Escape from Opulence
I’ve always had a thirst for extremes. From a business meeting in a suit on Monday to a pink Mohawk on Tuesday. From a lavish five star hotel in Manila at breakfast to a dank, fly-infested outhouse in the northern Philippines at lunch time. Or from the conclusion of 2 weeks riding in Cambodia torturing through the impoverished, knee-deep toxic mud hell of Poipet to a striking Cabernet and thick 8 ounce filet mignon in Bangkok in the span of only 8 hours.
After a week sheltered in an opulent suite at one of the most beautiful hotels in India, tomorrow I will be extruded onto a motorcycle into the tempest of Bangalore traffic for a ride 200 miles to the south. I can’t wait.
I don’t precisely recall the event, but I imagine the transition from the warm tranquility of the womb, through the birth canal to the cold, rubber-gloved hands of the masked doctor who delivered me must have been one of the harshest experiences of my life. The second most is doubtless the ejection from the serenity of the lush, walled compound of a fine hotel’s porte-cochère to the gritty cacophony of the streets of any large Indian city. One minute you are leading a blissful existence and the next, India is in your face.
It didn’t take too long to settle into a rhythm and after a few minor course corrections I pointed the front wheel south, jostling with the stream of all manor of vehicles like carpenter ants headed back to the hill.
National Highway 275 is like any regional connector: two lanes each way cluttered with an incessant mosaic of dilapidated shops, billboards and ‘hotels’ – cheap roadside food stalls where you can get your fill of good dal and roti for about a dollar.
What varies this ride from so many others over the past 10 years is that I am riding a ‘real’ bike – a Triumph Tiger 800 – instead of ubiquitous Royal Enfield Bullet 500 I have rented 10 times before. When I say ‘real’ bike, this is not to denigrate the humble Bullet: I have extolled its virtue as the perfect bike for India many times. But it cannot escape the fact that it is based a 1960’s design and the performance when you want to twist the throttle or yank of the brake is at about garden mower level.
The Triumph has two key distinctions from the Enfield. First is performance. I gleefully found myself riding at first-world speeds time and again only to almost ram into the back of an abruptly halted bus on one occasion, and into a herd of mules on another, violating my own Principle # 6 of Never Getting Comfortable. The other distinction is that it is distinct. Of the millions and millions of two-wheelers on the road in India, 99.999% of garden-variety 125cc Honda scooters. This distinctness brought back memories of when I rode here on my big BMW: every time I would stop, groups of men would congregate and ask how much it cost, or swarms of schools kids would encircle me and practice their English. I love when that happens..
The highlight of my day other than all of it was when I was passed by a shiny white Audi A6 – a hyper exotic car on the rural lanes of India – with the logo of the hotel I had just left embossed on its doors in gold. When we met up again at the next goat herder crossing they looked at me with a sense of utter befuddlement. ‘What’s he doing out there?’ was the message their eyes conveyed. ‘He’ll get killed!’ I thought of the air-conditioning and the plush leather seats inside their cocoon and then reflected on my sweaty, grimy face. ‘Nope, I’m fine. Very fine. But thanks for asking’, I thought.
Today I tried something new. I set off after breakfast with a mission: find the best Mysore Masala Dosa in Mysore. Well, that and a sherwani – a ¾ length kind of man dress made of silk that is worn at weddings – but more on that later. Or not. My old routine for heading into city centers after arriving at my hotel on a bike was to use taxis or autorickshaws. The primary reason is that getting lost in an Indian city on a big, heavy motorcycle when it’s oppressively hot and your depressingly tired really, really sucks. Today I cheated a bit and set off on the bike with a little Indian lady in my Bluetooth headset chanting step-by-step directions from Google maps. Yes, she did send me in circles several times but when I consider that first time I came to India – 25 years ago – not only was there no GPS but there were no road signs either, I accepted her artificially intelligent instructions without hesitation. With the sound of Indira Google in my ear as a safety net, I decided to wander aimlessly on the bike for a few hours as you might when ambling through the narrow lanes of an old European town. I spent hours getting deeper and deeper into the city, dosa by dosa, through residential neighborhoods, through inner-city dairy farms, through electrics town, transmission town and wrought-iron fence town. (most commercial districts focus on one commodity so you could have a whole block of guys selling screws or women’s undies or whatever). For showing me a new way explore the densest corners of India, I thank you, Indira Google.
Back to the dosas.
