Pumpkin and Drankwinkels

Van Zylsrus is at the end of the road.  Well, at the end of two roads, to be precise.   Kind of like a one-block settlement at the end of two roads. “Relax in Van Zylsrus” pronounces the welcome sign.  The Van Zylsrus Hotel is tightly sandwiched between two drankwinkels (Afrikaans for bottle stores, which sounds to me even more like a hangover than babelaas). Unsurprisingly we are met by one of the local drunks on arrival, as well as a variety of dogs of indeterminate breed and ownership.  The hotel is clean and comfy, rooms with automated air-freshener clustered around some artsy courtyards and a pleasant leafy garden.  Afternoon rugby is about to begin, and the bar is filling up with local patrons and some meercat researchers.  There are not enough of them, though, to make much of a difference to a slow autumn Saturday.

Earlier in the day, we passed through a half-street village in the middle of nowhere called Askham, where the Afrikaans manager of the local co-op invited us in for a coffee, in amidst the paint, fertilizer and horse bridlery.  She loves it here: she glows, she is full of energy, she sees beauty in the stark camel-thorns and the endless dust.  She is supersize in body and spirit, joyful, unpretentious, and content with her lot in life.  She confirms (or reassures?) that there are thirty white people in the area, and that they see each other at church once a fortnight. She rattles off the list of annual parties and dances.  Oh, to be a fly-on-the-wall at the Askham Valentine’s Dance.  She almost drools with delight and anticipation telling us about the menu that we can expect at the Van Zylsrus Hotel, in particular the pumpkin which, I later find out, is so sugary and translucent with butter that it is virtually jam.   

I go running and think about all the strange places I’ve been running in the past year (like Bandra Bombay, Gairezi Zimbabwe and Tooting London). It is almost new moon and my uterus aches. I calculate that if I’d lived in Mary Moffat’s time, albeit not in the Kalahari, I might well have had 13 children by now, including allowance for some fallow years in between and perhaps a death or two.  

Gravel beneath my feet, and my shoes make shadows in the late light – like hobnail boots, like wagon wheels, like hobnail boots, like wagon wheels, round they go.  The road is much more uneven under one’s own feet than it is under car wheels, of course.  Like so many things in life, one’s perspective shifts with proximity.  Uneven, undulating, coarse, pushed here and there into little sand peaks, this road is harder to navigate with only my own body-fuel. It is so silent that I stop to listen under a huge void of cloudless sky. Thud of own heart, gravel crunch pause, at least four bird species at different distances. A horse trap passes me, driven by three young country boys, perched side by side.  The trap moves strangely quietly and when I next look over my shoulder it is gone without trace, like maybe it was imagined.  I am nearly back at Van Zylsrus as the sun sets.  Three 4x4s rush past and their dust envelopes the orange.

At dinner I sample the remarkable pumpkin dish whose reputation precedes it. We are the only diners.  There are red-checked tablecloths. The wide-ranging playlist brings us everything from Phantom of the Opera to Belinda Carlisle.  There is a substantial collection of kitsch Christian crosses on the wall above the piano.  We are fussed over by two pretty teenaged waitresses, who double-check every detail.  The food takes its time, as it does in out-of-the-way places.  The girls flutter in and out, doing god-knows-what.  The food finally arrives and it’s very tasty.  Even two delicious gluten-free vegetarian quiches (specially prepared ahead of my arrival – in fact they were already proffering them to me at lunchtime), piping hot, accompanied by green beans smothered in white sauce, and the syrupy pumpkin.  Think of it as a sort of vegetable extension of the koeksister family.  Just in case I didn’t have enough sugar, I round off the meal with a Dom Pedro, that favourite of southern African treats, Kahlua mixed with vanilla icecream in an alcoholic shake that tickles both the adult and child within.  As for which Dom (or was it Don?) Pedro inspired this drink - and when and where - that remains shrouded in mystery.

