An Indian Safari

So I went to the Park on Sunday. No, not the park as in the park hotel in Vizag. A group of other I to I volunteers and I went for an Indian safari at the Bannerghatta Biological Park. To get there we took a 30 minute auto ride to a central bus station, we then traveled about 30-45 minutes by bus to find ourselves on the outskirts of the city at what was referred to as the national park. The auto ride was 120 rupees for three people (a little less than a dollar per person) and the bus ride was 28 rupees. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bus was air-conditioned (it was actually quite cold on the ride back), in fact it looked very similar to those found in DC and Europe, the only tangible difference being that there was standing room only for the majority of the trip—i.e. the bus was grossly over-packed.
The park itself was quite nice, although I was disappointed to find that despite the many hawkers outside none were selling nimbo-pani (lemonade, nimbo=lemon & pani=water), something that I was looking forward too. (After we got back to New Tipassandra [the area were the group home is], a few of us decided to stop off at a juice bar and it too did not have nimbo-pani although of course both sellers knew what I was talking about.) Many of the other girls were gooing over the elephant ride, but having been on one as a means of transportation to the Amber Fort in Rajasthan, I decided not to buy a ticket. We all did go on the safari however… I must admit that I was not expecting much and was surprised each time we entered a new section of the park and thus the safari continued for that much longer. (The different animals were kept in different sections of the park, blocked off by a gate that acted like the locks [is that the right word?] at a canal, wherein we drove past one gate only to be stopped by another which would not open until the first had been shut). There were a lot of bears at the beginning and at some point the bus conductor insisted on taking my camera from me and taking pictures with it. While this did guarantee great views—I was toward the back of the bus on an inside seat, many of the shots I wanted to take involved framing the photo of the animals with the Indian passengers to show case the true essence of an Indian safari (perhaps that while we have great views, probably the best views any safari can afford in fact, we’re dangerously close to the animals or the simple fact that here urban Indians are awing at animals that rural Indians take as part of their landscape.) One picture in particular that I wanted to capture was two girls each dressed in a salwair keemez with flowers in their hair looking out of the bus at two white tigers. Now if you don’t understand the significance of white tigers than you obviously haven’t read the book The White Tiger byAravind Adiga, which won the Booker Man Prize. No other book could capture India as well. Period. While I do love Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, the novel details the workings of the black market and underworld which are not necessarily unique to Mumbai, the story’s setting. In contrast The White Tiger shows the rise of a chai-wallah from a rural village to a successful entrepreneur in a large city, a story not unlike the American dream but unfathomable anywhere but India, a country so big and so fabulous that I believe no one, not the government or Bollywood, could ever really taim it.
And this brings me to the Park. For lunch we went to a restaurant just outside of the safari park called the Park. Unfortunately the restaurant had no menus and the waiter insisted we tell him what we want, but kept shooting down any of our requests. We were more lucky at the restaurant next store, except for the drink situation. As a side not, I was looking at the veg (vegetarian) side of the menu because that is all I will eat here (which is not convient at all, every restaurant offers veg or non-veg and many are veg only) and only later realized that the eggs were on the non-veg side of the menu. I do in fact eat eggs (and use omelets or egg buiyani as a main source of protein), and had forget that they are considered non-veg here: basically veg goes beyond vegetarian and really means vegan. Anyways, something of the following dialogue ensued when one of the boys tried to order a diet coke: “Diet Coke, please”/ No diet coke, coke/ fanta?/ No fanta, coke/ Okay, coke…(five minutes later the waiter brings Thumbs up) No coke?/ No, fanta/ fanta, please…(five minutes later the waster brings sprite). The End. I on the other hand ordered a sweet lassi. After the drink hadn’t come for a while I asked one of the help where my drink was and he said no lassi. I then asked the waiter when he returned and he said on minute. I received my lassi five minutes later. From this I can defer that persistence is a necessary trait in India. On another note, this meals showcases why I go veg when in India. The bog who wanted the fanta ordered a chicken dish tossed in rice and needless to say he found several pieces or lumps of matter that were not chicken.
I came back from the day only to fall asleep, the time being around 7.30. I threw off my sleep schedule the day I arrived by falling asleep at 4 in the afternoon. In my defense I had probably been up for 48hours straight so falling asleep that early really just allowed me to re-gain some much needed sleep (I only woke up once in the middle of the night, which was convenient considering I had fallen asleep in my clothes so this way I had a chance to change into my pajamas.)