Dosa is a simple food served for breakfast or lunch. Try ordering one for dinner in India and you will be laughed at. To find the one most adored by Mysorians, I asked the barber who had just pruned my scalp and straight-razored my face for $2. He took me to the door of his stall-like shop and recited a stream of directions. I managed to retain the first 2 or 3 steps. But I did recall the name – Hotel Vinayaka Mylari. I wasn’t really hungry – I had eaten 4 already – but I was on mission from Shiva so pulled out my phone, Googled the restaurant, mapped the route and hit ‘start’ to have Indira calmly guide me there through the mid-morning traffic crush. The Hotel – really a hole in the wall restaurant with 5 tables – employs the standard approach of seating you at any table where there is a spot. I was tripled up with two young dudes on a day trip from Bangalore out to find – you guessed it – the best Mysore Masala Dosa in Mysore. We talked about typical guy stuff – work, motorbikes, girls – and food. Unlike the traditional variety with a thin, crispy shell, the Mysore version is more like a crepe and is smeared on the inside with chili paste before plopping in a hefty load of potato cooked with masala spices. The flopped over pancake then receives a spoonful of soft butter and is served with some coconut chutney that was so delish I could have eaten it all by itself.
Was it the world’s best Mysore Masala Dosa? How the fuck should I know. I’m not a dosa expert. But I can unequivocally declare that it was the most fun I’ll ever have trying to find the world’s best Mysore Masala Dosa and I guess that was the mission Shiva had for me all along.
The ride home from office to hotel was a route I had taken before. It has never been a pleasant commute. But for some reason this evening, draped with a dusky, corrosion-hued toxic sky, the scene was reminiscent of Bosch’s morbid The Last Judgment as the panorama of suffering slid past my car’s window.
Clustered around the 150 foot high, 1,000 foot wide garbage mountain at Ghazipur with 1,000’s of vultures circling above like a halo of death lives a society of despair; a civilization of ten thousand living things enduring hell on Earth. Villages of sticks and tarps encamped in a mile-long drainage ditch, children playing, men urinating, women crying. Rotting, randomly layered carcasses of discarded vehicles like one would see at the bottom of the sea encrusted with mollusks and coral as an artificial reef, instead are rendered monochromatic by a thick layer of poison dust. Herds of cattle graze in fields of garbage and drink from murky septic puddles. Emaciated packs of dogs forage for any scrap.
I read every day that India is rising. I am not fooled. India will remain the parent who caresses you with one arm while beating you with the other until those with the will, the knowledge, and the money – the men in the billion dollar skyscraper homes – take action.
Meet Carl. You might easily confuse him for the local barman, but Carl is the founder, president and COO of Claymore Jackets of East Yorkshire, England. Finding him is a challenge. His web site presence has a distinct ‘get off my lawn’ feeling: An welcoming user experience it is not. And locating his little house in the small village of Goole requires persistence. There is no ‘Claymore Jackets’ sign in front and Google Maps has not yet caught up to Goole. But a trip to visit family in the neighboring county of Cheshire gave me the opportunity me to try.
Heritage is a word liberally used when describing British waxed jacket makers like Belstaff and Barbour. But these brands have long ago pivoted to the luxury market and seem to have lost the utility strand in their DNA. Claymore remains true to the original mission: they are made to be worn on the road, not in the club. If you know Bestaff’s Roadmaster jacket, Claymore’s Roadmeister will seem familiar. You could even say the design is more or less the same. But where the $800 Roadmaster feels delicate but practical for every day wearing, the $400 Roadmeister is of heavier gauge fabric that could actually withstand a spill. And with the $120 armor option, it will protect from everything India throws at you.
Visiting Carl in his shed was a journey to the roots of craftsmanship. The 100 square feet of workspace is crammed with five sewing machines, piles of fabrics and boxes of components. There is no showroom to try on one of the eight models. Instead, Carl had one Jacket he had ‘buggered up’ that served as the only tactile proof of the finished product. After selecting a style, I was offered an array of colors to choose from, two different materials (traditional waxed cotton and ‘Ventile’, a non-waxed waterproof material of tightly woven cotton) and a choice of a national flag to be sewn into a front pocket. Next, Carl measured every dimension of my upper body and relayed these to his only other employee, his Thai wife. And that was that. In only three weeks my Claymore Jacket appeared in the mail, ready for action.
Obviously, there are simpler ways to buy an adventure touring jacket and yes, Cordura is a very practical material and is available everywhere. But if you are looking for something different and, in my my opinion, incredibly well suited to the diverse riding conditions of India, give Carl a try.
If you can find him.
By eight in the evening on Wednesday, the night of our arrival in the ancient city of Varanasi, the wear of the day on the road had me fading at the dinner table. More than anything, I wanted to sleep. But by 4am the next morning, the sounds of the dense old town already permeating the shuttered balcony doors, I was wide awake, my mind already churning with the lists of things to do and see before we could get on the road again in three days time. I lay there for an hour and a half, but when the morning light finally penetrated the shutters, I decided to pull myself out of bed and walk to the river to capture some early morning photographs before my wife got up.
