Out Of The Flying Pan..

It was an afternoon like any other. The kids were playing, the wifey was reading, I was in the kitchen baking cookies (ok.. so whilst that was actually true, it was likely the first time this scenario has ever played out in my house!) when we all heard the metallic thump and raced to the window. Out the front of our place on the entrance to our driveway sat the car in the below image in a rather precarious position.

The driver had been cruising down the road when he came head to head which a bunch of workers who were upgrading the road and found he wasn't able to pass. Because the road is so narrow and on each side there is a significant drop into either the fields or the storm water canals, he reversed back along a hundred or so meters to our driveway with plans of swinging back into it to turn around. Unfortunately for him, he cut it waaaay too sharp and ended up resting in a nasty spot with one tire hanging off the edge in no-man’s land.

I ran out of the house and jumped our hedge to check that he was ok (and thankfully he was) and quickly found I was at a loss for how to help. By myself there would be no way I could give him the push he’d need to get back onto the road and without knowing Thai well enough, I relied on my pretty superb charades skills (refined after many years living in cultures where I didn't fully speak the language) to tell him to sit tight while I went in search of help. And as it turned out, he was in luck! 

Our Landlady was doing some renovations and it just so happened that there was a truckload full of Thai construction workers on the property willing and eager to follow the hairy white guy acting out what a car looks like when it falls on it's side.

The six of us took our places behind the car and I loaded my shoulder in against the boot in preparation to push. In my minds eye I could see us heaving mightily enough for the tires to find some traction and as the driver turned his steering wheel and eased on the accelerator he would gently cruise back into the center of the road. From there we would guide him safely back into the middle of our driveway and then off he'd go. It all seemed too easy.

"Saam, Song, Nung, Pai!" ("3 - 2 - 1 - Go!")

I shoved my body forward putting all my weight into it and with our combined strength could feel the car lifting and slowly moving forward. It felt stable, steady, under control, but alas, the feeling was all too fleeting. In an instant the sound of the engine jumped from a low rumble to a thunderous roar as the driver slammed the accelerator against the floor and within seconds the tires grabbed hold of solid ground and off he went, screaming across the road and careering straight off the other side.

He hadn't turned his wheel so as to go back along the road. He hadn't planned enough space to adequately stop. In a moment of madness he just planted his foot on the gas hoped for the best.. and the best alluded him.

It was all done within the blink of an eye and I immediately felt like I'd fallen out of synch with reality. Seeing a car leap off the edge and smash down into the concrete storm water drain isn't something you see everyday, and in my mind that was surely not what was suppose to happen, but after a second or two of realising the driver hadn't opened his door I was struck back into reality with the fear that he could have really hurt himself. 

I bolted across the road and jumped on the ledge. Grabbing a hold of the handle I threw open the door where the driver sat pressed up against the dash board, one foot in the air, looking sheepish and shocked but not injured, when he looked deep into my eyes and in a sheepish thick Thai accent spoke words that I will treasure forever more;  

"Out of the flying pan.. and into the flyer."

The seriousness of the moment seemed to dissipate in the face of this wonderful summary of events and I had to bite down on my tongue so as to not laugh. Thai's don't pronounce the letter 'r' but instead replace it with an 'l' and thus left me with the gem of a statement. I grabbed a hold of his arm and pulled him from the vehicle much to his embarrassment.

Within the hour reinforcements arrived to lift his car from it's resting place and with only a couple of moments of craziness they managed to haul it off. Wild Flower was worried about the driver and how he was coping. She voiced her concerns with our landlady with some expectation of offering a hand or doing something kind to help him out but for the second time that day we received a response which will forever live on in our families vernacular. She turned and in a very serious tone said "Oh, don't worry about him, cause he is Lich, leally, leally Lich." 

 

Running With The Bull..

I doubt that more than a week has gone by in the two and a half years since first moving to Banaras that something hasn’t caught me off guard. Whether it’s a festival, a person, a smell or a person emitting a smell, it’s a city that’s never short of new, confusing and often challenging experiences that rarely lets you come down off your toes (and often times wants nothing more than to knock you flat off your feet).

My most recent experience of this came in the midst of the most mundane of activities; buying lunch.

Wild Flower and I were having a pretty chaotic morning at home and so I opted to grab Little Feather, jump on the Scooter and ride off and get us all some lunch. There is this wonderfully cheap and nasty little eatery around the corner from our place that makes a fantastic Aloo Paratha (which if you haven’t had one before then do yourself a favour and don’t bother reading the rest of this post, instead close up your laptop, go find a good Indian Restaurant, and enter into paradise) and so we rode on up and put in our orders. I didn’t have cash with me and so we then proceeded to ride off in search of an ATM that wasn’t bone dry; a feat which sounds simple but can often prove a challenge round these parts, and were lucky enough to find a local one flush with cash on our first attempt and so rode back victorious.

Our food still wasn’t ready so Little Feather and I sat at a table and began waiting, and waiting, a.n.d.w.a.i.t.i.n.g.a.n.d.w.a.i.t.i.n.g.a.n.d.w.a.i.t.i.n.g....

During the next 40 minutes I’d been told the usual “just 5 minutes more” (with obligatory head wobble) about 100 times and apart from the handful of times when the Uncle who ran the place would come out of the kitchen with a bag full of food scraps and throw it out the front door to some of the street cows who would happily eat it up, nothing much really happened. I finally decided to kill some time by riding off and buying a clay cup full of Dahi (yoghurt) to go with lunch with the hopes of returning to a meal that was ready to go. So off we went.

All pretty mundane..

