I'm Pretty Predictable

Around the time that I came back from vacation in Mahabaleshwar, I realized that people had begun to recognize me. It isn't the same as fitting it, but it's nice to realize that people see you as a part of their routine rather than a total stranger. The guy who works at the grocery store now greets me by sight. One morning, a fruit vendor who didn't have an extra rupee (equivalent to 0.02 cents) to give me in change told me quite earnestly that he would give it to me when I walked by tomorrow, acknowledging that I do walk by him every morning at the same time. Another day, I approached the vegetable vendor who always gives me the best deal on what I want. He saw me coming, met my eye, nodded, and started putting green beans on a scale before I said anything to him.

Parsi Restaurant

The Parsis are members of the Indian Zoroastrian religion. This is an ethnic, as well as religious, identity, since in order to be considered a Parsi one must be descended from the original Persian emigrants who established the faith in India as well as a believer.

Through my guidebook, I learned that in Mahabaleshwar there is a Parsi restaurant, and it was one of the goals of the trip to go there. I was interested to try a type of ethnic cuisine that I probably wouldn't get a chance to try again. Also, my guidebook, which is always deprecatory, highly recommended this place.


They keep a picture of Zoroaster over the door.


Parsi style chicken appetizer. They're like very seasoned chicken meatballs.


Fish with tomato chutney, and some vegetables. Indian "salad" usually consists of chopped onions and tomatoes with a squeeze of lime. To give you an idea of how hot the chutney on this fish was, I was eating the onions to cool my mouth off.

This was the most expensive meal I've bought in India, but one of the best.

Mahabaleshwar- Mumbai Point and Tiger Path Trails

Mahabaleshwar- Elephant's Head Trail

Mahabaleshwar-Lodwick Point and Surrounding Trails

Roughing It In the Mountains and Partying for God

When we got to Mahabaleshwar, we had reservations to stay at the second-to-cheapest hotel that was listed in the Lonely Planet India guidebook, the Blue Star Hotel. We wanted what was essentially a place to camp out before hiking around outside, which was good, because that was all we got. The room was clean, located on the main road, and free of mosquitos. There were no phones, no internet, no matching sheets, no toilet paper, no functional toilet, and no running hot water. We got hot water once a morning. At about 8 am, without being asked, the hotelkeeper would wake us up by knocking on our door to ask how many buckets of hot water we would like, while roosters crowed insistently outside. Yes, seriously.

On top of that, we discovered that Mahabaleshwar is a popular place that people visit to do puja, and it happens to be festival (ie, religious holiday) season in general, and the holiday of Dusshera in particular. At the end of the main road, there was a devotional stage with painted plaster statues and lots of flowers set up. The stage also had an electric "Om" light that looked like it was produced by the same places that make "Open" signs. This juxtaposition of ancient devotional sound and modern electronics greatly amused me, but I decided not to take a picture in case anyone would be offended.

There was devotional music that started at about eight or nine at night, and continued until about three in the morning. The music was a mixture of pop-beat, Bollywood-style religious songs and traditional chanting, with (very loud) live drummers that created a pounding, underlying base beat. This place was a few hundred feet from the hotel room, so we heard it all night long as we tried to sleep after walking around on trails all day. My mind kept incorporating the music into the dreams I was having, which gave me dreams about being at some very strange parties.

The Streets of Mahabaleshwar

The actual "town" of Mahabaleshwar consists of two streets. Literally. All the shops are on those streets, as well as hotels and religious buildings. The place is largely known for a vacation spot where people can go out and hike up trails in the mountains, as we were doing. It is also known, as I found out after arriving, as a site for Hindu religious pilgrimage.

In the commerce realm, the town of Mahabaleshwar is largely known for producing honey and jam, and half the shops seem to sell only these two things. This place is especially known for its strawberry and mullberry jams, since those two berries grow in the area. I bought some mullberries to try from the man pictured above, and they were good. They had a fairly generic berry taste, and were probably closest to blackberries in flavor.

The picture above is a collection of typical Mahabaleshwar jarred goods that we purchased to eat on slices of bread for breakfast before walking around on the mountainside. The jars are (from the left) raspberry jam, gulkand (sweetened rose petals), and mixed spicy pickled fruits with garlic.

We also visited a store where they sold these candies. The gum in the green jar is called "Chloro-mint" with the subtitle "functional gum." The orange-colored Mentos are mango-flavored.

We also walked passed "New India Boot House," most notable for its lack of boots.

There were also a few of the obligatory unowned cows wandering along the street.

Travelling to Mahabaleshwar

Hill stations in India are generally small, high-altitude towns that were used by colonists to escape the summer heat. I decided to visit a hill station called Mahabaleshwar during the brief holiday from classes that I had.

We bought tickets for a Friday afternoon, semi-luxury bus to Mahabaleshwar on Wednesday. Not having used the Indian bus system before, I wasn't sure what the categories "semi-luxury" or "regular" meant. I tried to ask the person who was selling the tickets. He didn't seem to know, or possibly to understand what I was asking, and/or just wanted me to get the tickets so that he could serve the person in the line behind me. In the end, I decided to be safe by going with the semi-luxury bus for my first trip. The price difference between the two categories wasn't much. Also, many inner-city Indian buses are standing-room only, so I wanted to make sure that I could sit down if I had to be on a bus for 4-5 hours.

