Honeymoon Travails

It’s been a year…almost…I suppose the memory is now distant enough to look back and laugh at the whole thing….

One of those rare moments

I think it started in Turkey…and after several sallies across the globe – involving an armada of airline deals and super-saver packages to suit all budgets save mine - the best I could muster was “the mountainous wilds across the Eurasian fault line”… “What the hell’s that”, rasped Sun – irritated with my preceding disclosure that our budget was going to stop just short of the Sri Lankan shore…and, by now, familiar with my penchant for imaginative descriptions. The cat, or rather the tiger, was then sheepishly let out of the bag. “Corbett”, I said, hanging up to shield myself from the volley of invectives that was raining upon the overcast Bangalore evening…

Our honeymoon began with a bang, just outside Delhi. Rein in your imagination though –the onomatopoeic reference comes to mind thanks to a virile western UP tractor that attempted to penetrate the posterior of our car. I looked up at the signal we had stopped at – yep, it was still a glowering red, which pretty much summed up my mood too….at least it was, when I stomped across to join issue with the bunch of agriculturists that had outraged the modesty of my bumper. I craned up my neck to square off with an imposing patriarch perched on top of a mountain of sugarcane. He greeted me with a hearty laugh and some earthy pearls of wisdom concerning mountains and molehills. The twirling moustaches around him hinted that his seemingly agreeable disposition was neither shared by his mates, nor likely to last very long. Glowering red was, therefore, revised to something between chicken yellow and pacific green. The latter was also the colour presently assumed by the traffic signal. The tractor chugged on, leaving behind some thoughtful tips, in chaste Haryanvi, for mending my ruptured rear.

My long and difficult relationship with wheels had taught me to account for the occasional moment of highway ignominy in my drive-time estimates. But only in Gajraula - where we pulled in for a latish lunch after a stately cruise through the lush doab – did I realize that I’d placed undue reliance on cyber-trolls passing off Formula-1 fantasies as travel advice…Sun, who’d been gritting her teeth through my hesitant jabs on the gas pedal all morning, preferred to take a different view – the one from the driver’s seat. As she took over the wheel, I couldn’t help wondering if this was a sign of things to come….

Although our average was helped along by the substitution, the dinner buffet was already being folded up at the pompously named “ITC Welcome Heritage Corbett Ramganga Lodge” when we finally staggered in. Notions about a luxurious dacha in the middle of the jungle ought to have been dispelled by the grubby fare at the restaurant but we decided make some allowance for the lateness of the hour. However, once the lights in our “suite” were switched on, the gulf between our expectations from an ITC-branded, 10,000-bucks-a-night deal; and the tube-lit ugliness of our 10x10 shack couldn’t have been more starkly illuminated…

Smiling through it all

I’ve been to a few wildlife sanctuaries around the country but the Corbett experience is hard to beat. We woke up at the crack of dawn and made our way to the forest gates - the headlights sent streams of ochre into the black night, mimicking the attire of the felines we were hoping to see. What we did see that morning were wildcats – scores and scores of them - screeching and clawing at the ticket counter in a curious rite of passage that was mandated by the Park authorities. While I went around mumbling “Suniye jees” to uninterested officials, Sun donned her best Cat-woman costume and jumped into the bestial fray, eventually emerging with a blood- red entry ticket for the afternoon safari clenched in her paw. We headed back to celebrate the success of our six hour hunt with the Ramganga Lodge’s trademark rubber-naans…

A rickety gypsy pulled in at the hotel after lunch. Armed with a pair of binoculars and a birding book, I stood up on the seat, hoping to find something worthy of the National Geographic. Perhaps the Rusty-throated Wren Babbler, last spotted in Assam in 1947 or some such. Something flew past – “Ashy Drongo” I cried, industriously consulting my book. “Common crow” deadpanned Sun. The guide’s antennae went up - “Fair game” he seemed to think, as he gave me a once over. But I wasn’t Japanese and my camera wasn’t worth 5000 dollars – my tip wasn’t going to be worth it. “Kaua hai, sir. Kaua”, he crowed, along with the subject of our discussion – a budding ornithological flight was grounded for good that day.

