Indian Portraits.

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The Fool's Safari.

Doing safari through India is exhausting, like walking a tight-rope I am tense with every step, for there is danger at every turn, runaway traffic, man-eating tigers, serial killers murdering for ten rupees, yet somehow I sail through it all blithely, I hope like an innocent protected by an egg of white light that no demon can break through.

For my last day in the Himalayas we decided to go on safari deep into the jungle of the Rajiji National Park. I’d read in the newspapers that elephants had been coming into town and breaking into shops and warehouses to scoff up all the yummy stores. One male elephant was a real rogue, killing several people in its rampages. I had seen elephants in the wild before but was strongly desirous of seeing this particular specimen, always the Jungle Jim in me over-ruling the timid nerd. In his jeep, Balu and I drove deep down dirt tracks, the jungle enclosing us entirely, no way to turn and go back, we had to drive on and we got lost, the road giving way to landslides, at one point the jeep lurched over the edge, about to plunge into a deep gully, Balu only just swerving us back to safety.

Thank nogod the elephant didn’t show up, we were in his territory and there was no escape possible, he could easily have raged from the bushes, dragged us from the open-air jeep and stomped us to human ketchup. What he was doing at exactly this time not one km from where we were foolishly stumbling about was running amok up on the Dehradune Highway, dragging a poor 85 year woman from her car and smashing her to oblivion.

Most of the time we got about on an Enfield Bullet motorbike, Balu driving like a rakshas, (demon), out of Hell, taking every risk so that I try not to scream and trust to his life-long skill at speeding through a maze of obstacles, him always assuring me he knew what he was doing. Sure enough, two days after I left for my ongoing travails, an idiot auto-rickshaw driver did a sudden u-turn in front of him and he crashed into it hard, wiping out the front-end of his bike but thankfully rolling free of injury himself. What if I’d been on the back, the pillion often copping the worst of it? I shudder at my luck, is the high of adventure worth the fear and anxiety? It must be, because I keep going for it, like an addict, if I was a wimp I’d stay home and watch television.

When I finally made it to Mumbai I hoped I’d find refuge in that rambunctious city before I took on the wilds of Goa. I read in the Times of India that a foreigner’s body had been found on the local railway tracks, apparently having fallen from a train. He was unidentified, about 45 years old, six-foot plus tall, blond hair, beard and moustache, covered in tattoos, one of his legs was missing and he had deep wounds to his head. Who was he, how did he get there, what happened to him? Such a strong figure would be hard to overcome, he sounded like a hard-core druggie, drugs being the easiest way to get into trouble here. This story made me shudder all over again.

I’ve put in the hard yards and have a best mate as chaperone so I don’t need to fear the backstreets of Mumbai. The city has changed since the 26/11 carnage, not much fun anymore, every corner policed, the monuments blocked off, nowhere to sit and relax except for the Nariman Point sea-wall, staring at the sunset over the Arabian Sea. We went to the movies, we ate delicious food at funky restaurants, we shopped in crowded bazaars and drank beer in pubs. We patronized the grungiest night-club in the world, the Voodoo Club, empty except for working girls and dirty-old men voyeurising them, the cops raided it twice, the girls rushing to hide in a backroom while us guys sat innocently gazing into out beers, the crowd was scared off and the night was a flop.

Saturday was the big night, we went to a gay party at a club called Scream near Victoria Station. It quickly got packed with screaming queens, wall to wall sardines, smoke-filled so you couldn’t breathe. I cleared a space by dancing with wild abandon, ecstatic, riding the beat, eyes rolled back in my head, exciting the Indians to heights of rhythmic bliss so that we all jumped and writhed and shimmied for Indians love dancing even more than they love fucking and that’s saying something! This night was my lead-in to the season of ecstatic dancing that culminates in Goa on New Year’s Eve, a dance-cult where I can truly let-go of my Western rational hesitations and meld with the spirit of the locals, become one with them, for a few brief, eternal moments.

And then the fast, dangerous spin to Goa by sleeper-bus, an out-of-control roller-coaster ride across mountains, through jungle, me up all night drinking in the night-scape under a full moon, my MP3 pumping techno to match the speed of the bus. The windscreen smashed not far out of Mumbai and I thought we’d be stuck all night at a road-stop, but no, the driver simply rugged up and carried on, driving faster than usual, the wind freezing his arse off as he rushed to get home, we rocketed perilously upon a highway notorious for its accidents and deaths.

At last a gorgeous dawn and this fool’s safari could try and take a break in Goa, where everyone lets it all hang loose and thinks anything goes, and every step still has to watched with care.

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Life is an Extreme Sport.

 Meeting my good friends by the Ganges River and laughing carefree with them I would never guess at the dangerous life they lead. Man-eating leopards, rogue elephants, gun-toting bandits and crashing motor-bikes are just background noise for these fellows as they are river-guides, white-water rafters. Shooting the rapids on the Ganges is fairly safe, there are few really scary whirlpools, yet still many tourists drown, like the girl who was OK in her life-jacket after her raft overturned but drowned from swallowing too much water because she couldn’t stop screaming.

If you want death-defying rapids you have to go up to the wild rivers of Ladakh just below Kashmir and Tibet. That’s where my mate Balu and his “Real Challenge Adventures” team worked this year but lost their earnings due to the deadly earthquake that hit, destroying many towns and river camps. Sadly his crew lost a young member when, on a turbulent expedition, their raft flipped, the water being so cold it sapped the boy of his strength and he drowned.

Then Balu told me a story that really made me shiver. They had been hired by a middle-class British family to shoot the wildest rapids of Ladakh, mum, dad and two teenage kids on a jolly adventure to regale the rellies with over the Christmas dinner table. Except the raft flipped in the most inaccessible wilderness, all flung into the freezing torrent, separated and swept away. The crew struggled up onto a rocky beach and caught the family members with throw bags as they were streaming past. Most of the gear was also rescued so they thought all was well until they realized the father was missing, hurtled into oblivion. The rafting guides searched up and down the river, in and out of the icy crags, for hours to no avail, dad was gone and mum and the kids wailed in remorse as they sat bedraggled by the camp-fire.

But one of the Nepali guides refused to give up and kept searching the river environs. Just as night was setting in and all hope for British papa was lost he was suddenly seen whizzing around the bend, rushed uncontrollably along by the wild flow. He was so numb from the freezing waters he could hardly lift an arm to signal to the guide to help him, the quick-thinking guide ran, jumped from a height into his kayak, paddled furiously and reached him just before he hit another nasty turbulence, grabbing him before he would surely have been killed.

The family rejoiced at the return of their father and his tale was inspiring. He’d been swept to the other side of the river and found himself alone on a rock, freezing in the middle of nowhere. He knew that if he stayed there into the night he would die, his only chance at survival would be to jump back into the river and hope that the guides would see him further downstream and rescue him. It was a fifty-fifty gamble that he would be found but he had to take the chance as it was death for sure otherwise, so he leaped back into the freezing waters and luck, and the perseverance of the Nepali guide, was with him.

On hearing this I couldn’t help but wonder what I would do if I found myself in the same predicament: it’s amazing what one would do to survive any disaster but would I have the guts, the brains, the heart? I’d probably be still sitting on that fucking rock, but no, I’m not a passive guy, I’m all for action and decisiveness so I guess I’d have jumped too. Life for most of us is worth a gamble.

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If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.