Except that upon arriving back at the food place I began pushing down the kick stand on the Scooter to park when I saw the Uncle stepping out the front door with a plastic bag full with our lunch. I left the motor running and reached into my pocket to get the cash to pay him and as he got closer to us so too one of the bulls from the street decided to follow suite and wandered right up along side. I handed the Uncle the cash and he began handing me my food when the bull, which was literally standing inches away from the bike whipped it’s head over and tried to bite the bag out of his hand. The Uncle slapped the bull on the face and pushed its head out of the way with one hand whilst handing me the bag with the other. At this point still all very normal (yes.. even on a main road in the middle of the city this is all rather normal) so I took the bag with one hand and slowly began accelerating to just move a bit past the bull so as to not fall off balance, but it was at that moment I felt something in the air change.

I probably hadn’t moved more than a meter or two when I turned and looked back over my shoulder to witness the Uncle who’d just given me my food literally diving back into this store and slamming the door closed. I was continuing forward slowly so needed to turn my attention back to the road ahead, but would seconds later turn my head for a second glance that succeeded in uncovering a sight which will live with me forever; the bull, terrifyingly close, charging down the ragged streets of Varanasi with his sights set firmly on me and my little bag of Parathas.

Instincts kicked in and I ripped back on the throttle as far as it would go and the motor roared to life (well.. buzzed a little bit, it is only 109cc after all). In front of me all I could see was the familiar pandemonium of locals running to get off the streets, behind me a bull with it’s hooves pounding on the cracked bitumen. We accelerated pasted a handful of shops which were quickly filling up with locals all scrambling to get off the street and out of the way of the charging beast before I would turn my head again and feel some relief seeing that we were making a little patch of space between us and our pursuer. Turning my attention forward however, revealed that before us lay an even greater challenged; a crowded 4 way intersection.

In amongst the constantly merging traffic that acts like thousands of Tetris pieces fighting for position, I could see the line I wanted to take but knew that within seconds it could be blocked by any number of vechicles and thus there was really nothing for it. I lowered my head, squeezed Little Feather between my knees and floored it. 

With my thumb firmly holding down on the horn and a prayer on my lips we sailed through the intersection and whipped through the corner, only then turning our heads to see if our pursuer would follow us.. and he did.

Again I ripped back on the throttle and continued flying down this wider street, horn blasting as loud as it could go, overtaking anything and everything until I came upon a side street where I knew I could disappear in amongst the gullys and alleyways that I've come to know so well. One last glance over my shoulder at the beast which was now back some distance yet was still charging, still struggling to stay from falling off balance in every pothole and still kicking out his legs in a deranged Aloo Paratha desiring frenzy, and we disappeared into the labyrinth which is the Varanasi gulleys/alleyways/backstreets.

Minutes later we busted through our front door and being fired up with adrenaline I told the entire story to Wild Flower before I'd even cleared the welcome mat. I thought it was a great story, though her response of bursting into tears leads me to think that perhaps I should have shared it with a different crowd. Whilst the whole event lasted no more than a couple of minutes, it's a memory that I plan on boring my great grandkids with around the dinner table on more than one occasion! And whilst it might sound insane, it's really just the way life goes in a town like Banaras; one minute you're peacefully buying your lunch, the next minute your running with the bulls. 

Afternoon On The Gunga..

Last week we were blessed enough to have a few friends from Australia breeze into town and spend sometime with us here in Varanasi. This just so happened to coincide with my entire family coming down sick with various illnesses which, of course, made for an extremely long and difficult week and meant that we spent most of our time running off to see Doctors and staying awake throughout the nights tending to our sick little ones.

Thankfully the day before they left my tribe was all feeling much better and so we were able to join them on one of the staples of visiting Varanasi; a boat ride on the Gunga.

The city is such a memorizing place from the water and there is something so special about the feeling of stepping outside of it and peering back upon it as you float down the river. We've been on the water at sunrise, sunset and night, in the hot season and the cold, and each time I find that it's such a different experience than the last with differing colours, water levels, Pujas and atmospheres along the shore line which means that even though it's hugely touristy, it's also amazing.

I won't say too much more, instead I'll post a few of my favourite photos from this most recent trip down the Gunga and let the images do the talking for me.

The Dream Mobile..

I've never really owned my own car before. Eight years ago my parents gave us their old car as a wedding gift but because I was young and cheap, I didn't want to pay the money to transfer it over into my name, so I've never really officially owned one.. but that's all about to change! Well.. sort of..

As you can see, the traffic around here is straight up chaos and it takes a while to really understand how it works. A few tips I've picked up are that nobody has ever shoulder checked in their life, side/revision mirrors are completely irrelevant and it doesn't matter who has right of way (from a Western's perspective) the largest vehicle with the most obnoxious driver has right of way at all times. Thus transporting my family of 4 on a motorbike (including my 4 month old Son) with no safety gear weighs on me a bit. I do it - and I feel confidence to do it - but I don't ever truly feel 100% great about it. However, with the intense congestion and completely under planned roads the thought of getting a car in this city would simply drive me mad.


So here enters Bessie..

Winnie has been talking about it for a while now and I've finally caught up to her in thinking that we should look into getting our own Auto Rickshaw. I took this one for a test drive the other day and am now completely hooked! Sadly this one was a bit too old and a bit too expensive (it would have cost a third of the purchase price just to transfer the registration from a public to private) so now we're crunching some numbers to see if we can come up with the money and are continuing the search for the perfect set of wheels! 

And the perfect paint job! 

Below is Winnie's vision (apparently she didn't buy into my idea of black with flames streaked down the side).

  

Soon all that will be left is to take up chewing Paan to master the truly authentic experience.