Salt, Sand and the Heart of the Matter

More on the 2500km road trip.  After Augrabies we headed north towards the Kgalakgadi transfrontier national park, into country with no phone reception and one other car.  To use one of Larry Page’s favourite expressions, this was ‘uncomfortably exciting’ for someone who’s now sadly conditioned to email-and-SMS-on-tap.  The park itself is busier, with visitors converging from all three countries (Namibia, Botswana and SA).  The more-trafficked part was frequented by older-generation white South African 4x4 roadtripper couples with over-equipped vehicles, if not trailers as well.  (Thinking back a few years, the same breed would sometimes show up at campsites in Caprivi with the entire contents of a large house.)

We carefully followed instructions to find our meeting point, cutting it fine in terms of timing, but with a few spare minutes to enjoy yet another rice cake with avocado.  P. knows all about the rice cakes by now.  Two San and Mier guides from !Xaus appeared in a Toyota and accompanied us into the desert wilderness.  In these parts mileage is measured in dunes rather than kilometres, making the lodge 90 dunes from Tweerivier and 34 dunes from Kamqua.   34 dunes is about an hour’s worth of travel.  P. did a fine job of tackling the road, since driving in thick sand is no easy feat.  Only once did our guide have to take the wheel to conquer the largest orange dune at high speed, after which he announced in his singsong accent: “There’s nothing-wrong with this Hilux of yours…”

 

Traversing the dunes is well worth the effort.  The lodge is spectacularly perched on the edge of a giant salt pan, a kilometer in diameter.  You don’t grasp the scale of it until you realize that the dot about two-thirds across is in fact a stately oryx.  The pan is almost perfectly round, but for a small dimple which makes it more like a heart, giving the place its name, !Xaus, which is also said to reflect the spirit of healing and dignity brought by the restoration of indigenous land rights.   

At the start of Brody’s documentary Aftermath, #Khomani leader Dawid Kruiper describes what happened on the day that the land claim was formally signed, suggesting that even nature recognizes justice:

“The day Mbeki came with the helicopter and black car…there [were] lovely loose clouds, here a cloud, there a cloud, and the clouds began to speak…When they speak there, then they speak here…and from the top a faint rain already came. When the rain began to fall hard, the helicopter rose.  Within two days there were pools of water between the dunes.  After 30 dry years, on that specific day, it rained.  Those years when we were forced out were sad.  Then the land was given back, signed for.  And those bad things they did to us, we forgave them. That is why the blessing of rains came that day.”

 

Nor was this rain was not shortlived.  According to other interviewees as well, it was plentiful and extensive.  #Khomani children who’d never seen more than small quantities of drinking water bathed in it for the first time – and white farmers’ houses near the river were in danger of flooding. No rain during our autumn visit, but water is drawn from below the surface of the giant pan.  On a more trivial note than justice, it’s so salty and mineral-rich that it made my skin look ten times better than Lancome could ever aspire to.  I even filled two bottles with this miracle tonic to bring home, in the hope that I could prolong the ‘spa effect’.

The politics of the land claim, of community and identity, are obscure during such a short visit.  It was difficult to get any real sense of what was going on. ‘Shifts’ of people come to the lodge to preside in a ‘traditional village’ where they make crafts to sell, mostly jewellery.   This construction of Bushman-ness made me feel awkward – admittedly I’m over-sensitive to the identity politics, but others would argue that it is no different than any other ‘tourist village’, and a viable socio-economic strategy.  Our San guide grew up speaking Afrikaans, reinforcing what filmmaker Brody has documented among the elders: that the #Khomani language N/u had been strategically ‘buried’ during the process of land dispossession and assimilation into farm labour, because, amongst other things, it was not in #Khomani interests to speak a language which would brand them as ‘lowly Bushmen’ rather than ‘coloureds’.  Brody’s films provide a rich set of testimonies which explore over a decade’s worth of highs and lows, from justice and joy, to community power struggles, financial mismanagement and alcoholism.

Thanks to its remoteness and shelter from light pollution, the lodge is soon to qualify as an official international ‘Dark Sky Place’.  At night, the stars are a tremendous scatter of white sand granules.  You can admire them through the telescope, if the telescope is not being slept on by the tame guinea fowl.  The red dunes nestle amazing biodiversity, including oryx, springbok, wildebeest, ostrich, jackal, tortoise, kori bustard birds, and 9 lions recently recaptured after they disappeared over the fence into neighbouring farmlands for some fine dining. 

