -- more's the pity -- and steered me firmly toward the guy's cab. We got in, he started up, I checked that I had small change (the fare between the stations is approximately 40 Rs), and the guy glanced in the rearview mirror and casually mentioned, "150 Rs."
I dove for the door. Ok, actually I directed a string of abuse at the guy, which I kept up as I dragged K out of the cab and as I slammed the door shut.
I then hopped in another cab, practically waking up the driver, and we were on our way. Except, ten minutes in, I noticed the meter wasn't going up.
I leaned over the front seat. "Something wrong with your meter?"
"No work," the driver said, "by distance. Six km. Use farechart."
Well, that made no sense, but whatever. Fares are done in part by distance. The meters are almost all outdated, except in the more expensive air-conditioned cars. One arrives at the fare by looking up the meter value on a fare conversion chart, which all cabs are required to carry (but which I also do, just to avoid misunderstandings).
We pulled in to Victoria station, with a few minutes before our train was to depart.
"Rs 145," the driver announced.
I released another torrent of vituperative abuse, tossed him the approximate correct fare, and strode briskly off, ignoring his Hindi translations of my sentiments shouted out the window after us as he unfolded the bills.
K and I discussed the ethics a bit as we were chugging toward Lonavala on the bottom bunk of a 3-tiered sleeper car. I realized it was quite a cute little scam the second driver had: tell tourists the fares are by kilometer, and then make a show of looking up the km -- rather than the meter reading -- on the chart. Thus, the rupee value by a reading of "six" would be about 145, except that the meter would never read six unless you'd traveled about 20 km.
K, as usual, accused me of cheapness, which I protest. I tip generously for honest service, and I tip foolishly for service that's both honest and good. I continue to maintain that it's insanity to reward people who set out to prey on you based on your skin color, and even more so in the city in which you live. (I'd liken it to shitting where you eat, but, well, that's fairly common here, too.)
But, we had seats for the whole three-hour train ride, and the temperature kept dropping, and the wind whistled through the open windows, and the scenery progressed from brown to green to really green to mind-blowingly green, and the shy and polite boys sitting opposite us offered sweets, and we kept going through tunnels only to abruptly emerge right next to monsoonal waterfalls, with the spray rushing in as if we were on the flume, and the shrieking and whooping started in the rows ahead of us coming out of the tunnel first, and traveled down the whole length of the delighted train of downtrodden city-dwellers.
I've never been to Lonavala, a weekend getaway popular with Indians but not foreigners, and did no research on it before coming out (I didn't really think I'd get up at 6:45 AM...). K and I arrived hungry, tired, and in need of a bathroom. We explored what seemed to be all of town, which consisted mainly of fudge- and nut-brittle shops.
"There's got to be a restaurant district," I said.
"Hey, it's a small town," K said.
We debated eating at a forlorn little Punjabi place, but decided to simply tell an autorickshaw driver to take us to the address on the only hotel billboard we saw. Two minutes later, on the other side of the train station, we were on a modern highway completely choked with cars full of twenty-something men with thumping bass booming from their vehicles. Both sides of the road were jam-packed with nothing but hotels and restaurants. It was like some kind of cross between Daytona Beach and Lake George.
I deemed the hotel bathroom unacceptable, so we began to walk along the highway, discussing and dismissing various restaurant/bathroom combinations for assorted demerits. We did stop to admire and take a photo of one hotel with grand lawns, which proudly announced on a marquee that it offered "Specious Grounds for Marriage." Quick digression: that would, actually, be the Indian phonetic way to write it, but it often seems to have unfortunate consequences. Even though we were overheating in Amritsar, we both found we had the same reaction to ice cream which advertised itself as a "special test of milk": Errr, no thanks. As is often the case, Thailand leads the category. Last time we were in Bangkok, I spotted a place offering "fecial massage." Um, really, no; I couldn't. Thanks.
At one point during our long march, K snarled that I really ought to take a picture of the acceptable toilet once I found it.
"Why?" I asked.
"So I can show people what I did with my day in Lonavala," he said.
But, then, we found a place on the edge of town with an ok lunch and an excellent toilet (though on second use -- you really try to maximize your time with one of these when you find it -- I was next in line after someone who spent ten minutes sloppily throwing up; you really can't go home again, it's true).
After lunch, we randomly followed a road which led fortuitously under the expressway and through a small village, where a narrow path led up into the hills before petering out. We climbed to the top of the hill, and to a spectacular view of the valley, several lakes, and, ok, the expressway. But the next ridge offered nothing but green hills, lakes, water buffalo, and monsoon mist.
It was amazing. We got thoroughly soaked in intermittent cloudbursts, and completely muddy, but there was near-solitude and a string of nifty discoveries, like the gloomy ruins of a stone church (sans interpretive plaque! As if we were discovering it ourselves!), and a modest dam over one of the lakes. And the terrain was ideal: wild but treeless, almost like an alpine meadow, allowing for dramatic vistas and easy navigation. We didn't get close to the waterfalls, but could see them in the distance. Reading some months ago about visiting the hill stations during the monsoons, I thought "meh, waterfalls," thinking they were of the snowmelt-by-the-side-of-the-highway variety. But no, these are mountain-sized cascades which are probably only not famous because their location and size varies each monsoon.
I never used to be particularly into nature. It was just there; I was unmoved. But as I get older, I find that being surrounded by green is both calming and a moderate euphoriant. K doesn't react the same way, but he's generally willing to indulge me (though in London he did suggest that perhaps I could go to Kew Gardens myself once in a while...).
When the afternoon waned, we loaded up on fudge and nut brittle and took the absolutely crammed, hellish, standing-room-only-with-chai-wallahs-shoving-by three-hour ride back to the city. K amused himself by purchasing virtually everything every passing wallah had to offer; I tried to pretend the smell of the train brakes burning as we clattered down the mountain was just as non-alarming as the grannies clawing me and using me as a rappelling base as they shuttled between the bathrooms and their seat on the filthy carriage floor.
Six-ish hours of travel; three of mindless wandering amid choking car fumes and adolescent leering; three of green bliss. I can't wait to go back.
Sunday, 6:40 AM, K attempted to wake me up.
K: "Get up! We can still make the 8 AM train!"
Me: "Gnnaaagh."
K:"Don't you want to go?"
Me: "Gnnf-uhnh."
K:"Do you really not want to go, or is this one of those things where later you're going to wish you had gone? And maybe blame me for not having gotten you up?"
It occurs to me, sometimes, that perhaps we should break up simply because he knows me frighteningly well.
So, 7-something-ish, we're in a taxi trying to get to Bombay Central station, and the driver is obligingly stopping at every single station en route in the hopes that it's the one we want, and K is trying to pantomime the address, and I'm rather fruitlessly yelling variations on "andiamo!"
We ran into the station, K helpfully informing me that the locals refer to it as "the smelly one," and located the ticket booth. No line! With relief, we presented ourselves to the genial and elderly clerk...who tells us this particular train leaves from Victoria Terminus, across town. We started away from the window, to regroup, when the clerk called K back to the window. There was about forty seconds between each of his words.
Clerk: "You'll...never...get...there...by..."
K: "Yes? Yes??"
Clerk: "...bus....You'll...need...to..."
Me: "take a taxi? Taxi? Ok! Thanks!"
Clerk: "...waa-iiitt..."
K&I: "Taxi! Great! Thanks! Bye!"
We rushed out, somehow missing that the taxi stand was on the other side of the station (perhaps what the clerk was trying to tell us?). A tout poised at the exit asked if we wanted a taxi.
I have a general rule: when you're traveling, never accept services from someone who approaches you. Go interrupt someone going about their business; they have less prep time to put together a scam.
But K doesn't subscribe to my philosophy of life -- more's the pity -- and steered me firmly toward the guy's cab. We got in, he started up, I checked that I had small change (the fare between the stations is approximately 40 Rs), and the guy glanced in the rearview mirror and casually mentioned, "150 Rs."
I dove for the door. Ok, actually I directed a string of abuse at the guy, which I kept up as I dragged K out of the cab and as I slammed the door shut.
I then hopped in another cab, practically waking up the driver, and we were on our way. Except, ten minutes in, I noticed the meter wasn't going up.
I leaned over the front seat. "Something wrong with your meter?"
"No work," the driver said, "by distance. Six km. Use farechart."
Well, that made no sense, but whatever. Fares are done in part by distance. The meters are almost all outdated, except in the more expensive air-conditioned cars. One arrives at the fare by looking up the meter value on a fare conversion chart, which all cabs are required to carry (but which I also do, just to avoid misunderstandings).
We pulled in to Victoria station, with a few minutes before our train was to depart.
"Rs 145," the driver announced.
I released another torrent of vituperative abuse, tossed him the approximate correct fare, and strode briskly off, ignoring his Hindi translations of my sentiments shouted out the window after us as he unfolded the bills.
K and I discussed the ethics a bit as we were chugging toward Lonavala on the bottom bunk of a 3-tiered sleeper car. I realized it was quite a cute little scam the second driver had: tell tourists the fares are by kilometer, and then make a show of looking up the km -- rather than the meter reading -- on the chart. Thus, the rupee value by a reading of "six" would be about 145, except that the meter would never read six unless you'd traveled about 20 km.