Half asleep as I wandered through narrow alleys of beggars, pilgrims and cows, I found some men drinking tea in a small stall and paid a couple of rupees for something hot and caffeinated. I then wandered down to Asi Ghat, the southernmost of the ‘ghats’ or wide stone staircases that lead to the edge of the River Ganges for four miles through the heart of the 3,000 year old “the holiest in all India. I passed a row of squatted untouchables, the poorest of the classes, who begged with tin bowls into which passers by throw a handful of rice or a small sum of money. The last beggar in the line, a young woman with a baby, caught my eye and I gave her the few coins I had.
I walked down toward the bottom of the ghat, to the muddy river’s edge, squatted low and observed for a while the daily rituals that were taking place all around me. Women were washing their clothes, families in the river shallows were bathing, a purification rite for all Hindus, and young men atop small stone platforms overlooking the river sat in the lotus position and practiced yoga to the rising sun. Holy men in orange robes and painted faces chanted, rich and poor people prayed, and the bodies of the dead lay engulfed in flames on nearby a ‘burning ghat’, a set of stairs where funeral pyres burn around the clock so the ashes can be released into the Ganges to free the spirit of the deceased. I pulled out my camera and did my best to capture some of these beautiful things that were going on around me, things that have been happening in exactly this way for millennia. Then a young voice behind me beckoned and I turned to see a boy of maybe ten years, his head shaven and his face proud, asking me in broken English if I needed a boat. I smiled and said ‘not this
morning’ and, although he persisted, I quickly changed the subject to him and his boat and father and brothers and where I was from and what I was doing in India. His seriousness began to crack and I even got a smile or two out of him after taking some pictures of him and mimicking his stern, grown up grimace. Kuran followed me as I took more photos: boats, the sunrise, bathers, worshippers. Finally, after an hour or so at the Asi Ghat, I felt like the light had peaked and had gotten a couple of good shots, so I shook young Kuran’s hand and said good bye. As I made my way back up to the stairs and toward the row of beggars, I noticed that “the young woman I had given my rupees to was following me with her eyes under her orange veil and as I came upon her, her baby in her arms, she looked at me and beamed a warm smile of thanks which would have melted the heart of the most hardened motorcycle rider. I returned the smile and it stayed with me up to the door of my hotel. In my own narrow little world, I felt as if I saw the soul of India that day.
For four days, we wandered through the back streets and ghats of Varanasi, lanes more compressed with people, animals and vehicles than any we had ever roamed. As a city, it is a microcosm of the rest of India that we saw during our month of riding there. It has enormous historical value as one of the oldest cities in the world yet its lifeblood, the Ganges, is so polluted it is classified as septic: its lack of oxygen prevents the existence of life. It is the holiest place of the Hindu faith, yet its poverty is brutish. Like India itself, it is a place of extreme contrasts that left us with emotional paradoxes as memories.
“It seems a fitting conclusion to our month of riding the breadth of Northern India that it should end in an oasis of sublime beauty and ultimate tranquility. The Golden Temple of Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikh faith is such a place. It is like a visit to the pure soul of this religion of tolerance and inclusion, a world sealed off from the harsh chaos on the other side of its walls, a sanctuary glistening in white marble and luminous gold.
There is no doubt in my mind that, as a rider out on the street rather than tourists in a tour bus, our 2,000 miles across this country have been war. Each day presented its battles that tested us, grinded us, covered us with soot and grime, and on a daily basis, nearly killed us. Yesterday alone en route to this city we were nearly involved in eight head-on collisions due to the murderous stupidity of bus and jeep drivers.
“But even worse than our brushes with mortality, India murders itself. Whether it be on the highways, in its cities or in rural villages, it is a place where to be born weak is to subsist on the ruthlessly dark fringe of existence. Whether human or animal, I have seen suffering here like I have seen in no other country on earth. But in the paradox that for me has defined this place, India is the by far most magical country I have ever visited. It has the capacity to make you gasp for breath at its architectural beauty, to charm you with the mosaic of its peoples and culture, and seduce you with its history and the religions that are core to life. Metaphorically, it is like the tiger that still roams its southern jungles: awesomely beautiful and majestic, but with the potential to devour the unwary. ”
“I leave India tomorrow locked in this paradox and it may take me weeks or months to reconcile. Perhaps I never will. But as I prepare to spend another sunset roaming around the gem in the lake that is the Golden Temple of Amritsar, I am happy that I will exit this country with the warmth of the soul of the Sikh people in my heart.”