The park sees an extreme temperature range: 47 degrees Celsius in summer and -10 in the winter.  On our second day, a wind picked up at lunchtime and blew tirelessly through the afternoon and most of the night.  By early next morning the temps had dropped to 6 degrees.  Outdoor winters on the sandveld are not for the fainthearted. There is little protection in this vast and open environment, so going to bed between four walls was a true luxury.   At last light, on return from our game drive, we catch a glimpse of the silhouette of a male lion not far from our room: a little jolt to remind us about the other custodians of territory round here.

The Road to the Interior, and Other Missionary Wives

P. won two nights at the furthest-away-possible lodge in a raffle.  And so we drove all the way from the edgy city of gold to the Kgalakgadi (the more authentic name for Kalahari) which is tucked into a curious border indentation that you didn’t even know South Africa had.  When I say far, I mean far.  A 2500km round trip.  By some stroke of serendipity this lodge is on the land of the Khomani San, the same people who  lost, mapped, and reclaimed that land in a process documented by anthropologist and filmmaker Hugh Brody, whose New College lecture was the first inspiration for my graduate research.

En route, Kuruman is an unlikely place for the most prolific oasis in the southern hemisphere.  20 million litres of water dribble out of the rocks every day in an unassuming fashion, giving life to thousands of fish, including the largest koi I’ve ever seen.  Here in 1820, a few kilometres from the spring, the Scottish missionary Robert Moffat settled and built an outpost for God.

 The mission houses the oldest European-style buildings north of the Gariep/Orange River. In the late afternoon it holds an unexpected beauty and peace.  This was an ambitious missionary: the church was built to seat 800 and, in the scrublands of the Kalahari desert, the stone walls stood uncovered for 7 years before Moffat found timber long enough to complete the roof.  The beams eventually came from hundreds of kilometers away in the Marico River valley, with the blessing of Moselekatse/Mzilikazi, the Matabele Chief.  Today the church has a postbox-red door, a clay-dung floor in the original style, and a sign that politely asks visitors not to ring the bell.

                                  

In the nearby graveyard, lost in the service of King, Empire and God, a jumble of Boer War soldiers, missionaries, long-suffering wives and dead infants, some of whom lived only briefly.  Birth, death, the succumbing of spirit and heart – all this happened here, including the birth of Howard Unwin Moffat, Southern Rhodesia’s second premier (whose government passed the 1930 Land Apportionment Act, which in a nutshell was one of the ultimate causes of Zimbabwe’s turmoil of the last decade) and the falling-in-love of that other famous missionary and explorer, Livingstone.  In the aftermath of a lion attack, and no doubt some realisations about the fragility of the human condition, Livingstone succumbed to the care and affections of the eldest Moffat daughter, who actually survived the Kalahari to adulthood.  She was called Mary, like her mother.  Not that she had much competition, nor he many options. He proposed to her in the garden now dedicated to Mary senior, ‘and other missionary wives’.

To the Kuruman mission came the printing press that marked the start of a momentous sea change - the spread of Christianity across the sub-continent in a short century or so, which both facilitated and resisted the expansion of Empire.  In the 1850s, Moffat translated and printed a thousand copies of the Old Testament, the very first time this had been done in an African language, seTswana. Half a ton in weight, and transported painstakingly by oxwagon hundreds of kilometres from Algoa Bay on the Namibian Atlantic coast, it sits dull yet resolute in one of the schoolroom buildings, the disruptive Internet of its time.

Reads one of the placards: “It continued to produce Spelling Books and Hymn Books but its chief glory was the Bible, home-made from the start, created out of a language which had no [written] grammar or dictionary, and printed and published on the veld” 

From Kuruman we drove through some of the most extensive manganese and iron ore mining sites in the world to Upington.  From there, along the Gariep (Orange) River valley, where we wound through canal-fed vineyards (yes, vineyards!) and Afrikaner farm stores filled with dried fruit, nuts, tea, rusks. Kakamas was originally a colony for poor white farmers in the aftermath of drought and rinderpest in the 1890s, founded and regulated by the Dutch Reformed Church.  They were only granted property rights in the 1960s.  Here and there are dirt side roads simply signposted with an arrow saying ‘Namibia’.

