Without Reservations

Excursion to Elephanta

We'd tried to go to Elephanta Island yesterday, but we arrived too late. It's slightly over an hour to get there from the mooring at the Gateway of India, and the touts who stalk tourists there let us know we'd only have an hour or so to explore the island's caves if we left at 3.

A downward facing dog at Elephanta Temple

So, we came back to the hotel for a good night's sleep so we could get an early start. Having no idea of the strenuous day ahead, I ate a Raj-style breakfast of eggs and toast with a rasher of bacon. Liz, ever the explorer, chose idli instead, which came with a variety of chutneys and some lovely papaya slices.

We cabbed back to the Gateway around 9, where several touts recognized us from the afternoon before. Big, Black Americans and zaftig redheads make an impression round these parts.

Tourists outside the Caves of Elephanta

A girl no older than eight stuck to us like glue, despite our protests. Trying to shake her, we walked down the esplanade by the Taj Hotel, an ornate, opulent Victorian structure reputedly built by an well-to-do Indian after he'd been denied admission to a posh Bombay hotel, back when the British were noisily sucking the marrow out of his country.

Payback's a bitch -- his hotel is gorgeous.

The girl kept scratching at what I assumed were lice as she begged with plaintive eyes. Many street children here cough theatrically when they approach you, but her scratching seemed genuine. This day, I'd brought small offerings for the kids I knew would beseech me for baksheesh, alms, whatever. Wheat toast in a napkin, along with three pots of marmalade.

This largesse was distributed among three children, and I immediately felt like a selfish, selfish man. If you're beseiged by beggars -- in San Francisco, Tijuana or Mumbai -- try to keep a little perspective. These human beings are following the dictum of their DNA by keeping themselves alive for another day by any means necessary.

What would you do if you had no social or family safety net, no education, and no skills? I bet you'd hit up anyone who even looked like they had a nickel to spare. Bootstraps are all well and good, but first you need to own a pair of boots.

At one point, a torn 10-rupee note fell out of my pocket. I offered it to her, hoping it would be enough to assuage my guilt and get her something to eat, but no dice. A 2-rupee coin fell at her feet (tossed by a passer-by), and she snatched it up, before re-directing her soft but steely gaze back at me. She addressed me, clearly displeased, but still clutching the twin halves of the note. Eventually, one of the boat tour promoters growled at her, and she faded into the crowd.

The outbound voyage to Elephanta Island took a little over an hour. Not much to see after the Mumbai skyline faded in the smog, just a lot of container and tanker ships. A sign reading "NO PHOTO GRAPHI ON BOARD" didn't deter many, if any. For the most part, our fellow travelers were middle-class Indians dressed in jeans and Dockers, as well as the more familiar saris and salwar kameez.

The sign made some sense as I saw the tremendous infrastructure in Mumbai harbor -- a naval installation, an abandoned battery on an artificial island, tankers going to and from a nearby refinery, a nuclear power plant, and not least of all, the massive Tata steel works.

Once we put in at the long jetty on Elephanta, we walked the long pier back to the mainland while every other visitor made a beeline for the miniature steam train that runs to the park entrance. Paying 15 rupees for a quaint little train ride seemed, well, silly. Besides, your legs aren't broken -- you can walk, I said to myself.

Serendipitous, since we were met by a quiet young man named Nitim C. Mali who offered to be our guide. I was a little more inclined than Liz to accept his offer of 450 Rs/30 minutes. The island's attraction are five caves hewn from from the rock, each containing enormous bas reliefs chiseled into the walls that depict scenes from Hindi mythology. Nitin's pitch was persuasive without being overbearing, and he took the trouble to show us his official government tour permit.

Liz seemed skeptical, but I was able to sway her, and off we went. The breezes that had caressed us on the ride over cruelly vanished almost immediately. Reaching the pier, I was already drenched in sweat, but we'd not even begun the adventure.

We diverged almost immediately from the group who'd sailed over with us as our guide let us to his village. We passed through a rice paddy -- well, it'll be a rice paddy as soon as the monsoon starts. Any day now, we're told. Today, the paddy was a hardscrabble sunken clearing with dry, cracked earth.

The three of us passed through his village, shabby cinder block and brick abodes that looked tidy, but well-lived in. Laundry on the line, satellite dishes, toys in the yard. Alien, but oddly familiar. Chickens and roosters squawked and flurried out of the narrow paths, but the ubiquitous, panting Ur-dogs forced us to step over them, their tongues lolling in the heat. Friendly faces appeared in doorways and windows, greeting Nitin.

