Drunken Elephants in My Mask

Of Drunken Elephants and a Stealth Bomber

Out here, virginity takes on new meaning, and law is a word best forgotten. Its reputation of restrictions imposed on foreigners seems to have kept travelers at bay. But there are numerous islands to visit, some restricted, but nothing an offer of whiskey won't solve. The countryside boasts authentic tropical jungle, the people are suspiciously friendly, and there’s always a surprise around every corner. You’ll chance upon relics of the big wars and remnants of British oppression with a little Japanese torture thrown in for good measure, but it's stuff like this that gives the Andamans an enjoyable uncertainty.

Today, I'm planning to scuba dive off a "highly restricted" island in the north. Not as big a deal as it sounds, but it seems wise to keep a low profile and this is my tenth attempt. I plan to dive between two islands and get an under-belly view of a wild elephant crossing. Presumptuously, I sit in full scuba gear under the blazing sun waiting for these guys to make a decision to cross. It’s not like they have a schedule to keep and several hours and a few buckets of sweat later, my dive buddy apprehensively announces that our one and only local guide has passed out…drunk. Before we have time to dwell on this new development, we hear the rustling. It’s random and soft, but loud enough to churn the insides of my stomach.

We have two distinct problems here. One: we seem to be strategically located in the trampling path of a bunch of elephants, and two: these animals are actually wild. The experience is starting to take on an ominous drift. As the thumping of the herd amplifies, it's right now that we have to work our plan. Though it would be helpful if we had a plan. Without wasting any time, we get into the channel and as we float on the surface we decide to drop just thirty feet below, somewhere mid-channel and get an under-view of these enormous creatures swimming.

Exciting isn't it? And then, as if on cue, everything goes wrong. The guide wakes from his drunken slumber and starts panicking hysterically. The herd charges in blind confusion…the other way. We get a blurry view of the entire opera as we are swept away on the surface by the strong current in the channel.

About 4 km down stream, we decided to quit bobbing up and down and descend along the fringe of a large outcrop. My initial fears of tales concerning saltwater crocs dissolve as we drop into a school of gigantic hump head Wrasse. This immediately makes up for the elephant fiasco. And then we glimpse pure magic.

Millions of Fusiliers (almost neon blue fish) pepper the seascape forming a swirl of life cocooning us within. Suddenly they scatter in all directions as a mature White-tip reef shark springs out the coral head in front of us. The sound of whistling is followed by several dolphin that glide above us. Some flip around to get a closer look at these clumsy creatures with oversized tanks on their backs. We scale down a reef wall, and a large Greenback turtle curiously ambles headlong into my mask. What more could one ask for? The bed is resplendent with life, my tank is on reserve.

As we start our ascent, rather chuffed with life, a large shadow falls upon us. The sudden darkness spells either a whale or a large ship. Now the whale would be preferable to a gigantic propeller slicing through the water. Either way we descend a bit before attempting to look up.

I lie and tell my buddy that everything will be okay, but he seems transfixed on something behind me. And there it is. As I wet my wet suit, expecting the largest elephant to kick me on the head, I turn around and see the mother of all Manta rays glide above my head. A stealth bomber, it glides around oblivious of my excitement.

Finally we get back to shore, obviously nowhere near where we had started off. The experience makes for great campfire conversation. But for now it’s fast forgotten as we walk down a village road, looking for a bus in our skintight suits, nothing short of being humiliated and heckled by a whole village that has erupted in peals of hysterical laughter.

Of Peaks and Troughs

Bouncing along the Marsyangdi river valley to Besisahar, my rear was initiated to a soreness that was soon to become a familiar foe – a discomfort I almost missed when I returned home. We (eight of us of various nationalities) were briefed about the road being ‘seasonal’ and by the look of things, this did not seem to be the right season.

