I(n)diosynchronicities

En route to Madikeri.

Palelom Beach, Goa.

Not only was a life a lot less stable without the motorbike, but also less adventurous and surreal. Heading out to Madikeri with another South African couple on their Royal Enfield, both girl passengers helmeted despite the fact that our Indian side-saddling fellow commuters went bareheaded, we soon discovered the joy of being able to stop on a whim far outweighed the benefits of scheduled, and possibly more reliable, pitstops. Just two and a half hours away, which, in Indian congestion translates as 90 kilometres, our first taste of impromptu rural hospitality, in the form of a humble welcome by a toga-clad farmer, was gladly received as we unbundled still-cold beers and tuisgemaakte ham toebroodjies to quaff in natural luxury beside his well-tended rice paddie. Indeed, rice paddies, greener and more lush than I have ever seen, were the order of the scenery for the next 50 kilometres and, dotted with sari-clad workers and a monkey-bearing cobra charmer, made for photographs which would make any national calendar proud.
And better was still to come: Destination Honeypot on a coffee and cardamom plantation lifted the hoods from head and eyes alike. Owned by two brothers with a legacy dating back possibly to the Greeks, the hideaway’s three double-storey cottages were expertly kitted out with all the trappings of luxury and a well-rigged donkey kept the shower water boiling for two days. That it had taken us seven hours to travel 252 kilometres, (plus another two getting lost seeking out cigarettes, which in their mild form were all but elusive) was quickly forgotten by our tired extremities, and an evening of alcohol-aided unwinding tucked into with gusto.
Kicked off with a full Indian breakfast and a quick trip round the plantation, which was just two days ahead of blooming, Sunday was a mini epic. With stop-offs at the towering Golden Temple (complete with Coca Cola gifts and other contemporary eats fit for a western birthday party) and refugee centre for exiled Tibetan Buddhists, and a parking attendant’s T-shirt logo “No-one ever died from hard work, but why test it?”, we were well-aspected for hedonism. Not that eight hours in a saddle, either in driver or passenger mode, rates high on the scale of pastoral pastimes, but aided by meditation-like cushions from a roadside stall for aching passengers, we re-invented the meaning of Dharma Bums. Though the seating at drinking holes en route home were often too suspect to sample, Honda’s “Live off the Edge” billboard reminded us to relish the storm which greeted us on arrival in frenetic, unrelenting Bangalore. Percolated coffee never tasted so good, even if we missed the blossoms!

* In Sanskrit, Dharma literally means that which is established, that which is firm. Often equated with religious creed or dogma, a human’s dharma is what s/he was born to do, for all dharma is ultimately sva-dharma, an individual’s personal path through existence. (Sunday Times of Bangalore, 5 April 2009)

“Safe, my mate,” the Rainbow chicken billboard bellowed as we tripped over the Overberg en route from a Karoo campsite in surreal Simonskloof back to cosmopolitan Obs in Cape Town, complete with mod cons. Somehow, though, the fact that a friend and his girlfriend had just been mugged and stabbed in broad daylight because they dared to sample of nature’s delights at Melville Koppies 1000km away, I had a feeling that if a homely cocoon means being doomed to blind batteryhood, I’d choose the Simonskloof grass with solar-powered showers and long drops any day.
Or India, where I can walk unaccompanied to the corner shop at any hour of the dark and unlit night and be sure to get home in minutes without so much as a flinch of a fearful nerve. Hello Bangalore, I’m back after three months, I’ve missed your easy energy, even if it comes with frequent and frustrating power cuts. I know you didn’t notice, nor should you as you struggle to fit thousands more unemployed into your bursting womb, but the overwhelming welcome of the ‘ironing man’ on the corner speaks volumes.
Back home, they’re staging high-wire trapeze acts to stimulate the caring few to reach out into the xenophobic void which keeps the ‘amakwerekwere’ at a distance. And again, I long for the dissolution of labels, nationalism and ego boundaries which keep us quietly insane.