Tiger Reserve, Another Train Station

Sitting in the VIP room in the Alwar train station, watching my friends ignore a young beggar girl. But more on that later.

Woke up this morning a little before 6:30, though it wasn't until 6:40 or so that I got out of bed. We went down to wait for the jeeps... and look who it was, our guide from yesterday. Oh goodie. However, there were 5 jeeps, so we managed to avoid him. Denny was... not so lucky. Nate, Swaffy, Mike and I had a pretty good guide, quiet, but knowledgeable. A few language difficulties on occasion, but mostly good English. The tiger reserve itself was impressive, though dry as all hell. We saw a ridiculous number of deer, antelope, and peafowl, as well as many other birds, a jackal or two, a wild cat (probably jungle cat?), some wild boar, and some monkeys, though not as many as yesterday. The three or so watering holes were especially spectacular, with an absurd number of animals all in the same place. The ride was bumpy, of course, but not too bad, we had a point where we got out, stretched our legs, and fed some birds bread and seed. I didn't personally, but there are some great pictures of Sigrid, Swaffy and Mike at it. Of course, we later saw a sign asking us not to feed animals, but our guides were encouraging it. Not surprising. Drove back, lazed for a bit, read a bit, napped a bit, finished packing, and headed down. We briefly talked about the travel schedule, and then had lunch, which was again delicious. After that we had a short break, then class, which was a bunch of the biology stuff. A bit of a break, nice weather, cooler than we've had, and into a minibus. Which had almost exactly as many seats as there were of us, and with luggage the extra two seats weren't much help. It was uh, cramped

There is a beautiful incongruity in listening to The Holmes Brothers, The Notorious B.I.G., Gnarls Barkley, Warren Zevon, Loney Deer, Gorillaz, Streetlight Manifesto, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Bravery, Fall Out Boy, Say Anything, Steve Miller Band and Marvin Gaye while sitting on a cramped minibus and watching the Indian landscape go by outside the window.

That ride was about an hour, give or take. We got to the train station, got in, piled up our stuff, I paid 10 rupee for 6 of us to use the bathroom (didn't have any 1 rupee pieces, so I couldn't pay the exact 6), got some change from Nate, had a bag of “American Style Cream and Onion” chips and a coke, and sat around talking a bit. We gathered a crowd, unsurprisingly: in addition to the effect of 20some Americans in an Indian train station, we had Michelle and Becky braiding hair and exchanging backrubs, some of the guys doing ridiculous kung fu shenanigans, Allen petting a dog, Jacob, Nikki and I forget who else doing the macarena... as David pointed out, we were a three-ring circus. I tried to talk to a couple guys, but we ran into the same old problem: I don't speak any Hindi, they don't know much English. Eventually a station official came by and tried to shoo them all off, most of them left, a few stayed, not too long after the station guys opened up the VIP room and offered it to us. Whether it was a gracious “here, we are offering this to you” or a firm “you should go here now,” whether they were being kind to a group of American tourists or trying to eliminate a commotion that was causing a block in their train station, depends on whether Denny and David or I have the right interpretation. Maybe it was a bit of both, and in fairness, Denny has far more experience in India than I do. Another station guy eventually took that beggar girl out, by the way, not long after I started this entry.

I need to write a full entry on the poverty in this country. My normal posts just aren't doing it justice.

But yeah, Tiger Reserve was cool, no tigers (not a shock, only 3 of them in the whole park), but lots of wildlife, maybe the most we've seen the whole trip, land-wise. Train to taxis to a train to Mussorie and the Woodstock School tonight, then we're there for two days teaching, apparently (I'm horrified at the idea of handling 5th graders, high school kids might not be so bad), then a sleeper to Delhi, and off to Male and the Maldives. Hopefully we'll have interwubs at Woodstock so I can upload, since I didn't when I had the chance in Jaipur.

Monday, February 8th, roughly 6:50-7:05 PM local time