My girlfriend went to Matheran, and all I got was horse-whipped

Poor K.

But I'll get to that.

So, as our story left off, we'd just made it closer to our Matheran destination than ever before, actually getting up the mountain this time. Only to discover:

- Though Matheran is some 70 miles from Mumbai, the mountain is the tallest thing around and serves as a smog catcher for the city. What looked charmingly like mist from the base turned out to be a toxic cloud of Mumbai's industrial effluent.

- There was a fee to enter the town. Of course there was.

- Although there were no cars, true, neither were any trash cans in evidence. There was garbage everywhere.

- There was a long path from the parking lot to the town market. In lieu of a taxi stand, there were several pony stands -- not for people to rent a horse and then trot smartly off to their destinations, but for one to sit in the saddle and be led, ploddingly, along.

We decided to walk.

Every two minutes, we were interrupted along the trail by touts on horseback cantering right up to us and trying to get us to rent their mounts. They all recited exactly the same canned patter: "Long way, very steep, can't walk."

After a while, two horsemen took up half a pace behind us, like vultures patiently trailing a faltering antelope. "Horse?" they'd say, "nice horse, good horse, brave horse?"

"Please just let us be," I begged. "We're enjoying a nice walk through the garbage and horseshit. If it weren't for the airborne sludge blocking the panoramic view off to the left, I'm sure it'd be just lovely."

They'd be quiet for about 30 seconds, and then, with absolutely unallayed hopes, they'd interrupt our conversation with "Sir? Nice horse, good horse, brave horse?"

I blame the hippies. There are tons of very antisocial tourists, usually the low-rent ones, who allow themselves to be bullied and badgered into parting with their money. I say it's a form of mugging, and I say to hell with it.

It does, however, make me just unbelievably mad, serving much as a picador to a bull. After they asked us for about the dozenth or so time, I just stopped and turned around.

"I do not require a horse now, and I do not require one the next time you ask, or the time after, or the time after. I've asked you nicely to leave us alone. Now I'm going to ask you to get away from us, and I'm going to stand here until you do."

The riders looked at each other uncertainly.

I was fuming, in that sort of exhausted-overheated-wronged-exasperated way that activates the most primitive parts of the subcortex. Readers, I cannot swear to you that, were there well-formed feces present, they would not have been flung.

As it was, I broke the impasse by taking a few running, stomping steps towards them, flailing my arms like a madwoman, rolling my eyes, and sort-of yelling "Weaauuugh!! Waughh!!!"

The riders wheeled and trotted away.

For all that, it was a really long, steep walk in high-humidity heat, carrying every-heavier packs. Eventually, we reached the outskirts of the village, and began admiring the relatively little affluent little cottages of the Matheranites. A little boy on a new-looking bike rode up to us and started trying out his "Hey Joe, whaddaya know?"-type routine with us. We indulged him, and he was all apple cheeks and smiles until suddenly he was all business, and I swear to god, a little menacing. His hand shot out.

"You give me five rupees!" he demanded.

I kept my temper, but asked, evenly, "and why would we give you five rupees?"

"Why! Why! Why!" he shrieked after us, as we continued walking.

The road kept forking, and sometimes there was an arrow indicating Charlotte Lake, but sometimes there wasn't. Against my better judgment, K asked a local woman for directions. It was pretty clear she didn't know where the hotel was, but she pointed straight ahead and obligingly parroted back a kind of gibberish that sounded nothing at all like the name of the hotel and an awful lot like the name of the lookout point that we'd passed a sign for two minutes ago, but, fine; sometimes it's better just to say thanks and move on. But wait, the hand shot out. K gave her a few rupees, and I held my tongue. When we encountered her 15 minutes later, at the lookout point, with the hotel patently nowhere in sight, I did casually raise with her the idea that she knew the word "hotel," and it was, I thought, rather obvious that there were zero hotels by the cliff side, not just the absence of ours. She shrugged. Purchased directions don't come with warranties, I guess.

By retracing our steps and systematically investigating other alleys and dead-ends, we eventually found Charlotte Lake. We-ellll..."lake" is a bit grandiose. It was sort of a murky mill pond, if you take away the mill and add a raucous refreshment stand and a few different packs of boys horsing around and taking pictures of each other in front of piles of garbage. No hotel.

Five hundred meters and another ten pony rental offers later, we asked a passing pony-wallah. He pointed to a house that was not only not marked with the name of our hotel, but, in fact, had a different name engraved on its British-era entry pillars. He began to extend his palm, but withdrew it when he looked at my expression. K and I were both drenched in sweat, and I was about to keel over, so we approached the house even given the name disparity. It sort of looked like a hotel.

I gave our names to the only guy on the verandah who looked like he might not be a guest. He grunted and disappeared through a door. Despite the fact that he slammed the screen door in my face, I ascertained that I was, in fact, supposed to follow him. He then told us our room wasn't ready and ordered us to have lunch. When I pointed out that, overheated and desperately in need of a shower and a change of clothes, we weren't exactly ready for lunch, Mr. Friendly led us to an empty room and indicated we could wash up. I asked whether we could simply have that room. We could not. I asked when our room would be ready. "15 - 20 minutes," he replied, which I have come to learn is Hindi for "a period of time with a lower bound of one hour and no upper bound." Do not ask for time estimates from a culture that believes in reincarnation.

About half an hour after we were abandoned in the room -- which, frankly, was rather sooty and smelled of mold -- I began to realize: we had diminishing daylight left, and probably not that much time the next morning before contending with the whole travel process in reverse. Glumly surveying the peeling walls, I blurted out to K: "Look, do you just want to go home?"
He did.

We gave Mr. Friendly the slip -- actually, we just walked out of the hotel; there was absolutely no sign of anyone vaguely related to a "service" position -- and settled on a price with the first pony-wallah we saw. Twenty uncomfortable minutes into the ride, he subcontracted his bridle-leading services out to a six-year-old boy who kept jerking the poor horses around, making them stumble and making us nearly fall off several times. Meanwhile, the senior pony-wallah walked behind our steeds, striking them mercilessly with a long switch, despite my protests.

And then I heard K yelp.
Beating horses is dull work, I suppose; our wallah did his while admiring the scenic garbage off to the trailside, and succeeded in lashing K directly across the upper back. Which, I assure you, did nothing to deter either wallah from aggressively demanding a tip (in addition to subcontracting fees) when we reached our destination.

Back at the parking lot, we decided to spring for a car and driver all the way back to Mumbai, rather than contend with the train dangerously near rush hour. It was a smart decision in the sense that we got to sit, but it was still a very long and unairconditioned ride back, plus our driver decided to offer a random stranger a ride on our dime without our consent, taking us god knows how far out of our way, and he had to stop and repeatedly ask for directions -- to one of Mumbai's biggest train stations! -- once we reached the city limit. When we finally arrived, and I paid the rather high fare -- equivalent to an entire day's car-and-driver rental -- he stuck out his palm.
"Tolls?" he asked.
I glowered him down, but he just grinned and shrugged. Can't blame a guy for trying, right?