Back of Beyond (39 page)

My spine was tingling. That was my story. The accident that had happened but never happened in Iran, twenty years ago. One of the strange events that changed my life and my way of looking at life.

We sat quietly for a long time listening to the hiccupy rhythm of the bus engine.

“So that didn’t put you off going back in?”

“No—I’ve been kayaking ever since. I learned fast after that. Seemed to come naturally.”

“And you don’t get scared about drowning?”

“No. I’ve never thought about it since that first time. I’ve been banged about a bit y’know. But that’s all part of the game. But no. No, I don’t think about drowning.”

“She must have liked you a lot.”

He laughed. “Yeah. Yeah she must. She still does!”

For the next few days there were more buses, and then there were the trains—eternally slow, lumbering steam-powered relics howling their way across the empty desert (maybe the driver just gets lonely and turns the horn on for company) with dining cars whose only offering seemed to be rice and lentils (more dhal bhat) and bottles of warm fizzy Limca and Campa Cola. They said I could order meals, which would be picked up somewhere further down the line, but for some reason, the system never worked for me.

The days were oven hot and the fans rarely worked. If you opened the windows the sand and dust poured in; if you left them closed it just sort of filtered in and took a little longer to cover you and everything else in the compartment in layers of fine grit.

Relief came in the form of frequent—very frequent—pauses at little desert stations where you could buy eggshell-sized clay cups of milky tea for a couple of cents and then smash the cups against the wheels of the train (the cups were never reused by the vendor and were made of the ideal biodegradable material—a perfect “dust-to-dust” recycling).

I tried to read an English-language newspaper left behind by a previous occupant who insisted on giving me the ritual Indian interrogation and then spent an hour describing the horrors of government red tape when he attempted to establish a cement factory in the desert. The newspaper wasn’t much better—endless exposes of political corruption “in the highest of echelons” terrible statistics of female infanticide and fetacide due to the disproportionate emphasis on male offspring in India (“It is reliably estimated that more than half the girl-children conceived in India are killed at or before birth…”) and shrieking half-page ads: “TOUGH MEN have real feelings. For feeling sensation she’d love to experience, it’s CHAMP ribbed condoms!” Even one promoting vegetarianism, that began: “The stomach of a human being is a graveyard of animals…”

The nights were worse. Wrapped in two blankets over a double layer of clothes, I sat freezing and sleepless, trying to read in the one light of the compartment that flickered on and off with the bouncing of the train. I mentioned the light to one of the guards, hoping he’d try a replacement bulb. He smiled instead and pointed to a sign you see often on trains:
PLEASE RECORD COMPLAINTS, IF ANY, WITH GUARD OR ASSISTANT STATIONMASTER
. T
HEY HAVE COMPLAINT BOOK
.

“Do you have a complaint book?” I asked.

He shrugged and smiled again. Of course not. What a dumb question.

I finally arrived in a golden city.

Jaisalmer, in the far western reaches of India and only a couple of days’ camel ride from the Pakistan border, is a golden stone mirage. Spread across a rocky hill and bound by battlements and unbroken walls more than one hundred feet high in places, the city resembles an Indian version of France’s Carcassonne.

Driving by car for hours overland from Jodhpur, across three hundred miles of scorching desert, I had become accustomed to the barren monotony of burnt plain. The Indian landscape is always writ large. Scenery changes slowly here, and time flows seamlessly. There are few surprises. It’s not boring though—more a pleasant kind of mind-numbing neutrality in which the brain switches off and you’re left with a floating sensation, similar in some ways to deep meditation.

So, for a long time, there was nothing. And then suddenly—something. A vague blurr on the horizon that slowly took on form and substance. It could be a dust cloud, or an isolated butte not quite worn down to the interminable sandy plain. But the shadings were too evenly spaced. Those were walls and towers, I could see. It was a castle, a fortress, a Tolkienesque fantasy.

The road was heading straight for it. A few low houses appeared off to my left, poor mud-walled places with conical roofs and dusty compounds bound by fences of cactus and piled sagebrush. I passed a line of figures carrying huge bundles of twigs on their heads like enormous, comic hats. Some goats; some children playing in the yellow dust; women in bright red saris and ornately embroidered waistcoats; the rasp of sun-shriveled stalks and brittle grass.

Now the golden blurr on the horizon had taken on a finer form. It was a city, it was Jaisalmer—ancient enclave of the Rawals of Western Rajasthan—alone in this vast wilderness; a golden fantasy, and one of India’s most unusual and unspoiled, hidden places.

Even close up it maintained an illusion of fantasy. The evening sun was turning the miles of perfectly masoned walls into a soft pink confection. I stopped the car by the side of the road. What history behind those walls—what records of Rajasthan’s past glories, etched into the fabric of its palaces, temples, and merchants’ mansions….

Rajasthan has always been a “place-apart” in Indian history, particularly in these arid western deserts. Evidence of civilizations here have been traced back to 2500
B.C.
, but recorded history really began with the tribal “republics” and warrior clans of the sixth century
A.D.
, led by the fierce Rajputs. They were constantly at war with one another, although the still-existent “ballad-histories” of later centuries suggest highly structured and chivalrous battles, until the protracted and fierce campaigns against the occupation of India by the Turks from Turkistan during the twelfth to sixteenth centuries.

