Transitory Tabula Rasa (back dated to March 31, 2012)
The process of arriving in a new city is pretty much figured out now. Advance reservations are almost never required. As soon as you step off the train/bus/plane/ferry, rickshaws will be more than available. Haggle as low a price as is manageable, passing over two or three drivers to get there, and head in the general direction of a budget hotel that the guide recommends. Maybe the driver will try to take you someplace, maybe that place might be ok. Usually a glance at the outside will reveal its price range and its cleanliness. Otherwise, walking around will certainly produce a handful of places, and if you are not too picky, you can get an adequate (decently clean is a bonus, but not to be expected) place for 300-450, with or without attached bathroom, with or without hot water. Once checked in, the front desk can help to recommend good local (cheap) places to eat, and help arrange activities, transport around the city, and plan your next step.
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Approaching the town of Sultan Batherie in Wayanad county, the trip on the bus is scenic and only mildly circus-like. This is Kerala, after all. Quiet, communist, catholic, campy Kerala (buses are decorated with blazing "INFANT JESUS" name tags on the windshields), where life seems to be just a bit too easy. Where having electric appliances in the kitchen isn't an uncommon luxury. Where christian churches have found their way deep into the hills so that pictures of Jesus' lurid, glowing heart greet me in the most unlikely places.
The Oh My Jesus van lurks behind the bushes outside
Kerala is India's communist state. Che, Lenin, Marx, and Mao images are as common as Shiva, Hanuman, and Ganesha in the North.Â
The ride starts to become stressful as darkness hits the hills and the roads. The numerous little hill towns we pass take on a more anxiety-provoking tone. The part of my brain that's been trained to associate night with danger starts to fire: "Watch out! Now you have to be more careful! What if you get off at the wrong stop and you're stuck there and you have to sleep in the bushes?"
But body is feeling just fine. Body knows that I'm safe, on the bus, not in the bushes, and that being the only foreigner, the driver will make sure I get off where I want to. Body even has enough sense to ask driver to let me off at a nice hotel. Yes, body can entertain the silly neuroticisms of brain, but it's got it under control. Body has a conversation with brain about why darkness is supposed to make things scarier. Brain thinks that because you can't see as much you should assume that there is danger where your vision doesn't penetrate. But body knows that you don't actually need to see that much to do what you need to do. That the darkness actually simplifies things. Fewer hawkers. Fewer distractions.
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I find myself really enjoying the time I spend in transit between places. Sleeper boxes on overnight bus trips are amazing for giving appreciation to the place you are leaving (or for making vows of "Never there again"), the people met and connected with, the sheer wonder of the innumerable pieces of the adventure, and how much there is still to come. The transit time is pure alone time. It's the time when listening to your favorite songs stitches together the patchwork of acquired experiences of the trip onto the quilt of home. It's a time when listening to Final Fantasy makes me feel like I am simultaneously back in the sunny yellow kitchen in my Montreal apartment, while having my insides jumbled on the bumpiest road I've ever been on en route to Ahmedabad, while lying in a hotel room by myself after having traveled by train and bus for a whole day.
Sleeper class on the train: the best blend of comfort and circus
Transit resets the scale. It brings it all back to the present. There is no particular future to look to, because I usually have no idea what things will look like when I arrive. The past gets its space to be sorted, processed, integrated, cherished, learnt from. People met get the time to settle into their special places in me. Most of all, the sensation of movement is quietly thrilling. The "I'm going somewhere! but I don't know where!" feeling is achingly delicious. The hour before arrival is when all the practical stuff gets figured out. If I want to stay or move on right away to the next leg, where to look for sleeping, what I want to do with my time there.
Transitory Tabula Rasa is like starting at the beginning of a new level in Mario Brothers. You have the skills and experience from everything you've been through, but you don't need to carry the emotional baggage. You get to start anew, the Venus fly traps and Goombas of the last level forgotten behind you, the new power-ups still to be discovered.