Luckily we soon began our trek through wet subtropical forests and wetter paddy fields. The lovely and large German girl (called Sita, if you please) in the group loomed behind me like a late evening shadow. I had a feeling that she was captivated by my impressive agility. By the time she screamed, “FUCK MY LEGS ARE COVERED IN LEECHES,” it was clear. She was definitely trying to reach out to me. Before I could rescue her from her predicament, there exploded, from nowhere, an international debate on the parasites. The sherpas, who obviously had the best remedy, were immediately ignored. Hans, the Swiss cynic, insisted on rubbing tobacco on them. Chris, an overly sprightly Aussie, claimed to be a leech vet and was searching for limejuice. The two American girls were extremely helpful as they promptly vomited at the sight of the throbbing creatures that had now grown to alarmingly large proportions. So when I suggested pissing on the damn things, Sita shot me a scowl indicating that our potential holiday affair was kaput.

I’m not going to get into the names of the various places that we went through. Not for any other reason than the fact that I can’t remember them and apart from the sheer magnificence of the landscape, nothing exciting happened. All I can tell you is that we walked and walked and walked. We crossed rivers, jungles, canyons, and ridges, and water-logged terraced fields. For mysterious reasons, the American girls had opted out of the trek a few days earlier. This was great news - we could now relieve a part of our loads on the extra sherpas whom they had already paid.

The sherpas found our struggle with the altitude rather amusing. "Thorung la, thorung la" they laughed while giving us the old 'you are going to be buggered soon' gesture. Thorung La would come up sooner or later, a pass that stood at 17,700 feet. Oh joy.

The dry arid region of Manang is called Nyesyang. Since this area also falls in the rain shadow area of the Himalayas, not surprisingly, we experienced a freak snowstorm.
Once the storm subsided, we ventured along the valley floor enjoying spectacular views of Annapurna III and IV along with Gangapuran and Tilicho peaks lingering in the distance. This was possibly the best day for viewing mountains. There seemed to be a tangible crispness in the air. Chris was all set to tear up the mountain. As I stood by Sita, I felt as if I could have grabbed the peaks with my hand. Even Sita was grinning manically and was beginning to look rather delectable until she deliberately crushed my toe with her boot.

At the base of Thorung La we were all gasping and I was limping. The weather was good and we set out earlier than usual. My ass was worn-out, I needed to rest after every 300 feet of dragging my numb limbs. I was ready to take on the leeches any day. The pass itself was marked by a formation of rocks, which revealed themselves through patches of snow. We were at the highest point, 17,700 feet, of our expedition. We had scaled our very own Mount Everest. After some cheesy hugging, we indulged in a photo frenzy, which Chris took to another level by pulling out the Aussie flag. The sherpas found this hysterical, and doubling over in peels of laughter they almost rolled down to Muktinath.


Several villages, forests, smiley villagers and spectacular vistas later, we reached Pokhra. Over 23 days had passed. A hot tub, with a beer cooler by my side. I felt exalted. As I lay there triumphant, I contemplated the absurdity of my masochistic adventure. I love the mountains, but hate the cold. I have a weakness for the great outdoors, but loathe trudging knee deep in snow with painfully numb toes and taunting visions of my warm bed very, very far away. I resigned myself to being a wimp and opted for an alpine trek as opposed to a high altitude heavy-duty climb. If I had known what lay ahead of me, I would have, undoubtedly, wimped out a lot more. But it taught me respect and gave me a glimpse of something I wouldn't dare aspire to be. It taught me to admire - not try and make sense of the looniness of it all - just admire, a breed called mountaineers.

The High Life?

Some years ago, I landed in Nepal and was deported within two hours of my arrival. The reasons for this undignified course of action were rather mystifying, to me at least. So I was a tad incoherent from my nightlong farewell party after a month in Bhutan. I hadn’t seen a razor during that month resulting in a disturbingly patchy and pathetic excuse for a beard. The only thing stragglier than my growth was my clothes. Okay, so I had no documents at all. My interrogating officers were creative enough to label me an illegal Afghan immigrant. Either way they did not seem ecstatic about my presence.

Several years later, I returned. This time I was cleanly shaved, coherent and clad and at the risk of being over-efficient, I even carried my passport.

Katmandu is full of surprises. I had spent a fair amount of delirious time in the city during my college days. Freak Street (Thamel) was the pseudo-hippie hub where people decided to be temporary hippies until their visas expired. It was the kind of place where travelers thought they could buy nirvana from a smoky bar and people like us thought we were enlightened a few hours after having arrived. I could start off about the local fare, the arts and crafts, the Himalayas, and other stuff that would make for splendid conversation at my nana’s Sunday bridge parties. But this time, with the only common factor being ‘high’, I had come to do something very different.