K, as usual, accused me of cheapness, which I protest. I tip generously for honest service, and I tip foolishly for service that's both honest and good. I continue to maintain that it's insanity to reward people who set out to prey on you based on your skin color, and even more so in the city in which you live. (I'd liken it to shitting where you eat, but, well, that's fairly common here, too.)
But, we had seats for the whole three-hour train ride, and the temperature kept dropping, and the wind whistled through the open windows, and the scenery progressed from brown to green to really green to mind-blowingly green, and the shy and polite boys sitting opposite us offered sweets, and we kept going through tunnels only to abruptly emerge right next to monsoonal waterfalls, with the spray rushing in as if we were on the flume, and the shrieking and whooping started in the rows ahead of us coming out of the tunnel first, and traveled down the whole length of the delighted train of downtrodden city-dwellers.
I've never been to Lonavala, a weekend getaway popular with Indians but not foreigners, and did no research on it before coming out (I didn't really think I'd get up at 6:45 AM...). K and I arrived hungry, tired, and in need of a bathroom. We explored what seemed to be all of town, which consisted mainly of fudge- and nut-brittle shops.
"There's got to be a restaurant district," I said.
"Hey, it's a small town," K said.
We debated eating at a forlorn little Punjabi place, but decided to simply tell an autorickshaw driver to take us to the address on the only hotel billboard we saw. Two minutes later, on the other side of the train station, we were on a modern highway completely choked with cars full of twenty-something men with thumping bass booming from their vehicles. Both sides of the road were jam-packed with nothing but hotels and restaurants. It was like some kind of cross between Daytona Beach and Lake George.
I deemed the hotel bathroom unacceptable, so we began to walk along the highway, discussing and dismissing various restaurant/bathroom combinations for assorted demerits. We did stop to admire and take a photo of one hotel with grand lawns, which proudly announced on a marquee that it offered "Specious Grounds for Marriage." Quick digression: that would, actually, be the Indian phonetic way to write it, but it often seems to have unfortunate consequences. Even though we were overheating in Amritsar, we both found we had the same reaction to ice cream which advertised itself as a "special test of milk": Errr, no thanks. As is often the case, Thailand leads the category. Last time we were in Bangkok, I spotted a place offering "fecial massage." Um, really, no; I couldn't. Thanks.
At one point during our long march, K snarled that I really ought to take a picture of the acceptable toilet once I found it.
"Why?" I asked.
"So I can show people what I did with my day in Lonavala," he said.
But, then, we found a place on the edge of town with an ok lunch and an excellent toilet (though on second use -- you really try to maximize your time with one of these when you find it -- I was next in line after someone who spent ten minutes sloppily throwing up; you really can't go home again, it's true).
After lunch, we randomly followed a road which led fortuitously under the expressway and through a small village, where a narrow path led up into the hills before petering out. We climbed to the top of the hill, and to a spectacular view of the valley, several lakes, and, ok, the expressway. But the next ridge offered nothing but green hills, lakes, water buffalo, and monsoon mist.
It was amazing. We got thoroughly soaked in intermittent cloudbursts, and completely muddy, but there was near-solitude and a string of nifty discoveries, like the gloomy ruins of a stone church (sans interpretive plaque! As if we were discovering it ourselves!), and a modest dam over one of the lakes. And the terrain was ideal: wild but treeless, almost like an alpine meadow, allowing for dramatic vistas and easy navigation. We didn't get close to the waterfalls, but could see them in the distance. Reading some months ago about visiting the hill stations during the monsoons, I thought "meh, waterfalls," thinking they were of the snowmelt-by-the-side-of-the-highway variety. But no, these are mountain-sized cascades which are probably only not famous because their location and size varies each monsoon.
I never used to be particularly into nature. It was just there; I was unmoved. But as I get older, I find that being surrounded by green is both calming and a moderate euphoriant. K doesn't react the same way, but he's generally willing to indulge me (though in London he did suggest that perhaps I could go to Kew Gardens myself once in a while...).
When the afternoon waned, we loaded up on fudge and nut brittle and took the absolutely crammed, hellish, standing-room-only-with-chai-wallahs-shoving-by three-hour ride back to the city. K amused himself by purchasing virtually everything every passing wallah had to offer; I tried to pretend the smell of the train brakes burning as we clattered down the mountain was just as non-alarming as the grannies clawing me and using me as a rappelling base as they shuttled between the bathrooms and their seat on the filthy carriage floor.
Six-ish hours of travel; three of mindless wandering amid choking car fumes and adolescent leering; three of green bliss. I can't wait to go back.
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