So now we know, vividly, first hand, the-spider-bites-all-over-me-will-tell, why people vacate the jungle during monsoon season. Bugs EVERYWHERE!
We stayed at our friends' lovely lodge on the edge of Kanha national forest, where people go on safari in the correct seasons (NOT from June-September, when all sane people run for higher ground). The lodge is called Flame of the Forest , which is also what the Palash tree is sometimes called.
Some notebook thoughts and scraps from our week in the jungle:
7/11- The biodiesel plant makes bubbles! You break the cupped leaf from the tree, snap it at the node, where the leaf and stem join, very gently peel the leaf downward so a little windowpane of iridescence forms, and then blow flurries of tiny bubbles!
Purple orchids hang from bahera trees in clusters like bright grapes, or a violet wisteria.
7/12- We are sitting on an old piece of canvas ripped from a bag, on the dusty ground next to the stoop of a village house. A mahua-tipsy uncle uses threads from his white scarf to secure the tobacco leaf that he has spiral rolled into a bidi. A few people are crowded around us, a little boy's nose is running snot all down his front. They slice open a raw wild onion, the flesh is greenish-white and bitter hard. Baked in the fire, coated with soot, knobbly grey outsides smoldered in coals until the insides sunrise pink and orange, some of the bitterness sapped away. We smoke, we eat the bitter roots.
At the end of the week, we had come to think that most normal people didn't seem to care so much about stories- often they just wanted to complain. I would turn my recorder on, and Shivani would talk to them, and one person would get going, and she'd lean over to me and roll her eyes and say "complaining" and I'd turn the recorder off. Apparently I recorded one 80 year old grandma talking about how difficult it is for her to poo these days.
We also heard personal tales of confrontations with tigers and leopards stealing in through windows at night to take puppies, legends of banyan trees, learned how to tell from the ants if rain is coming or going, how to identify bird calls, what a black cobra looks like, and a set of new constellations from a farmer-shepherd who loves Kabir.
Somewhere in there we got some amazing full stories about fireflies and Rakshas (monsters) and helicopter contraptions and food always getting the girl.
Upon returning to Bombay I promptly succumbed to a fever, and this is also my excuse for taking so long to update the blog. I will have to be better in the mountains, because we will be in Ladakh for a month. I am one excited tumblin weed!
Some notebook thoughts and scraps from our week in the jungle:
Purple orchids hang from bahera trees in clusters like bright grapes, or a violet wisteria.
7/12- We are sitting on an old piece of canvas ripped from a bag, on the dusty ground next to the stoop of a village house. A mahua-tipsy uncle uses threads from his white scarf to secure the tobacco leaf that he has spiral rolled into a bidi. A few people are crowded around us, a little boy's nose is running snot all down his front. They slice open a raw wild onion, the flesh is greenish-white and bitter hard. Baked in the fire, coated with soot, knobbly grey outsides smoldered in coals until the insides sunrise pink and orange, some of the bitterness sapped away. We smoke, we eat the bitter roots.
At the end of the week, we had come to think that most normal people didn't seem to care so much about stories- often they just wanted to complain. I would turn my recorder on, and Shivani would talk to them, and one person would get going, and she'd lean over to me and roll her eyes and say "complaining" and I'd turn the recorder off. Apparently I recorded one 80 year old grandma talking about how difficult it is for her to poo these days.
We also heard personal tales of confrontations with tigers and leopards stealing in through windows at night to take puppies, legends of banyan trees, learned how to tell from the ants if rain is coming or going, how to identify bird calls, what a black cobra looks like, and a set of new constellations from a farmer-shepherd who loves Kabir.
Somewhere in there we got some amazing full stories about fireflies and Rakshas (monsters) and helicopter contraptions and food always getting the girl.
Upon returning to Bombay I promptly succumbed to a fever, and this is also my excuse for taking so long to update the blog. I will have to be better in the mountains, because we will be in Ladakh for a month. I am one excited tumblin weed!
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