No Ashy Drongos or Rusty-throated Wren Babblers were discovered in the end, but we did have some luck with the more conventional attractions of the forest. A battalion of Gypsies materialized to give chase to a tiger that had the misfortune of being spotted. At this point, our guide decided that a last ditch effort to shore up his gratuities was in order. A tiresome monologue was duly delivered, peppered with statistics intended to impress upon us, the utter improbability of the sighting and our immense fortune in being witness to the unfolding spectacle. Were it not for the pathetic sight of the harried animal running scared amidst our hoots and whistles, it would appear that he was prattling about a divine manifestation. But even if he had managed to invoke the Holy Ghost, it wouldn’t have altered his financial fortunes – when we were back, I ceremoniously handed over the taped up fiver that I’d fished out of my pocket while he was busy mimicking the crow…

The next morning, it was time to hit the road again - we could have used some rest but weren’t exactly heartbroken to be leaving Corbett. With TM Krishna belting out an energetic Ragam Tanam Pallavi and the after-effects of last night’s bran-beer having settled down, I was tempted to think that things were looking up after all. But that’s when the side-winders began to squeeze…It’s odd how straight and orderly roads can appear on a map, especially when one is being perused while negotiating a Himalayan hairpin bend. Sun had exactly one hill driving experience to her credit and I was…err…busy helping out with the navigation… we just about managed to stick our necks out of the serpentine coil before twilight descended.

Naini lake loomed large in front of us – a brilliant, lustrous emerald surrounded by a charming colonial-style mall….picturesque enough and a deserving honeymoon destination, except when being trampled upon by half of Karol Bagh’s juttis…We ducked into an HPTDC lodge, cutting ourselves loose from the10,000-strong convoy that was besieging the lake. Ol’ Ripley missed this one – hill stations, railway stations…they all look the same in this part of the world.

The move was a wise one – we saved our car a hiding from the tennis-ball-size hailstones that were smashing down on upper Naini….Night fell, as did our hopes of making it to our hotel in Ramgarh, a little beyond Naini – Sun was through with driving for the day, even if it meant bivouacking on Naini’s streets…and all of the town’s petrol seemed to have been consumed in one massive fuel-guzzling orgy…But we had underestimated Dahli’s all pervading influence on the town – in other words, jugaad was at hand! A jerry can was requisitioned (originally by the Army; in this instance, by an enterprising bootlegger). Besides supplying pilfered petrol at a 5x margin, Mr. Pappu was happy to ferry us to Ramgarh for a modest fee of Rs. 2500 – it would have been sacrilegious to attempt a negotiation with this heaven-sent angel…Our luck with folded up dinner tables continued in Ramgarh but the room was a pleasant surprise, considering it was priced at a fourth of our Corbett rip-off…a cozy little wooden structure with charming knick knacks arranged around a bay window that had the best view in the world…too bad, then, that we had to leave the next morning….

By now, we had clocked about 30 hours of road time in 3 days. With just a day left and a drive journey to Delhi ahead of us, the odds of bringing down that average appeared decidedly high. Nevertheless, given the 11:30 PM departure, I was hoping that an early morning start could yet help us salvage a romantic dinner in Delhi from this Himalayan blunder of a honeymoon…
I work as a consultant in the transportation sector. Day in and day out, my job involves taking unwitting investors on slick, power-point trips along the expressways and mega highways of India 2.0. I hereby offer the drive back from Nainital as repentance for opinions and advice handed down from approximately 10,000 feet above a very battered and pot-holed terra firma. The grandiose National Highways Development Program lay exposed across an ignominious single-lane traverse over a non-descript seasonal stream, as an Anaconda of frustration built up on either side. It took 2 hours for us to slither across.

Dinner was, unsurprisingly, reduced to a snappy bite at the airport Mcdonald’s outlet. We were lucky that plan B involved nothing worse than a downgraded meal ticket. Racing down through Ghaziabad, across the south-eastern flank of the capital, Sun had to use every trick in the driving manual and I, my considerable experience of mooching around South Delhi’s by-lanes, so that we could slam the brakes at the airport Avis counter before the boarding gates closed.

Stressed out...

A fierce loo was screaming into the night as we stepped out. I’m a Delhi boy – I’d seen it before…but Sun, after 12 hours of driving across the hot plains, was swept up by its gale force, like a fledgling caught in a storm. But we’d made it and shelter was at hand – nestled in her window seat, my beleaguered partner flipped through the in-flight magazine, finally settling on the alluring waters of some tropical paradise. She cast a slow, longing finger across the page before giving herself up to my shoulder, and elusive cerulean dreams….we had come some distance but there was a long journey yet ahead…