The Augrabies National Park is a stunning landscape of melting coffee-icecream rock with an almighty surge of water cutting through it, carving a canyon of substantial proportions.  The powerful Augrabies waterfall plunges into a pool that is 120 metres deep.  All around, the lilacs and khakis are reminiscent of Namibia, which is but a hop skip and jump away.  One needs several days to explore, so I hope to return.   More soon on the rest of the trip.

These Zulus, These Buddhists: Temple, Veld & Empire

According to an upmarket resident-guide, some eighty percent of the 25,000 visitors to Isandlwana – the site of the famous Anglo-Zulu battle - are British.  And of the remainder, less than ten percent are black South Africans.  This in itself raises all sorts of interesting questions about the history and politics of memory. Why, for example, are the British quite so fascinated by this greatest defeat in the history of Empire, analyzing and re-analysing its reasons; whereas for today’s Zulus, this battle is apparently insignificant in the context of other dramatic upheavals that took place in the 19^th century under kings like Shaka, Dingane and Cetshwayo?

Isandlwana is a prominent sandstone outcrop that can be seen from the surrounding hills and valleys, many kilometres away.  The tall white stone cairns that mark the fallen dead are scattered liberally across the hillside - nearly five thousand were slaughtered that day, but the fallen Zulu were taken away, so the  cairns (originally over 290 of them) only mark the piles of British dead.  The 22nd August 1879 was a new moon day; like many other cultures (including those who practice Ashtanga yoga), the Zulus observed certain lunar customs.  It was a day on which Zulu impi were not supposed to fight.  Uncannily, the same day saw a partial eclipse of the sun to underwrite all that was already auspicious or foreboding about the timing and location of the battle.

On a clear day the cairns can be seen from afar.  The British badly underestimated the capacity and strategy of the Zulu army, thinking amongst other things that, like the Xhosa, the Zulu would likely use guerilla tactics.  A highly disciplined force of 25,000 men who could march-run barefoot at 60 miles a day in sweltering heat and led by a commander aged over 70, nogal, was not exactly what they were expecting.

We learned on these ‘battlefield tours’ so much about individual British soldiers yet relatively little about their Zulu counterparts. This tourism in many ways hinges on postcolonial romanticism about Empire’s values of heroism, resilience and courage – disregarding lesser details such as an unprovoked and aggressive British incursion into Zulu territory.  The focus on British individuals continues the bias that imbued so many colonial history books – that white men were dynamic individuals who were the agents of history-making, whereas women and natives were the anonymous recipients of change.

Not only memory is interesting here, but memorialization.  The memorials are starkly different: there are a variety of monuments to the British erected over the years at Islandlwana and Rorke’s Drift, but only two or three monuments created to commemorate the Zulu dead.  The Zulu monument at Islandlwana is perhaps more a work of art than anything else – a striking ‘traditional’ bravery necklace of quills and lion claws, writ large in earth-hue metal, in the shape of the ‘bull horn’ formation, the military enclosure tactic developed by Shaka.

We stayed in the old farmhouse (c.1940) at Fugitives’ Drift in the shade of grapefruit trees, under a three-quarter moon, vying with encroaching weeds to use the outside shower.  With Islandlwana too in the far distance, it was suitably atmospheric.  Fugitives Drift is so named for the two British fugitive-soldiers who met their deaths by the flooded Buffalo river as they attempted to save the Queen’s colours (the symbolic flag of regimental pride and allegiance to Victoria) after fleeing the corpse-strewn hillside of Isandlwana.  They stood for all the old-fashioned valour and fortitude of Empire, the type that reminds me of Scott of Antarctica and more latterly the college rowing clubs in Cambridge. 

So where do the Buddhists come into all this?  Well they didn’t make it to the veld of Isandlwana, but they did make it to veld of Bronkhorstpruit which is 50km east of Pretoria, and where J. and I visited last weekend.  Believe it or not, Bronkhorstspruit is home to the largest Buddhist temple, Nan Hua Temple, in the southern hemisphere.  The site was established in 1992 by the Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order to promote Buddhism on the African continent.  There is a resident community of monks and nuns, one of whom told me off for brushing my hands along the scented lavender rows.  I guess she thought I was (rather violently) trying to pick it.

 People of all colours and from all walks of life visit the temple complex.  To that extent, it is a more South African experience than most other excursions one could choose.  At lunch we enjoyed a vegetarian buffet at the meagre sum of 30 rand per person, served on saucer-sized plates to foster reflection on greed.  Diners sit at slim bench-tables, all facing in the same direction, and are encouraged to eat in silence, whilst reflecting on the prayerful eating guidelines boldly displayed above on the wall.  We sat in the back row with some of the kitchen workers who have mastered the art of piling voluminous loads of noodles into the saucers.  It’s a fuss-free and functional affair, and about a hundred diners were in and out of the hall in under 40 minutes.

From there we went on to the sleepy village of Cullinan, famed for its diamond mine and the discovery of the largest diamond in the world - yup, over half a kilogram. The stone was bought by the (recently defeated Boer) Transvaal government and presented to King Edward as a birthday prezzie c. 1905, before parts of it were later incorporated into the Crown Jewels.  And this only 25 years or so after the Zulu army decimated the British at Isandlwana.   Could things have been different? The Boers aside, more twists and ironies of Empire as visions of Zuma’s five wives rise before me… each wearing a 120 gram diamond.

If God is For Us: The Randburg Boxing Club

Ashley Fourie has been boxing as long as anyone can remember. Or least since 1958, which is the oldest photo I can find on the wall of Ashley Fourie's Boxercise Gym, also known as the Randburg Boxing Club. Yet Fourie turned professional in 1969, which means he must have been boxing even longer than the first photo indicates. It turns out he started boxing at age 5, on account of being teased for his big ears and Afrikaans name at an English-speaking school in Yeoville, now downtown Johannesburg. Not long after his professional debut, though, he had a near-death motorbike accident which allegedly left him in a coma for seven weeks and scuttled all hopes of staying pro, despite a shortlived comeback.

The club is situated on a grungy corner of Randburg, sandwiched between the Hot Pot Takeaway and Lombard Tyres. When I first pulled up, I wasn't even sure I wanted to park my car outside, let alone venture inside. But venture inside I did, to find a sweaty group in the midst of a gruelling abs routine, and of course, Ashley Fourie himself with his long curly hair, heavy silver chain and bracelets, and an impressive array of tattoos, one of which features himself flexing his right bicep, on his right bicep.

Every square centimetre of Ashley Fourie's gym, from floor to ceiling, is covered in newspaper and magazine clippings about boxing, dating back to the 1930s. It is an interior design work of art in its own right, that reflects a lifetime of record-collecting, interspersed with messages about God ("If God is For Us, Who Can Be Against Us?"). All this combined and I knew the Randburg Boxing Club was for me. 

Despite his intimidating appearance, Ashley Fourie has attracted a plus-fifty-percent female following. His training sessions run six days a week, ranging from boxercise to amateur to professional. On Sundays? "You go to church and pray that you'll be able to recover in time to train again on Monday", he jokes.

Yes, it's still the New Year but I haven't missed a training session so far.

Bombay Works

Sand coloured smog. Fans. Air con. Swooping kites. The thin film of humidity that coats the skin. The smell that clothes acquire when they get damp, then dry, get damp, then dry. This is Bombay, the steamy city that never sleeps and where anything is possible. For example, being offered Fifty Shades of Gray by a street vendor through the window of my taxi opposite Dhobi Ghat, where the washermen process 100,000 pieces of clothing a day, each article discreetly coded so that it reaches its correct owner. 

