Clean

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I admit my ambivalence is deciding what to name this particular blog entry. Perhaps because India is such an overwhelming experience. You not only see, touch, hear and taste...but literally because it pours into you, onto you and throughout every living and breathing moment you exist in this fascinating country. I have long since learned that while I may see sights that are incredible, it is the experiences I have getting to them that will leave me confronted and changed...

So, we will start with CLEAN. This is a word that has completely changed its meaning to me. It seems that the webster dictionary may describe this word as "lacking in dirt" or "free from pollution". I now call clean an indescribable feeling. I am not sure what clean feels like...or looks like. I am pretty sure it doesn't exist in India. After completing the backwaters trip and arriving at our hotel, I attempted to do some laundry. This means that after soaking and wringing clothes in the sink...and letting them dry overnight...large clots of dirt were widely apparent all over them. Now, one could say that I did not use the widely popular method of slapping my clothes onto a rock repeatedly (that I saw on the river)...and therefore deserved not to have clean clothes. The ensuing trip to Munnar was a similar experience in dirt. By the end of the day (where we completed a 5 hour bus ride), hired a guide to take us for a 4 hour hike where I was promised elephants if I just hiked up one more hill (at the top of which hill I was told the elephants were in the next forest and it was to dangerous to go there-I was NOT happy), and went back to the "hotel"...also known as a room with questionable "cleanliness"...I took off my previously "clean" clothes to find them much farther from anything "clean" I could imagine. I have since given up. My new definition of clean is a shirt worn 3 days ago...pants worn yesterday...and socks that I have not yet worn...making me feel inifinitely "clean". :-)

However, Munnar was spectacular....miles and miles of green tea bushes cut into fabulous shapes...that created a drealike effect as they cascaded over the mountains. Munnar is like a fairytale. It was also the first great food I had had since Mumbai...with large quanitities of rice, curry and various other veggies cooked down into amazing flavors eaten voraciously as my hunger gets the best of me.

The following day had me waking up at 5:15 AM to catch a bus on my own to a place known as Ooty...a spectacular hill station in the state of Tamil Nadu in the mountains. The day is also known as "STARING". It seems that foreigners often attract attention...primarily for being foreigners. Couple that with being foreign and a woman travelling alone, and you attract all sorts of attention...sometimes in the form of help...and other times in the form of "offering theoretical help". I am stared at everywhere I go...usually benignly. The women stare in curiousity, the men stare, the children stare with smiles on their faces...and that is ALL OF THE TIME. It doesn't really bother me. Sometimes it is quite amusing. What is interesting is that in India there are special lines for women, because apparently men here have a difficult time keeping their hands to themselves. So far, I have been lucky. However, 12 hours later...I arrived in Ooty...possibly in the most "not clean" state...found my guest home...and a bunch of other friendly foreigners to trade stories with. Today we ventured out in the Ooty hillside for a hike with our guide Anthony...and it was spectacular. Mountains surrounded us, with a beautiful breeze. It is special being in this part of the world traveling. The other travelers I have met have been amazing including many Germans, a few British, Irish, Swiss and French. India draws us, and sometimes repells us in similar fashion...and it is impossible not to feel something all of the time.

I've been asked to describe this place and compare it to something similar back home. Unfortunately, that is almost impossible. In some parts polluted, others unspoiled...and many others a combination thereof...India rips apart the word "normal" and shreds it into fascinating colors, smells that waft through the air range from potently aromatic to nauseating...just depending on the steps you take. I cannot imagine a minute where I encountered the expected. I've been on roads that we as westerners would only take on in a 4-wheel drive vehicle with stabilizers in buses that are filled to the max and then some with questionable shocks, if any exist. The rest stops are a cacauphany of sellers coming onto the buses selling their treats and pushing their hands through the open windows. The roads are a mixture of modern vehicle (in the monority), rickshaws, buses-probably from the 1940-60s, cows, dogs and people. There is something in this place...something undescribable...and yet I spend most of the days weaving a description through my head that is impossible to get on paper later on.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend...
Marni

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