The day that we were planning to leave, we got to the station early, found the bus that had "Mahabaleshwar" written on it (pictured above), asked the driver to confirm that it was the bus to Mahabaleshwar, and then got on. We were the first people to board, and got a seat on a padded bench. Eventually, the bus filled up, and several people were left having to stand. I thought this seemed a little unfair, by American standards, since this was considered a semi-luxury bus.

Shortly after the bus left the station, a man with a ticket-printer came around to sell people tickets and check the prepurchased tickets. After examining the ticket for my group, he told me that we were on the wrong bus, and then said a few things in broken English that I couldn't understand. He didn't seem to have enough of a command of the language to tell me much more than that I had done something wrong. The man sitting next to me, who I didn't know and hadn't spoken to at all, immediately tried to confer with the ticketman on my behalf, talking quickly and in a low voice that I couldn't understand. After a few stunned seconds, I asked in Hindi whether the bus we were on was going to Mahabaleshwar. The man next to me relaxed quite a bit, realizing that I knew the language, and then explained that it was going to Mahabaleshwar, but it wasn't the semi-luxury bus. I explained several times in Hindi that this was okay with us, we just wanted to make sure that we were going to the right place. The man didn't seem to find as much comfort in this fact as I did, and explained in Hindi that they were debating whether I had to pay again, with a tone of voice that implied this would not be acceptable.

Immediately, I realized that accepting the "injustice" of having to pay again in my relief that I was on the right bus was a foolish American thing to do. Arguing over money here is a matter of pride, probably moreso than a matter of frugality. It shows people that you are a person who is aware of the way that transactions should go, and will accept nothing less. If you pay even an extra $ .50 for anything, you will be looked on with scorn from the person who just shamelessly "ripped you off." If you want people to treat you with any respect, you sometimes have to argue over money matters that you don't actually care about.

As the man sitting next to me was explaining the situation, the ticketman at the front of the bus called the station to figure out what to do with us. He came back and stated the obvious fact that we couldn't get on the semi-luxury bus because we had already left the station on the regular bus. I told him this was okay. Then he went to the front of the bus and called the station on his cell phone again. Two people took the opportunity of his absence to explain the situation for me again in both Hindi and English, although I was by now well aware of it.

While the ticketman was waiting for a response from the ticketing counter at the station, a small crowd of people standing at the front of the bus, who overheard the situation, began to argue animatedly with him to the effect that, since we had already paid for tickets for a nicer bus, the least they could do was let us stay on this one. Finally, the verdict was that we didn't have to pay again, and the small crowd of people who had begun to follow the issue seemed content. I thanked the two people who had been reexplaining everything to me, who responded with embarrassment that it was "nothing at all." Then, the small commotion that we had created quieted.

On the way to Mahabaleshwar, we stopped in several colorful small-town bus stations to let people on and off. We also got to enjoy the scenery as the bus wound its way up the mountain. The views from the bus were among the best that I experienced during the trip, and the atmosphere of the bus was fun and interesting. It was clear that many of the people used this bus route to get to and from the city during work, and were acquainted with each other as a result, which gave the ride a nice, familiar atmosphere. Most people seemed not to notice us, and the few that did looked at us with a sort of well-intentioned but undisguised curiosity that's typical here. I fell asleep for parts of the bus ride, and it also reached Mahabaleshwar an hour before the estimated time of arrival. I later learned that the semi-luxury bus actually takes about an hour and a half less than that because it doesn't stop so many places, but I enjoyed the experience of the regular bus ride much more.

Unusual Produce

Here's a lovely array of fruits that I purchased a few blocks from my hotel. The ones that look slightly like grenades are called "custard apples" in English, and sitaphul (Sita Fruit) in Hindi. The ones the look like tiny watermelons are called coccinia, or scarlet gourds.












Here's the inside of a custard apple. Each of the little segments inside has a large black seed in it. The fruit itself tastes like an overly sweet mango, and has a squishy texture. It's neat to try, but not overly appealing.














Here's the inside of a coccinia. It doesn't taste like much.



















These round things are not potatoes, but a kind of fruit called a santol, or chikku in Hindi. They have a taste, texture, and color inside that's similar to a persimmon.










These are figs, like in America. I thought that they were good enough to deserve a picture on the page of unusual fruits.

Navratri

October 8th to October 16th are the dates for this year's observance of Navratri. The name of the holiday literally means "nine nights" in Sanskrit. In the most general terms, this holiday is when people do puja to Durga, the goddess.

I'm told that there are a lot of variations in the myths and customs surrounding Navratri in the various parts of India. Here in Pune, everything is open later at night, and there are more people selling balloons, food, etc., than usual. On the first night, there were also some fireworks.

People have set up what look like stages with lots of decoration and painted plaster statues on them for about a week or so in advance.


There also seems to be an increased sale in the flower garlands used for puja.




Also, in the photo at the bottom, there's a tractor pulling one of these stage setups down the main highway while several men are sitting on it. This is the sort of thing that is seen only here in India.

Funny Signs, Part 1

The McAloo [McPotato] Tikka Sandwich



Also, below the sign is a McDelivery motorcyle.













I think the transliteration of the name on the sign is funny. The ad below the sign offers a burrito that lets you "celebrate the best of Italy and Mexico!" I don't really want to know more about that product.








"Instant fairness bleach for men." This is both funny and depressing, I think.









The Indian version of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Motorcycles are Everywhere Here

Some bamboo and motorcycles on a side street.

















Traffic on the main highway into Pune.

Again, there are lots of motorcycles, and also people standing in the right lane of the street while waiting for the bus.

























Even this pair of holy people who I spotted from a rickshaw owns a motorcyle.