Kiwi David Allardice is considered by many to be the river rafting pioneer of South Asia. Before we first met, I had heard bizarre rumours that in a nutshell blended him into a drug peddling-secret service-missionary from New Zealand (the land of high-end international espionage and sheep?) He is a man with a good many different sides and a zest for adventure that has allowed him to survive through the intimidating hogwash. In an apparent attempt to get away from the city’s grind, David had partnered in the creation of an adventure center just 10 km from the Tibet border aptly naming it The Last Resort. Parts of the invite I had received read something like this: “have completed the bridge and it has been professionally tested…. it is the second highest jump in the world…..have named the bar ‘Instant Karma’……David”.

I had done a few jumps before, but quite possibly, this looked like the most spectacular jump in the world. I felt like I had been transported back into the interrogation lounge several years ago. This had nothing to do with the staff, but more fittingly with my overwhelming need to expedite the digestion of my lunch. Standing atop that gorge which narrowed down to the base 480 feet below was an incomprehensible rush. Why do we do this? What joy is derived from leaping off a platform over forty-eight stories up with your jewels in your mouth? As fear fused with excitement, I considered rationalizing my intentions. This was when the 14 year old Canadian girl fearlessly plummeted with a piercing “bungeeeeeee” that echoed through the canyon. My rationale was promptly swallowed with a large lump of trepidation. I was next.

After yo-yoing like…well…a yoyo, I dangled a few feet above the gushing force of the river. Having lost my voice screaming madly and my dignity with the shrillness of my voice, I pondered my life with all the blood in my body having drained into my head. And I could only think of describing it the way it has been written…. “Imagine a bridge over a one hundred and sixty meter tropical gorge with the Bhote Kosi, one of the world’s wildest rivers raging below…..NOW JUMP.”

Fakired and Far From Home

"Hyaack thhoo", the machine spews forth the image. Defiantly spat out, it purposefully settles below my bed. The inky figure resembles a naked man who has deplaned at thirty thousand feet landing head first into the sand. The small print below reads "above please find the image of exactly what we want".

I freelance doing weird assignments of sorts. A pleasant twist of quirkiness seems to linger here. An Italian art house wants a fakir who will bury himself in sand for two hours at a stretch, three times a day, for eight days. It's an installation.. additional confusion for the confused art world. Conceptualized by a renowned Italian artist the piece is part of a grand opening for an international art festival in Venice.

I know what they think they want but my search for the fakir is admittedly harder than I had anticipated. I had overlooked a few subtleties. Authentic dreadheads hold a strong affection for marijuana and a rather strange disaffection for money. Screw a free ticket to Venice, these guys can sit naked by a river bank and teleport to Venice in a blink and a puff.

After dispatching a few scouts around India, good news comes my way. A sober fakir has been discovered. My mystic man has finally arrived. Our time has come. In a cloud of exhilarated accomplishment I may have skipped a minor detail...he is an unemployed painter from Bombay who, till three years ago, had been entombing himself for a living under the sands of Juhu beach.

Seems like a rather unassuming man. I show him the image, and film his performance of this bizarre ostrich act. He has difficulty with the pose, revealing that his true prowess is samadhi - where he buries himself completely with only his hands sticking through the earth.

The film of the fakir is approved. The Italians love the hands and the ridiculous headless headstand is thankfully shelved.

After a panic-filled week of arranging the fakir's passport, I organise his visa on a guarantee to the consulate that he won't settle down in Venice as an opera-belching gondola driver. All arrangements made, the fakir is missing four hours before our flight. After biting down to my knuckles, I discover him at his cousin's hut watching television. I am beginning to realize that I have a very strange man on my hands. Although I've spent a week with him getting his passport, visa, bag, clothes, he seems to think that the 'foreigners' are coming here to see him. Only later do I realize that thinking is not his forte.

The officer raises his eyebrow engaging me to state my business. Struggling through immigration, as if on cue, my subtle fakir casually asks where we are going. I can understand the reservations the officers have - after all, a fakir doing samadhi in Venice? A half hour later we walk away from a bunch of uniformed morons who have burst into peels of manic laughter.