Last Friday I boarded the Ladies Carriage on the commuter train from Bandra Station to what used to be Victoria Terminus, now CST (return ticket = 12 rupees). The Bombay (latterly Mumbai) trains carry over 7.24 million commuters a day - the highest passenger density of any urban railway system in the world. Teenagers in salwar kameez, hijab and burkas giggle on their way to school, and sellers of tacky jewellery proffer their sparkling cargo. A transgender hijra circulates the carriage in her sari, blessing each one of us – though only about five passengers part with any coins in exchange for good luck. We pass stations with the names of empire: Sandhurst Road, Dockyard Road, Cotton Green. Other commuter trains shoot by with open doors, men hanging out.

The charming and humorous Armando awaited me on Platform 1. Having completed a Masters degree in Fine Art at Stanford, he is now negotiating the extremist bureaucracy at the Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay’s oldest and most prestigious art institution, where Rudyard Kipling, son of the dean, grew up in a large and picturesque wooden double-storey house. Outside are unkempt gardens where the trees and plants grow prolifically with no attention. Birds chatter and a cockerel wanders around proudly. The shade encloses this other-world, separating it from the working chaos of one of the largest cities on earth. Many important artists and architects were trained here, going away to produce some of India’s best-known buildings and public spaces. As one of the school’s only international students ever, Armando goes from office to office acquiring forms, signatures, photocopies, stamps, more signatures, more authorisations, additional forms. Paperwork will in fact be the subject of his art. 

Built by the British, the school buildings are over a century old. Their interiors are a bizarre and liminal world like Harry Potter on oriental steroids: huge stone buildings with grand staircases and ornate metalwork, acres of high ceilings with old-fashioned fans, cathedral-size windows, and a chaotic litter of sculptures, murals, paintings, easels, work stations, and antique hardwood furniture. 

In the printmaking studio are Harrild & Sons printing presses that have been in situ since their arrival from London a thousand moons ago. Harrild was an English printing pioneer in the first half of the 19th century. The life drawing studio is kept firmly out of bounds thanks to the ‘sensitive’ subject matter. We sneak in anyway and marvel at the (real) skeleton with decaying teeth in its glass case. Armando tells me that the life drawing models are apparently 3rd generation – like other professions in India, it has become an inherited occupation. 

On the other side of the school, the Crawford Market begins: street after street of fabric shops, tiffin sellers, purveyors of fine sweets, jewellers, all loosely divided into their respective sections. We do some swift business, Armando’s Hindi proving to be excellent value. At the sweet shop, our two small boxes of delicacies are selected by some of the 9 men behind the counter and then vacuum-packed by a tenth man with a hairdryer. We do our best not to laugh. 

In the tiffin shop I buy stainless steel food containers that are the kitchen hallmark of India, and Armando persuades me into buying a pressure cooker. The salesman looks on, wondering why on earth it is Armando the man, not me the woman, who knows all about the intricate workings of such a device. He gets increasingly impatient as we discuss what to engrave on the bottom of the cooker (another Indian tradition), and when we finalise on “Cooked with Love” in Hindi, he tells the inscriber to get a move on: ‘Ok, ok, your love, my love, everybody’s love!”.

On the way back to the closest station we walk through a Muslim burial ground which is one of the most beautiful inner city gardens I’ve ever seen. It’s a commuter short cut as well, so also the busiest inner city garden ever! Interesting how religion in this case promotes and protects the environment. Back in Bandra I’m supposed to meet a mystery man who speaks very fast on the phone and who’s delivering my salvaged iPod, which I handed over into the unknown tech realm before travelling to Mysore. Bandra Station is, like most Indian stations, a flurry of activity with hundreds of people on the go. Within literally 30 seconds, whilst I’m digging for my phone and stressing about landmarks and how on earth to find my ‘contact’, a man I’ve never seen before appears in front me of me and says my name. Of course. This is Bombay. It works. iPod and cash change hands, he evaporates into the crowd, and I’m gleeful to have had 8GB of data rescued by some tech whiz. 