"Does everyone here know each other?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. Everyone."

Nitin nodded while I inwardly wondered whether such interconnectedness was always a good thing. Me, I couldn't live on an island of 1200 where everyone knew everyone else's business. I already reside at the tip of a peninsula with about 750,000 other people, and the place often feels too small.

After giving us a frame of reference for daily life on Elephanta, we headed for the main attraction. To reach the caves, you must climb one hundred twenty steps. More like 120 landings, as each step is around 8 feet deep and a foot high. Several touts offered to take us the distance in sedan chairs, but there was no way I was going to let four guys carry my fat American behind up to the park entrance.

The steps are lined with local vendors selling everything from Ganesh T-shirts to silver jewelry, and each merchant dutifully tried to draw us in to examine their wares. Our guide has lived each of his 26 years on Elephanta, which insulated us from some of the most aggressive sales techniques. A quiet word or glance from Nitin, and most of them left us alone.

We purchased our tickets near the cave entrance, where I was compelled to sign a form indicating that I'd not take any moving pictures inside the caves. Liz had her digicam, so I wasn't worried, even though my camcorder takes decent stills.

Nitin is a encyclopedia of knowledge regarding the carvings, and he brought each scene to life for us as he explained Shiva's three faces, his union with Parvati and the other key tenets of Hinduism. I was pleased that he seemed surprised when we recounted the story of Ganesh's birth -- and death at the hands of his father (I didn't let on that we'd heard the story the day before during an audio tour at the Prince of Wales museum).

We explored the caves thoroughly, and I got some excellent pictures. At one point, a very aggro guard got up in Nitin's grille for letting me use my camcorder to take stills. Even after showing him the photos, we put the camera away.

Nitin sighed with annoyance, explaining that the guards send mixed messages: don't use your camcorder inside the caves, but for a little baksheesh, they'll look the other way. This guard didn't seem to want to believe that the camcorder would capture still images. Since you can't fight city hall, I stashed my camera until we were back outside.

The caves are a truly incredible experience, and if you have an opportunity to visit, take it. Despite the efforts of the Portuguese to destroy the incredible art and religious symbols on display, the place abides.

Monkeys of Elephanta

Mind the monkeys, however. Their main source of food is cadging carbs from homo sapiens. As Nitin warned, "if they see anything that looks like something to eat, they'll take it right out of your hand. Careful!"

Luckily, we'd been preceded by a score of picnickers, so there was no pressure to cater to our simian hosts. I'd never seen monkeys in the wild before. I was engaged in watching them until I had a pang while a pair groomed each other for lice, ticks and the like. I'd seen two young beggars engaged in the same activity in the street before we left, and it didn't resonate nicely.

This is the world in which we live. I guess I knew that, but I didn't really know it until just recently.

After the caves, Nitin took us on a hike to the highest point of Elephanta. Heat, humidity and my hydration level had me ready to quit, but I'm glad we pressed on. My quads won't thank me tomorrow, but hiking to the summit of a mountainous island isn't something you get to do every day.

There are two British cannon emplacements on either side of the summit. I believe Nitin said they were were 22 feet long, but by that point, I was so exhausted, he could have told us that the British flung Yorkshire Puddings to repel Dutch, French and Portuguese interlopers, and I'd have believed him.

As we were preparing our descent, we walked past a hill that was truly the highest point on the island. On the mound, there was a shirtless Caucasian man in his twenties who appeared to be sitting in the lotus position under the shade of a tree, palms turned upward.

It wasn't until we got a little closer that I realized he had his cell phone in one hand and a 7-UP in the other.

The ride back was a little faster -- low tide, as Nitin explained.

We sat in the second row behind the prow, behind two French chicks wearing flimsy cotton skirts and spaghetti tank tops. Two young Indian men took a seat closer to the front, the best vantage point for staring at these Gallic beauties. By the time we pulled into the dock by the Gateway, the men were asleep on each other's shoulders.

When we got back to the hotel, a film crew with all the trappings was shooting an ersatz wedding reception in the lobby. We skirted the reflectors and cables, staggering back to our room in search of electrolytes. By my count, I drank more than 3 liters of water today, and I could probably use some more.

Posted by Walter at June 9, 2005 08:07 AM