Ten minutes before our flight, le fakiro knocks down a bottle of Codeine cough syrup. Why? He tells me not to worry, he has four more bottles in his bag. Great, the reason behind my fakir not being a pot-head is owing to his spirited fondness for liquor. The flight is of little consequence to him. He thinks we're in a moving theater and as the syrup blends with a few vodkas, he acquires quite the mystical gaze.

In Venice, I find myself in an exquisite fifteenth-century villa. A romantic chateau with plush rooms, antique furniture, a gourmet menu, obviously to be shared with my charming room-mate.

The festival is impressive to say the least. The exhibits are situated in a four hundred year old infantry base called the Arsenal. The people are exciting, with extremes ranging from artists who work with umbilical cords to male critics in frilly pink dresses. The place is teeming with activity. Our installation is located in a room viewable only through a broken doorway and a side window panel. The floor is overlaid with gray sand and the center of the piece is the fakir's hands protruding out of the mud.


Admittedly, the exhibit has a strong visual impact. The audiences seem to be going gaga over it. Now it's time for me to play my role. Naturally I'm the psychic-cum-yoga apprentice. Only I may and can communicate with the fakir. I insist on closing the room with curtains between performances. You see, the fakir has to meditate. Well in a manner of speaking - knock down a peg, have a snack, and chew a bit of tobacco.

As crowds wait anxiously for each opening, I sit inside the room cajoling this debauched man to do the next piece. Now for the tantrums. He has just informed me that he doesn't feel like performing any more. He wants to get back to the hotel and watch Italian TV, which he claims to have lucid understanding of (after three drinks). So apart from sharing his room, teaching him not to wash his face in the bide, and babysitting him 24 hours, now I have to kiss his butt to continue the job.

Time for the interviews. The questions range from plain curiosity to absurd stupidity. "Is he dead?" My answers are fueled by boosters of Yugoslavian weed, and I seem to impress myself with a proficiency in spewing forth creative garbage. The fakir's ability is attributed to a metabolic breakdown whereby he drops his pulse rate to half that of a normal human. He requires little air which minimally filters through the porous sand. "But why does the sand move fast sometimes?" Well that's when he wakes from his inebriated slumber. Wrong answer - so I go with "that's a technique called shallow breathing which he adapts whenever he breaks out of the transcendental process." Fortunately, constant regurgitation of the jargon, differently spiced with unsettlingly large words, prevents any cross questioning.

The fakir is an overnight attraction. People come from several places to see him perform. But no one is allowed to meet the mysterious little Indian man. He's in another realm and doesn't like mixing with regular people. This does not deter the 'Energy Society', who have arrived today. Could be a problem. They seem to want to partake in a group meditation with the fakir. I figure that if they see him, the only high they'll get is from his breath. I'm sorry, it's impossible as he doesn't participate in lower activities such as these.

Absorb whatever vibes you can from afar, concentrating on his hands..you can do that can't you?

Free day today. I sacrifice my morning taking this joker sightseeing around Venice. He has amazing opinions on everything. They range from the history behind the architecture in St. Marks Square, to why it stays light till nine at night. Leaning on experience, I decide to munch on my sandwich and ask few questions.

I drop him back to the hotel. He's pretty nervous about being alone. I inform the staff that he must not be disturbed as he has to meditate the entire day. Upstairs, he's probably cracking open the scotch and watching some redundant game show in Italian.

A week has finally passed. The job has been successful. We have our last breakfast in the magnificent villa. The trip is already appearing to look incredible in retrospect. 7:30am - time to leave. I check my tickets for my connecting flight. All hell breaks loose. My Venice flight has already left at 7:10am. Almost soiling my undis, I start yelling at the receptionist who obviously has no clue what I'm saying.

The plane chase begins. I take a later flight to Zurich, miss my connection, charge through the airport to catch a flight to France, sprinting madly to one of their infinite terminals in the hope of acquiring a seat on a flight to Bombay. Did I forget to mention, my fakir is escalatorphobic. So in between this action drama, this fifty year old dipsomaniac is, at the risk of bursting a few organs, tearing through like a mad man alongside me on all the travelators at the various airports.