Down the road at the printing shop, I’m having business cards made to publicise my new book. They can do the job in 9 hours, of course, despite being inundated with greeting card orders for the upcoming Diwali festival. The tiny front room is crowded with a thousand paper samples, wedding invites, personalized stationery of Bollywood actors, Muslim family photos, theatre posters. I sip a petite cup of hot chai and look at fancy invitations for Parsi socialites at the Race Course Turf Club and hotels in exclusive Juhu. Later in the day, the card designer personally delivers my cards on his motorbike to Armando’s flat by St Andrews Church, where hundreds of striking orange marigold garlands are being laid on graves for All Saints Day. 

By mid-evening Bandra is more awake than ever. I ask for the opening house of a nearby pharmacy and the attendant looks at me with some surprise. “Twenty four seven, madam”. Of course. How could I think otherwise?

[With thanks to Armando for his photo of the hallowed halls of J.J]

Coffee, Cardamom & the Forests of Coorg

The bus driver to Madikeri had a beaming smile, an immaculately maintained mustache, a steering wheel with a two-foot radius, and a take-no-prisoners attitude.  Sitting at the front of the bus, sweatily snuggled amongst mostly men, is better for the view but worse for the nerves.  Like, quite a lot worse.  The driving in this place is unreal. The bus also has a Suggestion Box though it was hard to tell if anyone ever had ever used it.

Three hours later on arrival, after arguing with a smarmy rickshaw driver who then got a commission from the hotelier, I spent the night not far from the bus stop at a characterless but clean hotel where the receptionist sleeps behind the desk so that he can be available twenty-four-seven.  There’s no getting away from the mosques and temples, so it was the usual 5am wake up call, which was also when a group of other guests decided to start making lots of noise in the corridor.  Sunday morning, god strewth.

Despite a somewhat uninspiring start, Madikeri turned out to be a true highlight of the India trip.  My randomly-found hiking guide Channappa was a local coffee farmer who’s been guiding for nine years.  He speaks six of India’s twenty-two official languages (122 languages are spoken by more than 10,000 people) and wears slip-on sandals, in contrast to my full-on hiking boots.  We spent two days trekking up and down through muggy emerald forests and expanses of rice paddies, chatting with other small farmers who we met along the way in their burbling Kannada tongue.  Without wanting to romanticize these people, I was struck by how content they seemed – a light in their eyes or something in their faces that suggested the benefits of leading an outdoor rural life inscribed with agricultural labour.

I was blown away by the forests.  Several centuries of exploitation by colonisers and latter-day loggers, yet this earth is bountiful.  The monsoon brings 150 inches of rain here each year.  Many of the common crops grow happily amidst the jungle: coffee, cardamom, pepper, vanilla, ginger, lemongrass, cashew, pineapple, wild tobacco and the occasional avocado, orange and lemon trees.  There are less savoury things in the forests too: leeches which dance frantically on the forest floor and then back-bend their way up your shoes to bite through your socks; poisonous vipers lying quietly near the paths, one of which put Channappa out of commission for weeks as a teenager; nettles which will make you itch for a month; and yellow poisonous frogs.

Channappa’s grandfather purchased 14 acres of forest here in the 1920s during the British Raj, at a time when poisoning tigers was rewarded by the government.  He grew cardamom, an unassuming plant whose seeds grow in small fleshy bulbs just above the ground. India is the second largest producer in the world of this third-most-expensive spice. Nowadays farmers focus on coffee because the price has doubled in the last year or two, especially for organic coffee.  Many of the trees are already 40-80 years old. 

 Channappa’s spotless home is at the top of a steep climb, marked by roses, geraniums and hibiscus but otherwise fully ensconsed by forest.  He and his neighbours have put in their own road, their own water system and their own electricity.   These are impressive and expensive feats given the dramatic terrain.  He has two impeccably behaved children (there are government benefits for families who only have two offspring) who are fluent in English, a dutiful wife who spent hours preparing a sumptuous dinner, breakfast and packed lunch, and, importantly, a bathroom with hot water heated on a fire. 

The night brought soft rain and deep sleep.  I liked this place so much that I offered to come and help pick his coffee for free during the harvest season – though I imagine I’d be one of the most unproductive labourers.  Perhaps even the laughing stock.  In fact, almost most certainly the laughing stock.