Constant duplicity, double-dealing, and complex family infighting finally led to the erosion of Rajput morale and power. The tribal states became mere protectorates and later allies with the British, who began their conquest of India in the mid-eighteenth century. British “residents” were appointed “to ensure the welfare of the Rajput princes and the tranquility of their country.” In turn the Rajputs returned the favor by loyally supporting the British during the great national rebellion of 1857 and later during the First World War. But British power waned, and by the time of Independence in 1947, the Rajasthan royal families agreed to relinguish much of their independent power in exchange for generous pensions and privileges. Even today, after Indira Gandhi’s abolition of those perks in 1970, the population of Rajasthan still holds the descendants of the “ancient Rajputs” in high esteem.

A man on a bicycle interrupted my musings. He was neatly dressed in a tweed jacket, with baggy slacks folded around his ankles and held by metal bicycle clips. His black hair was crisply combed forward over a bald patch and he carried a small canvas briefcase. He explained that he was a representative of one of India’s largest tire companies and was in the city “to make businesses.” I’d only got in a couple of nods and a friendly hello when he began this remarkable monologue:

“I am wondering if I might be assistance to you…for India, d’you see? Of course you are British I am thinking by the little flag on your bag, and you are our ex-rulers…I’m not going to talk about that…that is just a joke between the friends of our two countries…these are all things of the past. Those who are understanding of India are very much with us and those who cannot are very much gone. Irrelevant. So we don’t have to look back, d’you see?

“I see it as my duty to look after you. We are all in this world—one world for all, everyone, of course. I find, moving around all the places, that my country is still far, far behind. So far. They talk very much loudmouth things—they say they are doing a lot of things for the downtrodden and all. But it is not so—not so at all. Things are not changing at all…all poppycock, as I think you are saying.

“If you have money in my country you will get what you want, and if you don’t have, you will not get anything. VIPs all over. Too much. Always secret, isn’t it, under the counter d’you see?

“I am pleased to offer my services. Really—I wanted. If I can do it I am pleased. You are not asking me money. You are not asking of anything at all. I have plenty of time, and I think you are looking something. God takes me here. God takes you here, d’you see? And it is nice to know that I have a friend in England who I can call when I come to your airport.

“Please do not belittle me by thanking me. If this were my city you would be welcome to my small residence—in my small way I would offer you Indian hospitality, but I am snookered by being in this city, which is not mine. But we have planted seeds for the future, d’you see? And now please tell me—how it is that I can help you?”

I hadn’t said one word throughout this masterly, all-encompassing preamble. It was far too eloquent a speech to be interrupted. And I really didn’t need any help, but it seemed a shame not to think of something after such an introduction.

“Well—I was wondering where I should stay.”

“Ah, yes. Always a problem in my country, isn’t it? Where to stay is one of the most difficult things. It is so easy to make a mistake, and then you pay for it, by jove. Very difficult it can be.”

“I presume there are hotels here.”

“Oh yes, by golly. Many places but not places for you, if you don’t mind, d’you see? Only three places I think—no, I am mistaken. Four places. First there is the palace up there, on the hill by the gates. Actually it was really a caravansary—for the camel trains, d’you see? But some people call it a palace. Then there is another palace behind the city, d’you see? Very nice. Then a new hotel, just finishing I think, up by the temples. And then there is the Circuit House—and Tourist Bungalows in India—very good places and very cheap for traveling persons. But it is difficult there because it is being filled by Indian people. I am staying there. Very cheap price—30 rupees ($3.00) with a very nice dinner—thali—you know thali—plenty of rice and dhal and curry vegetables and chapatis. Eat as much as you like. But I think there will be no room. If you wish I will be asking for you.”

“No, no. Don’t worry. I’ll go and look at the palaces.”

“Yes. I think is a good idea. Very nice places. Not too expensive. Very clean. Let me show you how to go there.”

And so, he did. I followed my businessman friend, pedaling away happily on his gearless bike, and was introduced to the luxuries of the city hotels. Finally I selected a large and inexpensive room in the pleasantly seedy eighteenth-century Jowahar Niwas Palace on the edge of town. Some of the fine trimmings were still in place, but I had a feeling that the great days of the Maharaos had long since passed, and that their descendents had to be content now with meager pittances from passing travelers.

But the fortress city was everything it appeared to be from a distance, a magical golden stone masterpiece of walls-within-walls palaces; dark and complex little Jain temples filled with white statues of
tirthankaras
(saints), all with jeweled third eyes in the center of their foreheads (a sign read: “
USE OF EGG, MEET AND VINES PROHIBITED HEAR
”); narrow, winding alleys ending in impregnable battlements and sentinel towers; a richly decorated temple to the Goddess Bhavani where the fierce Bhatti Rajput warriors, “the wolves of the wastes,” once worshiped before embarking on their innumerable battles with desert tribes—and all climaxing in the main square by the Jawahar Mahal, the Jeweled Palace, where the regal Rawals gave blessings to their armies and entertained the populace with spectacular extravaganzas after each successful expedition.