Finally, we are back. Like all fairy tales, this one too has a happy ending. The fakir's three kids have been put into school with the cash he made. And he has opened a bank account where his withdrawals will be monitored by me so that he doesn't buy a pub for himself. The moral of the story is something I haven't figured out yet, considering he calls me up regularly, hammered off his face, to ask me when we are catching the plane.

Pass the Pythons Please…

“Shhnake wine good tonic for fuckee fuckee,” he slurs authoritatively. My friend, guide and probably my last link to sanity, Vui beams at me as he takes yet another bite of yet another species of genus unknown. Though, if there’s even a morsel of truth in his encouraging words, I should be the finest fornicator on this fine night. I’ve just knocked down a whole bottle of some strange liquid that has been decanted from a bell jar holding thirty venomous snakes and a crow thrown in for good measure. Obviously they are all dead or piss drunk. Either way I wouldn’t be surprised. For out here, anything goes.

The American way of life seems to have penetrated Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) probably more than the bombs that they merrily dropped over Vietnam three decades ago. As night falls, the frenzy from the streets pours into the endless bars that dot the sidewalks. Pool sharks hang around these jaunts where walls are adorned with worn-out posters of rockers from the yesteryears. Fuelled up on the snake wine, I revel in a delightful nostalgia that hangs precariously in the air from a time before I was even born.

Hung-over and leaving the city on an embarrassingly small scooty, I head for the south-eastern coast. The road mostly snakes along the shoreline and is peppered with coffee stalls that are run by prostitutes. Meandering between dense jungle and isolated beaches, I arrive at the beach town of Nha Trang and head straight for the scuba shack. The Vietnamese scuba diving instructor has a finger missing after sticking it into an anemone, and casually reveals his encounters with decompression sickness. Just the push I needed to get into a deep crevice of black water. There are interesting formations underwater but not much sea-life out here. As I walk up the wharf I realize that everything that should have been in the sea is hanging up in the shops. Rather dejected, I opt for Mama Hanh’s boat tour around the islands. Enjoying a boat-full of Vietnamese food, we encourage her implausible stories that get progressively outlandish. Loud as ever, Mama Hanh pours shots of wine down everyone’s throat (thankfully no snakes or crows here), as people float around in truck-tire tubes, catatonic, after what seems like a hundred roll-ups of Kampuchean marijuana have been passed around.

Heading north, I reach the ancient city of Hoi An. It has an interesting cultural past, but can be seen several times over in a day. In the Chinese quarter, most of the houses are converted into art galleries. I saunter in on a family composed around the lunch table, a painting in itself. The art is impressive and impressively out of my budget.

The next few days I ride my monstrous scooty cutting through the Central Highlands. Dalat is the main town here. A hill-station with a French District, a beer-bottle pagoda, and a food market selling pig’s brain, snake meat… the usual. The Crazy House is a series of quarters moulded in the shape of various things (yup ‘things’) on the whim of some crazed French lady. The guide here takes me into the honeymoon suite and while showing me around, he starts playing with the hair on my arms. Having experienced this local male fascination with bodily hair before, it really doesn’t bother me... though the intense honeymoon atmosphere makes for a speedy exit.


Several pagodas, floating markets, and snake farms later, I find myself ten feet underground in the Cu Chi tunnels. This 200-kilometer subterraneous network of hospital rooms, conference chambers, full-fledged kitchens and even mini theaters spreads far below the thick jungle. Without flinching, I follow a guide in and decide to crawl through the maze of underground passages. A minute later, dying of claustrophobia and cramps, I’m begging the guide to get me out. I break my journey with a week’s stay in the Mekong Delta. The family I am living with don’t speak an iota of English and regard me to be a great source of amusement. Soon, after being laughed at continually, I feel a need to regain some of my squandered dignity and wind my way back up to Saigon.

A month and more has passed and I haven’t even been up to the north of the country. A good excuse to return, but now my budget has run dry and my scooty can’t handle the company anymore. Vietnam has an unpredictable infrastructure, and may not be an ideal leisure destination if you really want to get under its skin. But it’s alive with a passion one sees in its people and culture. There’s an exhilarating sense of spontaneity I experienced here. An excitement that springs from the place…that cannot be packed into one’s bag and taken home.