Yesterday we finished our post asana breakfast of fruit and buffalo curd with a drizzle of palm syrup and ... no wait, before I go on I would like to salute the noble water buffalo: their efforts have transformed nations, shifting mud and water to create verdant rice paddies; their dung is burned for cooking fuel and for warmth; upon their yoked necks travel every item imaginable from vegetable to mineral; but in their nobility they have bestowed an even greater treasure (or we have stolen it, either way it's the best) and that, their milk, has been transformed into manna, known in Sri Lanka as curd. I'm not a nutritionist but I claim that buffalo curd is not only a complete food but also the tastiest damn thing to be produced from teat juice, ever! Dude, I could eat that stuff all day and sometimes do. I'm starting to smell like it and that is only bad because I stand around sniffing my sweet curd-y stink and it makes people look at me funny. Though admittedly people are always looking at me funny here but I finally figured it out, it's not becaue I'm doing something rude or freakish (except in the case of sniffing myself) but because I'm a novelty, like a small child in an office or a trained monkey, and everyone feels the need to speak to me with exaggerated facial expressions and say hi and ask me how old I am and what my name is and ask me to say their name and then wave goodbye with too much enthusiasm. I figured this out as I was doing all these things to a little Sri Lankan girl, I got a moment of deja vu and realized that the situation was eerily familiar but the perspective was different. But I digress, both generally and now specifically, the main point is that curd is yummy and should be available everywhere in it's little earthen crocks with paper on top. - anyway, post-brekky myself and two other yogis set out for Uda Walawe National Park.
Uda Walawe has a reputation for having lots of elephants and we had a day off of practice, so we decided to expend our extra energy on a little half day safari, in an effort to have a more "local" experience we also decided to take the bus, not even the air-con bus but the most local of the local buses. Buses in Sri Lanka are like buses in India with fewer people; loud, bumpy, crowded, and not to be missed. I always feel like I see more when I ride a bus and I meet cool people sometimes, like the super helpful guy in Colombo who took time out of his day to direct four tourists to their various buses, trains, and hotels and,in my case, to spend thirty minutes helping me purchase a phone card and find an internet shop, or the guy on the way to Trivandrum who I talked to for two hours about travel and books and then failed to exchange emails with because he almost missed his stop and his traveling partners had already disembarked with all the money, or the woman I met and ended up sharing a room and trip to a police station with or ... well trust me the list goes on. The bus was grand, we entertained the locals by trying to request directions for the bus to the park (this involved elephant impersonations by yours truly) and imitating meerkats foraging and guarding (this was purely for our own entertainment, as I mentioned before foreigners are a bit of spectacle here and we decided, since we had everyone's attention anyway, to do a little improv), we found our bus connection and the proper stop, and got a recommendation for a lunch place where we were able to hire a jeep and have yummy rice and curry at the same time.
Our driver informed us that there was an elephant orphanage very close by but that if we waited a few minutes we would be able to see the babies being fed, so we decided to take a little stroll. It was about here that we met "the French Lady". It started off innocuously enough, fellow tourists making conversation, and when our driver showed up she asked if she could come along. Okay, really she kind of invited herself and asked if we would be able to cover her costs because she didn't have enough cash but she did it in a way that made it sound more like a request than a demand, though that may have just been the accent or the little "no?" on the end of the demand. "You will loan me the money, no?" Whatever. We were in a hurry and the orphanage was free, so she hopped in and we all headed off. The orphanage was fun, lots of babies being fed by bottles, pushing each other around, running around in their baggy trousered hides (they really do look like Charlie Chaplin impersonators from the rear), and the sound of someone going on and on in a french accent about the cost of things and being robbed by the locals.
Travelers are generous people, loaning each other tiger balm or the use of a phone or fan, directing each other to good food or hotels, not thinking the worst when you snap and start to freak out (as you will) about costs and being ripped off, because they've been there too. But sometimes the generosity is misplaced. You loan someone your phone and they call home, or someone starts going on about "being robbed and cheated by the locals" and they aren't freaking out they are just like that. So we overlooked her price paranoia at first and tried to reassure her that we weren't being robbed blind, that this was in fact what we had been told was a fair price. But when we got to the ticket booth at the park and she argued with the staff for fifteen minutes over 100 Rs (split between four people, mind you, which is 25 cents and even I, sadistic penny pincher that I am, thought that was going too far) and then called the rest of us, who just wanted to get into the park before it got dark, selfish and rich, well, we took her suggestion and got tickets for three. And we had a blast. The park was lovely and green, the mountains in the distance were suitably misty and blue, the breeze showed up and was fresh and light, basically the park decided to show us a good time. We saw elephants, spotted deer, a crocodile, wild water buffalo (or "blessed producers of curd" as I call them), monkeys, and lots of birds; crested serpent hawks, peacocks, kites, hornbills, myna birds, and parakeets. It was grand. At one point an elephant decided to run toward us and even though I flinched I knew somewhere in my heart that the most fearsome beast in the park was back at the visitor station trying to get a ride back to town and arguing over the fare.
"Twenty rupees, ooo lala, that is very expensive, no?"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment